The Gentleman's Daughter (28 page)

Of all the tasks associated with ‘keeping house’, one of the most productive, in a simple economic sense, was the making up and maintenance of personal and household linens. The diligent mistress claimed this as part of her domain, although it was a domain whose boundaries were shifting in the course of the eighteenth century. At the turn of the seventeenth century it was common for women of the lesser gentry in the north to organise the manufacture of linen, and sometimes woollen cloth for household use. Gentry women would superintend the spinning of textile fibres into yarn by their female servants and contract with jobbing weavers in their neighbourhood to transform that yarn into cloth. This kind of self-provisioning only supplied a proportion of the household's textile requirements, with an emphasis on the coarser textiles, but it nevertheless constituted a significant responsibility for gentlewomen. There is no evidence of this kind of household self-provisioning of textiles in Elizabeth Shackleton's voluminous diaries, and it appears to have largely died out in other northern gentry households by the second half of the eighteenth century, as they came to rely entirely on an ever-expanding supply of shop-bought cloth.
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Gentlewomen were largely responsible for purchasing this cloth, and they continued to be responsible for processing it once bought, particularly for cutting out and sewing linen cloth into sheets and handkerchiefs, shirts and shifts. It should not be assumed, however, that this switch from partial self-provisioning to dependence on retail supply resulted in less work for gentlewomen. Time saved in organizing the manufacture of cloth may simply have been eaten up by shopping for larger quantities or more diverse qualities of cloth, by ever-more demanding standards of needlework, or by other tasks unrelated to textiles.

As had been the case with household spinning at the end of the previous century, the elite mistress of the second half of the eighteenth century expected to administer more sewing than she performed herself, yet her own practical ability was vital to effective production. As Dr Gregory lectured the elite seamstress, ‘the intention of your being taught needlework, knitting and such like, is not on account of the intrinsic value of all you can do with your hands, which is trifling, but to enable you to judge more perfectly of that kind of work, and to direct the execution of it in
others.’
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At Alkincoats, fabric was regularly bulk purchased, extra labour brought in and the family's new linen made up in enormous batches under Elizabeth Shackleton's supervision. But she herself sewed and labelled many ruffles, stocks, neckcloths and handkerchiefs for her menfolk and favoured servants, for a lady's plain-work was an attractive symbol of her dutiful ministration to the needs of her family. Sheets, pillowcases, blankets, towels and napkins for family and servants were all cut, stitched and labelled by Elizabeth Shackleton: ‘Made two pairs of sheets, one pair for the red room marked R.R. and a diamond, the other pair with a diamond red for my own bed.’ The first making was only the beginning of the story, many an afternoon was spent ‘busy mending old shifts, shirts and sheets’.
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Outdated or faded gowns were often unpicked to the original ‘whole breadths’ and ‘pieces’, and sent to be re-dyed in Manchester or London, while old linen was laboriously maintained and adapted. For Elizabeth Shackleton's was a thrifty regime, wherein every last scrap was utilized; a virtue she liked to broadcast. She reproved her improvident married son precisely for his failure to save fabric pieces: ‘I asked [Tom] for a piece of cloth to make me a Pincushion. He told me he had none. I said he sho'd keep bits. If they had not done so at Newton, how co'd the old Lady have made my own dear, nice, little [grandson] a pair of shoes.’
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Long after her sons left home, they continued to avail themselves of her services both managerial and technical. John and Robert Parker wrote from London requesting eleven new shirts without a qualm, while Elizabeth Shackleton was more than happy to oblige her sons. She told Robin in 1774 that she ‘wo'd take particular care to have all his shirts done as he directed & desired his acceptance of the making of them’.
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Mrs Shackleton revelled in her ability to be useful to her sons, urging them to bring home any shirts that required mending. Her efforts to make recompense with John Parker after a damaging quarrel are suggestive of the wider uses of her skills: ‘I am Happy to have [John] here. Mended up slightly some shirts & night Caps, all his things much out of repair. God knows he will find it a great & expensive difficulty to renew them.’ Even when theoretically head of an independent household, Tom Parker continued to resort to his mother over the matter of linens: ‘Tom called … said he sho'd want a number of things in the Housekeeping way – Particularly Linnen. I might advise Miss Parker about things.’
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Thereby he acknowledged Mrs Shackleton's accumulated expertise and authority.

Food was the most bountiful expression of genteel housewifery. Ladies recipe books, both printed and manuscript, detail a comprehensive interest in its production and processing. Elizabeth Shackleton was actively concerned with the running of the home farm. It seems unlikely
(though not impossible) that Elizabeth Shackleton directed labourers in the fields, but she was still
au fait
with their labour. The letters she received from her first husband conveyed information about crops and livestock. In her widowhood, she ran the estate herself with the help of her brother's steward, and even after remarrying was directly involved in disputes with tenant farmers concerning their misuse of Parker land – contentious issues being the taking of rushes and timber, over-intensive ploughing and the laying of lime.
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In her diary she noted the rhythms of the farming year: ploughing, lime burning and laying, hay-making, mowing and threshing, lambing, calving, sheep shearing and so on. She also coyly recorded the matings of livestock: ‘A Mr Sheep came to visit our young Miss Lambs.’ Throughout the 1760s and 1770s Mrs Shackleton discussed the farm animals in very possessive terms, writing of her ‘little dandy cock and hen, which I value very much’, ‘my sweet little pigs’, ‘my good old handsome gander’, ‘my good profitable sow’ and so on, and reporting tasks like ‘set the old goose, March Wednesday ye 15th upon eleven eggs’. While such testimony is of limited value in ascertaining the full extent of her daily engagement in farm and estate management, it does at the very least confirm that this gentlewoman was no precious hothouse bloom withering at the first farmyard breeze. However, it may well be the case that her endeavours were usually concentrated in the immediate vicinity of the house. Abetted by her part-time gardener, Mrs Shackleton also tended a flower and kitchen garden, recording the prodigious yields of her apple and pear trees. When she moved to Pasture House, she sent away to a Pontefract nursery for moss, Provence and Portland roses, honeysuckles, gessamine and myrtles to establish her new garden.
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The diaries contain no evidence that crops or livestock were sent to market. Most produce seems to have been absorbed by the family or given away, with the exception of butter, which Mrs Shackleton sold at between fivepence and sevenpence per pound. Her customers were made up of neighbours, tenants and Colne traders. They either came directly to the dairy door to buy the butter, or had it sent by cart. Only occasionally was butter sent to Colne market to be sold. Looking in detail at butter sales in one year gives an idea of the scale of the dairying at Alkincoats. In 1776 Mrs Shackleton reported sending eight gargantuan pots of butter into the cellar. Of these, one pot was consumed by the family and the other seven were sold off at sevenpence per pound to neighbours. In all 496 pounds of butter was sold, bringing in £14 9s. 4d. in revenue. Thus, in relative terms, her butter trade was worth the annual wages of two to three maidservants.
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It was a significant enterprise.

The complete and accomplished housewife was also an expert at the
‘The Art of Preserving, and Candying. Fruits and Flowers, and making all sorts of Conserves, Syrups, Jellies and Pickles’, as well as distilling and making artificial wines, perfumes, oils, musk balls and so on.
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Certainly, Mrs Shackleton's year was punctuated by seasonal pickling and preserving on a liberal scale. May saw the fermenting of gallons of cowslip wine, July the making of currant jelly and the bottling of cherries, September the pickling of literally hundreds of cucumbers, October the sousing of onions, the preserving of damsons and gooseberries, and the perfecting of several varieties of ketchup. In addition to the processing of produce, Mrs Shackleton supervised her menservants in the brewing of ale and small beer and her maidservants in the home-curing of ham.
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Stocking the larder with home-processed food and drink was the bread and butter of good housekeeping.

The scale of food processing was consistent with the overall tenor of Mrs Shackleton's provisioning. Many commodities were bought annually in staggering bulk, such as malt, flour, sugar, salt, wine, candles and soap. On arrival, these products were inventoried, labelled if appropriate, and put into storage. It was Elizabeth Shackleton and not the cook-housekeeper who monitored the amount of food in the household if the sheer number of inventories in her diaries are anything to go by.
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Indeed, long after her removal to Pasture House, Mrs Shackleton continued to order the groceries for Alkincoats. In addition to the role of head-provisioner, Mrs Shackleton assumed the duties of a guardian of supplies. Minute testimony to her surveillance is provided by numerous, annotated inventories and her reaction to waste. The squandering of supplies on the part of careless or prodigal servants was condemned. This mistress prided herself on sound stewardship and resented any interference therein. Predictably, interference was yet another of Mr Shackleton's offences: ‘Mr S. exceeding bad … as soon as ever he came down this morning he drank White Wine. S. threw that bottle down & another of red Port and broke them both, Sad terrible housekeeping indeed.’
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Nowhere in the diaries, however, is there any suggestion or expectation that the mistress of the house would herself prepare food on a routine basis. Mrs Shackleton did make her husband a special cream cheese as a peace offering, but the power of the gesture lay in the exceptional character of her labour. A lady did not make family meals, instead she took pains to see that her cook joined ‘Oeconomy with Neatness and Elegance’ in the spreading of her tables.
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One of the most distinctive and traditional aspects of genteel housekeeping was the production and distribution of medicine. It is a commonplace that seventeenth-century gentlewomen saw the liberal dispensation of
medicine and succour as part of their remit; a notable example being Lady Grace Mildmay and her herbal remedies.
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As already noted, the female role of sick-nurse was long established, all but inescapable, and long enduring. Medicinal recipes remained a familiar currency of women's correspondence throughout the period. Moreover, informal medicinal philanthropy still survived here and there. For instance, Lady Lawson, wife of Sir Henry Lawson of Brough, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, had a local reputation among the poor in the 1750s for being ‘skilful in medicines and bountiful in bestowing them’, while in Denbighshire, Lady Wynne was eulogized in 1748 for a lifetime of relieving the poor with food, clothes and physick: ‘a rare example in this extravagant and luxurious age’. In the Parker network, Barbara Stanhope was noted for ‘the art of Quacking’.
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Mrs Shackleton, for her part, was celebrated for the production of reasonably priced rabies medicine. She inherited a recipe and reputation for the making of rabies medicine from her first husband. Robert Parker (who studied medicine at Cambridge) and a Mr Hill of Ormskirk, Lancashire (apparently a merchant), had sold their ‘Cure for Hydrophobia’ throughout the 1740s and 1750s. Robert Parker's cure and public spirit was the subject of a letter to the
Gentleman's Magazine
in August 1753:

After Robert Parker's death in 1758, Elizabeth determined to perpetuate his public spirit, so she took over the production of the medicine and sold it at the modest price of a shilling a bottle.
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In 1776 she passed the recipe on to her son John Parker, much to his satisfaction, but continued making the medicine right up to her death in 1781.
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Unlike Robert Parker, if we are to believe the
Gentleman's Magazine
, she was prepared to send the mixture long distances, although consumers also came in person, or sent agents from far afield. Appendix 6 shows that the market for her medicine extended north and west to Westmorland, Cumberland and Scotland, north-east to County Durham, and south to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Elizabeth Shackleton enjoyed considerable provincial fame through her
medicine. The potion needed no introduction in 1777 to the readers of the
Leeds Mercury
: