Women entrepreneurs in Malta's Porto grande in the Baroque age

Abstract

Four days after Christmas, on the 29 December 1773, Fra Giuseppe Agius recorded the news of the sudden death of a certain Teresin Francesa in his diary. Teresin used to sell embroideries and miscellaneous items next to the main door of the Law Court in Valletta. At first glance this one-line inscription may seem insignificant. However, a closer reading reveals succinct details on one of Valletta's eighteenth-century female entrepreneurs. Reverend Giuseppe Agius was an erudite cleric. He was the Chaplain of a retreat house for Hospitallers known as the Camerata. He was also Master of the Deacons at the Conventual Church of St John the Baptist. His Giornale di Notizie was his private diary, a notebook in which he recorded novelties which he deemed to be worth remembering. The chronicle was not meant to be read by anyone and is inevitably imbued with implicit biases, yet it offers historians a window on the past through which one can quizzically peer into an unfamiliar world.