Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

I am researching my 3xgrandmother who lived and worked in Roscoe Lane in 1840's. She was a fent dealer, and although I understand a fent dealer sold offcuts and remnants of fabric, I get the feeling she was self-employed as her husband was deceased. She is listed in Gore's and Slaters directories as a fent dealer. Would she have worked for herself or for a larger company?

My gut feeling would be that the word "dealer" says that she was the boss, even if only of herself, rather than working for anybody else. At that date, particularly if a woman was widowed, she was likely to have turned her hand to whatever she could and fent dealing might have been rather more attractive to her than say, charring.