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- Title
Hester Hammerton and Women Sextons in Eighteenth‐ and Nineteenth‐Century England.
- Authors
Henry, Wanda
- Abstract
Hester Hammerton is one of the few English women recognised as a sexton who buried the dead. Yet, nineteenth-century eccentric biographies emphasised Hammerton’s singularity while ignoring many other women sextons. With reference to a database of 783 named women, this article discusses the history of England’s sextonesses, elected from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries and argues that published profiles increasingly presented Hammerton as a manly woman, unique in her occupation. Such a representation contributed to an intensifying gendered demarcation of the workforce and deflected attention from the historical precedent of women elected to parochial office.
- Subjects
SEXTONS; WOMEN church officers; HAMMERTON, Hester; HISTORY of the Church of England; ENGLISH church history; EIGHTEENTH century; NINETEENTH century
- Publication
Gender & History, 2019, Vol 31, Issue 2, p404
- ISSN
0953-5233
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1468-0424.12424