INTRODUCTION

In July 1782, the widow Mary Flint of York died, leaving behind a last will and testament signed in December 1781. In this document, Flint bequeathed several items of clothing including a ‘striped Linen Gown of my own Spinning’ to Mary Nixon, a ‘red and white flowered Gown’ to Ann Nixon, and a ‘brown Poplin Gown’ to Alice German, leaving ‘All the rest of my Wearing Apparel’ to be passed on to her servant Hannah Smith. The hand the will is written in is not Flint’s own but rather that of the paid scribe, public notary, or local clergyman who drew up the document on her behalf. As with other wills from the period, the document which survives today is the result of a process shaped by a range of factors including the needs and wants of Flint as an individual, her familial and social networks, religious considerations, and the expectations and constraints of the genre as a legal document, as well as ‘practices of textual production, dissemination, and reception’ with which a number of people and institutions were involved. While, as Lloyd Davis has argued, we cannot disentangle Flint’s own voice entirely from this complex network of practices, the descriptions of clothing contained in her will were likely her own. We will never know if they came from memory or if she had these items to hand as she drew up the document. Perhaps she was even wearing one of the gowns. Her will sheds light on the words available to her with which to describe her own wardrobe, something of importance to her as she planned its dispersal after her death. However, as this chapter argues, these descriptions alone do not grant easy insight into her thoughts or feelings.

In the same year that Mary Flint died, an anonymous individual placed an advertisement in the London newspaper The Daily Advertiser. The advertisement stated that a ‘Caravan-Box’ containing, amongst other things, ‘one green Tabby Gown, lined with a light-grey Persian, topt with Yellow’, ‘one Laylock flowered Cotton Gown’, and ‘one purple and white Cotton Bed-Gown, lined with Callico’ had been dropped from a Hackney Coach the previous evening. The advertiser offered a reward of two guineas to anyone who would return the box.