C & J Clark's Employee Signature Books 1891 & 1916
C & J Clark was founded in 1825 by brothers Cyrus and James Clark and the latter’s son William Stephens Clark drove the business forward in the second half of the 19th century. The Employee Signature Books were gifts to William and his wife Helen Priestman Bright Clark from the factory staff on the occasions of their Silver and Golden wedding anniversaries. Over one thousand names occur in the 1891 Signature Book with more than three hundred of these being women. Some women appear in both books which gives an insight into their long term working lives. Clarks was the biggest employer in Street, Somerset and most households will have had someone that worked or had worked for the company up until at least the mid twentieth century. A third Signature Book dating from 1904 was given to William and Helen’s son, John Bright Clark, on the occasion of his marriage to Caroline Susan Pease.
The women whose names appear in the signature books are now available for continuing research as part of our A Few Forgotten Women Fridays Everyday initiative. Volunteers who sign up for the challenge have the option to get back in touch and ask for more information if they find parents/siblings/spouses/children of the woman or girl they are researching who worked for Clarks or their sister companies Clark, Son & Morland and Avalon Leatherboard as it is probable that their names will also be in the Signature Books. The story of Mabel Louisa Russell, for example, shows that she was the third generation of her family to work for the company and that she had siblings, aunts, at least one uncle and cousins who did too.​​​
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If you are interested in other business archives, please see our Women at Work page.
Image used with kind permission of the Alfred Gillett Trust, home of Shoemakers' Museum
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If you have further information about any of the women whose stories are told here, please do get in touch. The information in these stories is accurate to the best of our knowledge, given the sources that were available to us at the time of writing. We cannot be held responsible for any errors of fact that may have inadvertently included. Please inform us if you believe that any errors have been made. Where the women have descendants, we have tried to contact them to get permission to tell their ancestor's stories. This has not always been possible. If we have told a story of your ancestors and you would rather we removed it, please do contact us.
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Florence Bond 1878-1963 from Glastonbury, Somerset - Women at Work, Clark's Signature Books. 7 minute read.
Mabel Louisa Russell, later Mabel Louisa Marsh 1875-1955, from Street, Somerset - Women at Work, Clark's Signature Books. 8 minute read.