Exeter’s Elizabethan Bakers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.27947Keywords:
United Kingdom, Exeter, bakers, 16th-century, price regulation, staple foods, Bread, product identification, retail history, distribution, food and the state, social history, court recordsAbstract
This article arises from a prosopographical study of Exeter’s sixteenth-century ‘ordinary’ population, about whom far less is known than those who were part of the city’s trading and political elite. Prosopographical study requires that a large quantity of individual mentions of personal names, and the actions attached to them, from across a wide range of documents are entered into a database and then searches made on individuals’ names to create biographies. While this article concentrates on bakers, until similar studies are undertaken on other occupations, it is difficult to say what, apart from bread, differentiates the baking trade from other trades in Elizabethan Exeter. For the time being, however, this article sketches some of the aspects of bakers’ lives over 400 years ago, discerned from organizing snippets of information about individuals pursuing that trade.
References
Unpublished
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