I examine wealth holding patterns of lower middle class women married in the years surrounding the 1870 Married Women's Property Act to determine whether a change in property law altered the implicit price of personal property purchased by married women. My results indicate that the Act altered...

The 1870 Married Women's Property Act created major change in nineteenth-century British property law. Until the passage of the Act, a husband had legal ownership over his wife's personal property and managerial rights over her real property. The Act granted British women the right to own and...