Abstract
AT the beginning of the century, as Ashton showed, the pioneer industrialists ‘came from every social class and from all parts of the country’ [100 : 16; 124 : 376–82]. Subsequent enquiries have increased our knowledge of the entrepreneurial class and its geographical, social and occupational origins, but generalisation regarding the relative contributions of each distinguishable group remained hazardous, even misleading.
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Notes and References
Details of some of the houses built for Victorian entrepreneurs are provided by Mark Girouard’s fascinating study, The Victorian Country House (Oxford, 1971); for the examples cited, see pp. 7, 8, 184, 186–7.
Miss J. de L. Mann [74 : 194–5] provides some interesting data on the west of England cloth industry in the first half of the century. These show a very high mortality rate, and even the names of the relatively few surviving firms may have concealed a change of partners. In 1830, of the 135 firms in Leeds engaged in the sale and manufacture of woollens, worsteds and blankets, only twenty-one houses had partners who could provide a direct link with those in 1782. R. G. Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants: The Merchant Community in Leeds, 1700–1830 (Manchester, 1972 ) p. 115.
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© 1974 The Economic History Society
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Payne, P.L. (1974). The Entrepreneur: Origins and Motivation. In: British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century. Studies in Economic History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00985-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00985-5_4
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