Joan Mellish also ‘laid out’ money for Molly Harvey’s clothing on behalf of her son. In 1708 she described purchases of ‘Pladd for the Childrens Coats’, ‘scotscloth for [Molly] Harvey Handk’, and ‘Black Shallou[n] and ferret Ribband’ for a petticoat for Molly Harvey, which John Harvey paid her for later that year. 77 ‘Proxy shopping’, whereby men and women called on friends and family to undertake commissions of clothing and other goods, was widespread, and it is likely that many of the Mellish family purchases reflect this practice. 78 Both Helen Berry and Nicola Phillips, for example, have demonstrated how Judith Baker relied on a circle of family and friends to borrow money and acquire goods. 79 Without any surviving correspondence, it is difficult to determine how and why these purchases were undertaken. However, what they do show us is that the Mellish family functioned as a unit of accounting. They recorded and accounted for purchases made for other family members, who sometimes lived within but also beyond the boundaries of the household. As Naomi Tadmor has demonstrated, household membership was ‘permeable and flexible’ and was not determined by physical boundaries alone, but it is clear that members of the Mellish family living under different households also accounted for one another. 80
The purchase and maintenance of an individual’s wardrobe could therefore become an entangled process, scattered across accounts and described by different people. For example, Sarah Mellish’s clothing appeared in the accounts of her mother and sister-in-law, while her ‘Sister Harvey’s’ clothing appeared in Sarah Mellish’s own accounts, as well as those of her mother and half-brother. The fact that the family’s accounts are inextricably intertwined is further demonstrated by their obvious reliance on the same circle of suppliers and makers; Sarah Mellish paid bills to Mrs Lister, Mrs Yarwood, Mrs Stocker, and Mrs Faram (or Fayram) for textiles, clothing, and making, to Mr Shaw for shoes, and to Mr Martin for stays. 81 Her mother paid one ‘Mrs Lester for 3 quarts of Lace’ in 1706, and John Harvey also recorded payments to Mrs Lister, Mrs Stocker, Mr Martin, Mr Shaw, and a Mr Faram. 82 Dorothy Mellish similarly ‘Paid Mrs Stockers Bill’ for her sister Harvey, and ‘Mrs Yarwhood as by Bill’ on behalf of Sarah Mellish. 83 By looking at clothing across the Mellish family accounts as well as their accounting practices, we can see the ways in which an individual like Sarah Mellish could expect to account and be accounted for. They also highlight the processes of construction involved in accounting, as accountants needed to demonstrate to family members how and where their money had been expended when ‘laid out’ for clothing on their behalf, to justify the amount owed, and to note when these debts had been settled to avoid future dispute. These entries were therefore weighted by ties of obligation, expectation, and indebtedness.
This chapter has already outlined difficulties with calculating expenditure on clothing from account books, but it is worth making a few further points. The first is that we will never be able to calculate with absolute certainty individual, family, or household expenditure on clothing from an account book. Not only are things often left out, mistakenly recorded, or vaguely worded, but the very processes of accounting complicate this. As we have seen, accountants sometimes recorded paying a bill without specifying what it was for; sometimes, we can infer that they refer to expenditure on clothing, but this can only ever be conjecture. Secondly, this prompts us to give pause and think about the usefulness of the numbers we extract from account books. As Poovey has highlighted, the numbers listed in accounts are the products of various processes of textual transfer and abstraction. 84 I have tried to put this into context as far as is possible, relating expenditure on clothing to an accountant’s yearly outgoings. However, the difficulties involved in calculating expenditure place limits on how much this can really tell us. Finally, we need to stop thinking of account books in isolation. Looking at the account books of the Mellish family gives us some idea of the relation these sources might bear to one another, as we find family members appearing across them. While a woman might have accounted for the clothing of family or household members, her own clothing may well have been described in the account book of someone else.