Fent Dealers

[suzyemm]

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?

[MaryA]

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.