A Woman’s Business: the enterprising Louisa Greef (1829-1913) and others

For Mill Road History Society's October event we welcomed back Ann Kennedy Smith, who had previously talked to us about photographer Lettice Ramsay, to tell us about another successful, but largely forgotten, Cambridge business woman, Louisa Greef.
“As part of my research into F. R. Leach’s college and domestic decorating business in 1880s Cambridge a few years ago, I stumbled across a reference in the Newnham College archives to ‘L. Greef, painter’ and at first assumed it referred to a man. Then I discovered that, after inheriting her husband’s established business in plumbing and glazing for the colleges, Louisa Greef expanded the company and took it in new directions, to become ‘L.Greef, Plumber, Glazier, Plain & Decorative Painter and Paperhanger’.
“It is hard to find data on the number of women who oversaw traditionally male businesses in Victorian Britain. In this talk I will tell Louisa’s story in the context of other women’s decorating businesses, including Mrs Pratt of All Saint’s Passage. If you know of other Cambridge businesswomen from this period (1870s-1910) I hope you’ll come along and share your information with me.”
Dr Ann Kennedy Smith is a freelance writer, researcher and critic. She writes about 19th-20th century Cambridge women in her blog, Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society.
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