Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2025
Business failure was a key moment of crisis for family relations, when obligations to kin were tested and liabilities negotiated. Family ties have generally been regarded as a positive resource, and a key form of insurance against failure, but in practice the terms and conditions of assistance could be a matter of delicate negotiation. Focusing on a case study from nineteenth-century Sheffield, the article uses personal and business correspondence to reveal the different positions of family members in managing failure, and the emotional tensions that accompanied this process. Through cooperation, assets could be protected and the family name preserved from the shame and expense associated with the formal process of bankruptcy. However, the family’s response to failure also highlighted differences between grades of kin and across generations. Direct financial support was one option, but separation of assets was an alternative way of proceeding that could offer strategic benefits. The case demonstrates the role of microhistorical study for exploring the tensions and emotions that could be generated within families. Responses to financial crisis highlight the role of family relations and emotion as important factors in understanding economic behaviour.
Les rapports familiaux devaient affronter une épreuve décisive si l’entreprise patrimoniale subissait quelque faillite et que les obligations des membres de la parenté devaient être testées et négociées les responsabilités de chacun. Jusqu’à maintenant on a généralement considéré que les liens de famille constituaient un recours positif en cas de coup dur et une forme d’assurance essentielle contre l’échec, mais, dans la pratique, les conditions de l’assistance intrafamiliale pouvaient être objet de négociations fort délicates. L’auteur se penche sur une étude de cas concernant Sheffield au XIXe siècle, et procède à l’analyse d’un dossier de correspondances personnelles et professionnelles qui mettent en lumière la diversité des positions adoptées par les membres d’une famille face à l’échec subi, un éventail de réactions émotionnelles générant des tensions. C’est pourtant par la coopération que les biens pouvaient être protégés et évitée toute honte sur le nom de la famille, sans compter la question des frais liés à toute la procédure formelle de faillite. Toutefois, la réaction des uns et des autres, à l’état de faillite, variait aussi selon les niveaux de parenté et l’appartenance générationnelle. La première option était de fournir un soutien financier direct, mais, par ailleurs, envisager un partage des biens était une autre solution qui pouvait offrir des avantages stratégiques. Cet article de microhistoire propose une démarche fructueuse qui explore les multiples tensions et réactions affectives susceptibles de se faire jour au sein des familles. Les réponses à une crise financière révèlent ainsi le rôle des relations familiales et des émotions comme facteurs majeurs pour comprendre le comportement économique.
Wenn ein Konkurs zur Überprüfung von Verpflichtungen gegenüber Verwandten und zur Verhandlung über Verbindlichkeiten führte, wurde er zum Krisenmoment in Familienbeziehungen. Familienbande werden gewöhnlich als positive Ressource und zentrale Absicherung gegen unternehmerischen Misserfolg angesehen, aber in der Praxis konnten die Bedingungen der Hilfeleistung zur heiklen Verhandlungssache werden. Im Rahmen einer Fallstudie zu Sheffield im 19. Jahrhundert wertet dieser Beitrag persönliche Briefe und Geschäftskorrespondenzen aus, um nicht nur die unterschiedlichen Positionen aufzudecken, die von den Familienmitgliedern eingenommen wurden, um dem Konkurs zu begegnen, sondern auch die emotionalen Spannungen, die mit diesem Prozess einhergingen. Durch Zusammenarbeit konnten Vermögenswerte geschützt und der Familienname vor der Schande und dem Aufwand bewahrt werden, die mit dem förmlichen Konkursverfahren verbunden waren. Die Reaktion der Familie auf den Misserfolg beleuchtet aber auch Unterschiede je nach Verwandtschaftsgrad und Generationszugehörigkeit. Direkte finanzielle Unterstützung war eine Option, aber die Trennung von Vermögenswerten eine alternative Vorgehensweise, die strategische Vorteile bieten konnte. Der Fall zeigt, wie sich durch eine mikrohistorische Studie die Spannungen und Gefühle, die innerhalb einer Familie entstehen konnten, offenlegen lassen. Die Reaktionen auf finanzielle Krisen unterstreichen, dass Familienbeziehungen und Gefühle wichtige Faktoren zum Verständnis des ökonomischen Verhaltens darstellen.
1 Yoram Ben-Porath, ‘The F-connection: families, friends, and firms and the organization of exchange’, Population and Development Review 6 (1980), 1–30.
2 Andrea Colli, ‘A theory of emotions and sentiments in family firms: a role for history’, Entreprises et Histoire 91 (2018), 126–37.
3 Sheryllynne Haggerty, ‘“You promise well and perform as badly”: the failure of the “implicit contract of family” in the Scottish Atlantic’, International Journal of Maritime History 23 (2011), 267–82; Sheryllynne Haggerty, ‘I could “do for the Dickmans”: when family networks don’t work’, in A. Gestrich and M. S. Beerbühl eds., Cosmopolitan networks in commerce and society, 1660–1914 (London, 2011), 317–42; Sheryllynne Haggerty, ‘Merely for money’? Business culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815 (Liverpool, 2012), 51–2, 138.
4 Hannah Barker, Family and business during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 2017), 97.
5 Robert Nantes, ‘English bankrupts 1732–1831: a social account’ (PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2020), 122.
6 Douglas Hamilton, ‘Local connections, global ambitions: creating a transoceanic network in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic empire’, International Journal of Maritime History 23, 2 (2011), 297.
7 Thomas M. Safley ed., The history of bankruptcy: economic, social and cultural implications in early modern Europe (New York, 2013), 7.
8 Mark Häberlein, ‘Merchants’ bankruptcies, economic development and social relations in German cities during the long 16th century’, in Thomas Safley ed., History of bankruptcy (New York, 2013), 25.
9 Thomas M. Safley, ‘Bankruptcy: family and finance in early modern Augsburg’, Journal of European Economic History 29 (2000), 71.
10 Edward J. Balleisen, Navigating failure: bankruptcy and commercial society in antebellum America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 90–6.
11 Aidan Collins, ‘The interconnected nature of family indebtedness: the Halliday family of Frome, Somerset (1733–1752)’, Enterprise and Society 25, 3 (2024), 813–39.
12 Alastair Owens, ‘Inheritance and the life-cycle of family firms in the early Industrial Revolution’, Business History 44, 1 (2002), 25, 43.
13 Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, Producing culture and capital: family firms in Italy (Princeton, NJ, 2002), 13.
14 Mandy Cooper and Andrew Popp, ‘Introduction: at the heart of the market’, in Mandy Cooper and Andrew Popp eds., The business of emotions in modern history (London, 2023), 17.
15 Jennifer van Kesteren, Jan Adriaanse and Jean-Pierre van der Rest, ‘The story behind bankruptcy: when business gets personal’, QUT (Queensland University of Technology) Law Review 17, 1 (2017), 57–73.
16 Sarah Pearsall, Atlantic families: lives and letters in the later eighteenth century (Oxford, 2008), 14–15.
17 Clare Monagle, Carolyn James, David Garrioch and Barbara Caine, European women’s letter-writing from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries (Amsterdam, 2023), 193–9, 204, 219.
18 Sophie H. Jones and Siobhan Talbott, ‘Sole traders? The role of the extended family in eighteenth-century Atlantic business networks’, Enterprise and Society 23, 4 (2022), 1094.
19 Robin Holt and Andrew Popp, ‘Emotion, succession, and the family firm: Josiah Wedgwood & Sons’, Business History 55, 6 (2013), 892–909.
20 Holt and Popp, ‘Emotion, succession, and the family firm’, 897.
21 For context, Sidney Pollard, ‘Fixed capital in the Industrial Revolution in Britain’, Journal of Economic History 24, 3 (1964), 299–314.
22 Ronald E. Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years: a history of the Sheffield Smelting Company Limited, 1760–1960 (London, 1960), 94, refers to his ancestor William Wilson: ‘He was to become the saviour of the business … through their descendants the blood of the founder was to continue’.
23 Alison Twells, ‘Missionary domesticity and “woman’s sphere”: The Reads of Wincobank Hall’, in The civilising mission and the English middle class, 1792–1850: The ‘heathen’ at home and overseas (Basingstoke, 2009), 83–114.
24 Autumn Mayle, ‘Respectable women, ambitious men: gender and family networks in Victorian Sheffield’ (PhD thesis, West Virginia University, 2020).
25 Julian Hoppit, Risk and failure in English business 1700–1800 (Cambridge, 1987), 51–2.
26 Ibid., 131.
27 Ibid., 70–3.
28 Simon Barley, ‘The 18th-century Sheffield saw industry: its origins and relationship to crucible steel making’, Historical Metallurgy 42, 2 (2008), 123; Simon Barley, ‘Hand tool manufacture during the Industrial Revolution: sawmaking in Sheffield c.1750–c.1830’ (PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 2008), 217, 220, 284–7; London Gazette, 14 March 1775, no. 11544, 3; 25 August 1778, no. 11904, 3.
29 Hoppit, Risk and failure, 24; Ian P. H. Duffy, ‘English bankrupts, 1571–1861’, American Journal of Legal History 24, 4 (1980), 283–305; Nantes, ‘English bankrupts’, 48–9.
30 Duffy, ‘English bankrupts’; Ian F. Fletcher, The law of insolvency, 2nd edn (London, 1996), 9.
31 Jay Cohen, ‘The history of imprisonment for debt and its relation to the development of discharge in bankruptcy’, Journal of Legal History 3, 2 (1982), 153–71.
32 Robert J. Morris, Men, women and property in England 1780–1870: a social and economic history of family strategies amongst the Leeds middle classes (Cambridge, 2005), 53–4; Margot C. Finn, The character of credit: personal debt in English culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge, 2003), 110–111.
33 David Hancock, ‘The trouble with networks: managing the Scots’ early-modern Madeira trade’, Business History Review 79, 3 (2005), 481.
34 Nantes, ‘English bankrupts’, 282–4.
35 M. H. F. Chaytor, The Wilsons of Sharrow: the snuff-makers of Sheffield (Sheffield, 1962), 10.
36 Tawny K. Paul, The poverty of disaster: debt and insecurity in eighteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 2019), 241–2.
37 Barbara Weiss, The hell of the English: bankruptcy and the Victorian novel (Lewisburg, 1986), 14–15, 48–9.
38 Morris, Men, women and property, 59; Robert J. Morris, Class, sect and party: the making of the British middle class, Leeds 1820–1850 (Manchester, 1990), 322.
39 Weiss, Hell of the English, 29.
40 Ibid., 19.
41 Finn, Character of credit, 74.
42 Balleisen, Navigating failure, 188; Thomas M. LeCarner, ‘Of dollars and sense: economies of forgiveness in antebellum American law, literature, and culture’ (PhD thesis, University of Colorado, 2014), 156.
43 LeCarner, ‘Of dollars and sense’, 158–9.
44 Ian P. H. Duffy, ‘The bankruptcy laws’, in Ian P. H. Duffy ed., Bankruptcy and insolvency in London during the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1985); Nantes, ‘English bankrupts’, 62.
45 V. Markham Lester, Victorian insolvency: bankruptcy, imprisonment for debt and company winding-up in nineteenth-century England (Oxford, 1995), 36.
46 Duffy, ‘English bankrupts’, 293–4, 304.
47 Lester, Victorian insolvency, 36, 45.
48 Finn, Character of credit, 102.
49 Weiss, Hell of the English, 16–17.
50 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 101, indicates that Read & Co. was bankrupted, but in fact the family managed to avoid this outcome. Neville Flavell, ‘Banking services in eighteenth century Sheffield’, Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society 19 (1997), 59, discusses the similar case of Benjamin Roebuck in the late eighteenth century, on which see also ‘Benjamin Roebuck’, EverybodyWiki, https://en.everybodywiki.com/Benjamin_Roebuck_(1712-1796) [accessed 12 January 2024].
51 Lester, Victorian insolvency, 36, 78.
52 Weiss, Hell of the English, 27.
53 Ian P. H. Duffy, ‘Appendix II: deeds of arrangement’, in Ian P. H. Duffy ed., Bankruptcy and insolvency (New York, 1985); Lester, Victorian insolvency, 79; Weiss, Hell of the English, 179.
54 Sheffield City Archives (hereafter SCA), MD6340, no. 6.
55 Weiss, Hell of the English, 26–7, 178–9.
56 Peter M. Solar and John S. Lyons, ‘The English cotton spinning industry, 1780–1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette’, Business History 53, 3 (2011), 314.
57 George Elwick, The bankrupt directory (London, 1843).
58 The wider region is here defined as centres up to 10 miles distant from Sheffield, including, for example, Rotherham and Dronfield.
59 Jessica M. Lepler, The many panics of 1837: people, politics, and the creation of a transatlantic financial crisis (Cambridge, 2013).
60 David Crossley, ‘The Rolt Memorial Lecture 1995: The Fairbanks of Sheffield: surveyors’ records as a source for the study of regional economic development in the 18th and 19th centuries’, Industrial Archaeology Review 19, 1 (1997), 8.
61 Neville Flavell, ‘The economic development of Sheffield and the growth of the town c.1740–c.1820’ (PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 1996), 86.
62 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 31.
63 Ibid., 57; Richard Thomas Simmons, ‘Planning industrial development: the Norfolk Estate, Sheffield, 1800–1914’, Planning Perspectives 12, 4 (1997), 416.
64 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 10. For William Bacon Rawson’s death 19 July 1829, see www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/documents/collectionsindepth/nonconformistchurchregisters/fym1-1burials1827-1854.pdf [accessed 10 January 2024].
65 His papers are available in the Nottingham Archives. See https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/74689ff0-c52c-44b7-9999-9d4b7d4b1e24 [accessed 11 January 2024].
66 Twells, ‘Missionary domesticity’.
67 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 85, 87; Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 94.
68 Quoted in Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 95.
69 Ibid., 74. See London Gazette, 28 June 1831, no. 18818, 1287, for the dissolution of the partnership between Joseph and John Read, the firm to be continued by Joseph alone.
70 Morris, Men, women and property, 172–3.
71 SCA, SSC 683, dated May 1824 to January 1830, letter from John to Joseph Read.
72 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 85, describes this as John making an investment in the business, but it should be regarded as a conversion of equity into debt. No new investment went into the firm; rather than receiving a share of the profits of the firm, John would receive a fixed income.
73 SCA, SSC 683, dated May 1824 to January 1830, letter from John to Joseph Read.
74 SCA, SSC 683, dated May 1824 to January 1830, letter from John to Joseph Read.
75 SCA, SSC 683, dated 12 January 1830, letter from John to Joseph Read.
76 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 71.
77 Ibid., 96.
78 Lucy Newton, ‘Regional bank–industry relations during the mid-nineteenth century: links between bankers and manufacturing in Sheffield, c.1850 to c.1885’, Business History 38, 3 (1996), 69–76.
79 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 282; Elwick, Bankrupt directory, 263, lists ‘Lucas Sam.; & John Shore; Beer Ferris, Devonshire, refiners, May 13, 1831’.
80 Lepler, Many panics.
81 SCA, SSC 740, 2 March 1837, letter from Edmund Read to William Wilson.
82 SCA, SSC 740, 17 December 1836, letter from Edmund Read to William Wilson.
83 SCA, SSC 740, 20 February 1837, letter from Catherine Read to William Wilson.
84 SCA, SSC 740, 8 April 1835, letter from Edmund Read to William Wilson.
85 SCA, SSC 740, 2 March 1837, letter from Edmund Read to William Wilson.
86 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 282; SCA, SSC 764, 16 May 1837, letter from William Wilson to John Read.
87 SCA, SSC 764, 16 May 1836, copy of letter from William Wilson to John Read; SCA, SSC 743, 16 May 1836, original letter from William Wilson to John Read.
88 SCA, SSC 740, 16 February 1837, letter from Edmund Read to William Wilson.
89 SCA, SSC 740, 10 March 1837, letter from Catherine Read to William Wilson.
90 SCA, SSC 764, 25 March 1837, letter from William Wilson to Catherine Read.
91 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 100; Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 96.
92 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 106, argues that William appreciated Catherine’s advice, but the tone of the letter suggests that this question was probably rhetorical. See SCA, SSC 764, 25 March 1837, letter from William Wilson to Catherine Read.
93 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 109; SCA, SSC 740, 6 April 1837, letter from Edmund Read to William Wilson.
94 SCA, SSC 743, 12 May 1837 original of letter from John Read to William Wilson. SCA, SSC 744; Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 104; SCA, SSC 764 copy of letter from John Read c. 1837; see also SCA, SSC 743 for John’s earlier letter of 24 March 1837.
95 SCA, SSC 743, 12 May 1837 original of letter from John Read to William Wilson; SCA, SSC 764 copy of letter from John Read c. 1837.
96 SCA, SSC 743, 12 May 1837 original of letter from John Read to William Wilson; SCA, SSC 764 copy of letter from John Read c. 1837. Although the copy states that it was unsigned and unfinished, it appears from the original that this was signed and sent to William.
97 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 87, 101, 186–7, refers to Joseph’s ‘bankruptcy’ in 1837, but John’s intervention into the company was intended to prevent this outcome. Similarly, Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 182, n.549 refers to John Read’s ‘bankruptcy’ in 1846, but this was also avoided.
98 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 193–4. Derwent Hall was on sale from at least 1841, see Manchester Courier, 24 December 1841, 1. It was sold off by auction in 1846, see Sheffield Independent, 24 October 1846, 4.
99 SCA, SSC 765, letter from Mary-Anne Rawson to John Read, probably May or June 1837.
100 SCA, SSC 765, letter from Mary-Anne Rawson to John Read, probably May or June 1837.
101 SCA, SSC 716, letter from Mary Anne Rawson to John Read, c. 1846.
102 Mayle, ‘Respectable women’, 188; SCA, SSC 716, letter from Mary Anne Rawson to John Read, c. 1846.
103 SCA, SSC 764, 7 November 1837, letter from William Wilson to John Read.
104 SCA, SSC 764, 10 November 1837, letter from Brookfield & Gould to William Wilson.
105 SCA, SSC 764, 13 November 1837, letter from William Wilson to John Read.
106 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 106–7. On the private bank of Rimmington & Younge, established in 1816 as Sheffield New Bank, see Flavell, ‘Economic development’, 264–5; John Holland, The picture of Sheffield (Sheffield, 1824). Todd Naylor & Co. was a Liverpool company established in Liverpool c. 1827; on Todd Naylor as one of the directors of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, see Crosbie Smith, Coal, steam and ships: engineering, enterprise and empire on the nineteenth-century seas (Cambridge, 2018), 212.
107 SCA, SSC 716, c. 1846, letter from Mary Anne Rawson to John Read.
108 Safley, ‘Bankruptcy’.
109 SCA, SSC 773, 8 June 1846 letter from Edward Smith to William Wilson.
110 SCA, SSC 773, 25 June 1846, letter from William Wilson to Gould; Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 286.
111 SCA, SSC 773, 30 June 1846, letter from Gould to William Wilson; SCA, SSC 773, 11 July 1846, letter from Gould to William Wilson.
112 SCA, SSC 773, 2 July 1846, letter from William Wilson to Brookfield & Gould.
113 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 287.
114 Gillian Cookson, ‘Family firms and business networks: textile engineering in Yorkshire, 1780–1830’, Business History 39, 1 (1997), 15–16; Barker, Family and business, 112.
115 Wilson, Two hundred precious metal years, 287–8.
116 Yanagisako, Producing culture and capital, 21; Cooper and Popp, ‘Introduction’.
