Torn to pieces by the Devil?

From Robert Burton, Wonderful Prodigies of Judgement and Mercy (1685), p.13-14:

"At Oster, a Village in Germany, there happened a most strange and fearful judgement upon a Woman who gave her self to the Devil, both Body and Soul, and used horrible Cursings and Oaths against her self and others, which detestable Custom she practised upon all occasions, but more especially at a Marriage in that Village upon St. John Baptist’s day. 

Though the whole company exhorted her to leave off that monstrous Villany, yet she would not be perswaded [sic], but continued therein till all the People were set at Dinner, and very merry; when the Devil having got full possession of her, suddenly appeared, and taking her away before them all, transported her into the Air with most horrible out-cries and roarings.

In that manner he carried her round about the Town, so that the Inhabitants were ready to die for fear; and soon after tore her body into four pieces, leaving a quarter of her in the four several high-wayes, that all who came by might be witnesses of her punishment; and then returning to the Marriage, he threw her bowels upon the Table before the mayor of the Town, with these words, 'Behold these Dishes of Meat belong to thee, whom the like destruction awaiteth, if thou dost not amend thy wicked life.'"

The real Mrs Beeton

The public thought of her as a brisk dumpy matron, but the real Mrs Beeton died at 28, with no idea that she would become a legend

Isabella Beeton's photograph was the first photograph of a woman ever purchased by the National Portrait Gallery, when they bought it in 1932

Every morning Isabella Beeton left her brand new semi-detached house in Pinner with her husband Sam and travelled by train to their publishing business in Fleet Street. She faced down scowling moustachioed commuters, who resented not being able to smoke before a lady. A few years later the same men probably bought their wives a copy of her book. But Isabella Beeton did not have time to enjoy her triumph.

Isabella Dorling was born in Epsom in 1836 to a nouveau riche family. Although she was one of 21 children, her stepfather made enough money publishing race cards for the Epsom track to send Isabella to study in Heidelberg. When she returned home, fluent in French and German, 20-year-old Isabella married a young publisher of cheap periodicals, Samuel Orchart Beeton.

'Mr Beeton' - Samuel Orchart Beeton, c.1860

Unlike her alter-ego, Mrs Beeton’s life was not one of domestic harmony. She suffered a series of miscarriages and lost a three-year-old boy, before her two surviving sons, Samual Orchart and Mayson Beeton were born in 1863 and 1865.

To distract herself she started working at Sam's publishing business, although a working middle-class woman was anathema in Victorian society. Isabella penned columns for The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine on ‘Cooking, Pickling and Preserving’ and ‘The Nursery.’ Her columns were collected and published as The Book of Household Management, which sold 60,000 copies in the first year.

The public lapped up Isabella’s 2751 tips on etiquette, dinner parties, servants and culinary expertise. As well as being (or at least appearing to be) a scarily efficient household manager, Isabella had a social conscience. She turned her cooking skills to charitable use by opening a soup kitchen at her house for local poor children during the harsh winter of 1858.

Isabella’s death in 1865 cut short her career. Katherine Hughes’ excellent biography, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, reveals the true reason for Isabella’s early grave. For decades, the Beeton family concealed Isabella’s papers from biographers, but when Isabella's last Beeton descendant died in 1999 Hughes finally accessed the family papers. 

Mrs Beeton and her maid take on turtle soup in the recent BBC dramatisation of Katherine Hughes' book

She discovered that, like thousands of other young middle class Victorian women, Mrs Beeton was almost certainly infected with syphilis on her honeymoon, the pattern of miscarriages and weak babies fitted the trajectory of the disease.

Sam - and the firm that bought the copyright from him - concealed Isabella's death from her adoring public. Over the years increasingly varied Mrs Beeton spin-offs have appeared on the market (from a Mrs Beeton Board to icecream) and there is a Mrs Beeton book for every kind of cookery - including microwave.

Mrs Beeton has never really been allowed to die. Instead she has entered the British consciousness as a standard of culinary – and moral - efficiency.

 

 Mrs Beeton's grave in West Norwood Cemetery. 

Image from Andrew Webb's blog.

 Katherine Hughes' book The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton is well worth a read for a glimpse of Victorian middle-class life as well as demystifying the Mrs Beeton legend.

Valentine Greatrakes - Restoration quack or healer?

(Not strictly women's history, but a colourful character nonetheless...)

The Irishman who ‘stroked’ the sickness out of patients in the 1660s

Around 1662 Valentine Greatrakes suddenly "had an Impulse or strange persuasion” that he could cure the “Kings-Evil,” now known as Scrofula, a horrible skin disease that caused suppurating sores and nodules to break out all over the body. The touch of a monarch was thought to cure it. But now Valentine was convinced that he could “pursue some pains from place to place till I have chased them out of the Body by laying my hands on the outside of the cloaths only.”

Valentine Greatrakes doesn’t have the kind of background you would expect from a quack. He was born in 1628 in New Affane, County Waterford, to a Protestant landowning family, and his grandfather was a Justice of the Kings Bench. 

At 19 he took the 17th century equivalent of a gap year - “in contemplation” at Cappoquin Castle - then became a lieutenant in the Cromwellian army. After six years later he went home to Affane, where he became a landowning farmer, a JP and Clerk of the Peace for County Cork.

In 1661 he physically examined an elderly widow accused of witchcraft in Youghal. He found enough evidence to have Florence Newton executed for bewitching Mary Langdon to vomit “needles, pins, horse nails...wool and straw.”

A year later he was a faith-healer. 

His first patient was a young boy, William Maher of Salterbridge. Valentine laid his hands on William’s sores “and prayed to God for Jesus sake to heal him.” William improved “the Eye was almost whole and the Node, which was almost as big as a Pullets Egg was suppurated” and was soon “perfectly healed.” 

Another, Margaret Mac Shane, had sores “from the bottom of her stomack upwards, all over to her throat, neck and nose...over her back, shoulders and armpits, so that I could not see one place free from the Evil, where you might put a sixpence.”

People flocked to be ‘healed’ and Valentine cured “whole families.” When he failed, he put it down to “possessions by dumb Devils, deaf Devils and talking Devils.” The combination of his social standing, “majestical yet affable presence” and “lusty body” made him the perfect showman. He entertained the nobility, reportedly levitating Lord Orrey’s butler.

Around 1665 Valentine had another message from God – now he had “the gift of healing” all diseases and his “Stable, Barn and Malt house...filled with sick people,” which was rather unpleasant. There were “crowds pressing, steams and stinks of the multitudes and ulcerous persons.”

He failed to cure Lady Anne Conway of severe headaches, when her husband invited him to Ragley Hall in Warwickshire in 1665. But this didn’t deter Greatrakes; he succeeded with plenty of others and was summoned to meet Charles II at Whitehall. He attracted influential followers, including Robert Boyle, a leading physician.

Boyle watched Greatrakes cure a deaf young woman and a lame tinker:
“Mr G. began to stroak his shoulder, where the patient complaind of a paine, which by his stroacking being as the Tincker sayd presently removd unto his Elbow...by stroaking the Extreamitys of his Toes both above & below with the glove...he affirmd that paine to be quite stroakd away.”
 

This print is from a Victorian melodrama called The Evil Eye, or the Black Spector by William Carleton, Valentine Greatrakes is the horseman on the left. (Image taken from blog.greatrakes.org)

Anonymous pamphlets accused Greatrakes of fraud and borrowing money from followers. One claimed that his patients made “horrid complaints of his undecent and intolerable handling of all their parts; of his pricking, rubbing, chafing and lancing of their sores.”

Greatrakes responded with his own pamphlet in 1666,'A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrakes and Divers of the Strange Cures by him lately performed’. It fuelled his fame and he returned to England on more healing tours before he died on in 1682 in Affane.

Find out more

The British Library holds Greatrakes’ pamphlet ‘A Brief Account of Mr Valentine Greatraks’ (London, 1666) and his 1663-1679 account and memorandum book (MS 25692).

Birkbeck University have digitised accounts of cures by Greatrakes from Robert Boyle’s work diary.


There is a blog dedicated to Greatrakes at blog.greatrakes.org

A week in the life of a 1930s London prostitute

According to a Metropolitan police file at The National Archives, two policemen spent their days in May 1939 watching two women living in at 46 Old Compton Street, central London.

Ida Voisky, aged 61 (a “vile and violent creature") and Edith Messiter, aged 37, 5ft 1, with "complexion fresh, stout build and dressed in a "blue coat and hat, blue and white frock, white straw hat. (“well known to the police as a common prostitute”).

Ida and Edith had lived together for about seven years. "I don’t employ her," Edith told the police. "She just lives here with me and we muck in. I pay for the food and I take her to the pictures now and again. If she wants a shilling I give it to her and if I want one she gives it to me.”

The police kept a detailed diary of the women's movements, which is almost tragically dull, a round of light ales in the local pub between punters (M= Edith; P= Ida):

Tuesday 2^nd May 1939

12.35pm M went to the Amuseument Arcade, Charing Cross Road, soliciting men. Her method of soliciting was to enter into conversation with men who were playing on the pin tables. At 1pm she successfully accosted a man, and took him to number 46.

7.40pm “M” persistently soliciting strange men at Charing Cross Road, watched by “P” who followed about 15 yards behind. Met P outside the Tottenham Public House on Oxford Street and a man M spoke to bought them two light ales.

Wednesday 3^rd May 1939

7pm At the Amusement Arcade in Charing Cross Road, M spoke to three different men playing on the pin tables, then went to the George.

9.45pm P stood on the corner of Old Compton Street looking into the window of a newspaper shop, and entered into conversation with a man who was also looking into the shop window...I heard them speaking in a foreign language. Then they joined M in the George public house.

10.30pm “M” and the same strange man enter no.46. Twenty minutes later, P enters no.46.

11.15pm Strange man leaves no.46

Old Compton Street, March 1939

Thursday 4^th May 1939

8pm At Charing Cross Road “M” solicits strange men followed and watched by “P.” “M” accosted strange man, spoke to “P” who shook her head. “M” then left man and recommenced to solicit other strange men.

8.30pm M and P went to the Tottenham Public House. M and P were seated at a table drinking light ale. M later went to the bar and ordered drunks, she entered into conversation with a man there, who paid for the beer she had ordered, and carried the drinks with his own to the table where P was seated. The man later bought more drinks and at 9.45pm he left the pub with M for no.46. P entered ten minutes later.

Friday 5^th May 1939

2pm They both entered the Sports Arcade in Charing Cross Road. P stood by the entrance while M spoke to different men playing on the pin tables. After talking to a man for a few minutes M took him to No.46. He left at 3.10pm

5.20pm M enters No.46 with a strange man. He left at 5.50pm.

7pm P accompanied by a strange man entered the George. “P” spoke to M who joined them, telling the man she was speaking to at the bar “Excuse me dear, I must go.” The man bought them three more light ales.
 
8pm M left the George with the man, telling P “You follow us dear,” and took him to number 46. Fifteen minutes later P entered no.46.
 

Saturday 6^th May 1939

7.20pm At the George P sat at a table and M spoke to a party of men apparently football supporters weating rosetters, they bought her a drink and also one for P. The man who gave P the drink remained with her, M was at the bar with the rest of the party, playing on the pin table...P beckoned to M who joined them. At 8.45pm M lefts with this man and took him to number 46.

9.30pm M and the strange man went back to the George. The strange man bought drinks for both P and M. One of the football party said to the man who had been to No.46 “Where have you been?” he replied “I have been home with her” pointing to M.

Monday 8^th May

9pm At Soho Street M successfully solicited strange man and took him to number 46 followed by P who also entered.

10.20pm M left No.46 and went back to the George, but after half an hour said to the barmaid “I am going home as my feet are tired, wearing light shoes.” The barmaid said “Goodnight Rose.”

Tuesday 9^th May 1939

2.20pm M left no.46 and I followed her to the Sports Arcade in Charing Cross Road. I was playing on a pin table when she came and commented on my lack of skill, she then spoke to a man two tables away.

7.45pm M soliciting strange men at Charing Cross Road watched by P who followed at about 15 yards to the rear. M successfully solicited strange man outside the Astoria Picture House and took him to number 46 followed by P.

9.45pm P and M met another man at the George who bought them light ales and all went back to no.46.

While the police were arresting Ida for living on the earnings of a prostitute, Edith came in with a client, who said he had agreed to pay her 7s 6d. “You know why,” she said.

Read more in series MEPO 3/1003 at The National Archives.

I also recommend Patrick Hamilton's autobiographical novel about his doomed affair with a prostitute in the late 20s Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky.

A night at the Victorian gin palace

Flora Tristan, an early French feminist, was fascinated by the hordes of prostitutes on the streets of London in the 1820s and 30s. One night, accompanied by some friends, she decided to experience a prostitute's night on the town first-hand:

“There are so many prostitutes in London that one sees them everywhere at all times of day; all the streets are full of them, but at certain times they flock in from outlying districts in which most of them live, and mingle with the crowds in theatres and other public places...They take their 'captures' to the houses reserved for their trade...

I went to take a look at the new suburb which lies on either side of the long broard thoroughfare called Waterloo Road at the end of Waterloo Bridge. This neighbourhood is almost entirely inhabited by prostitutes and people who live off prostitution; it is courting danger to go there alone at night.

It was a hot summer evening; in every window and doorway women were laughing and joking with their protectors. Half dressed, some of them naked to the waist, they were a revolting sight...we sat upon the bridge to watch the women of the neighbourhood flock past, as they do every night between the hours of eight and nine, on their way to the West End, where they ply their trade all through the night and return home between eight and nine in the morning. 

They infest the promenades and any other place where people gather, such as the approaches to the Stock Exchange, the various public buildings and the theatres, which they invade as soon as entry is reduce to half price...After the play they move on to the 'finishes'; these are squalid taverns or vast resplendent gin-palaces where people go to spend what remains of the night...

Inside the gin-palace “you are dazzled with the light of a thousand gas lamps. Upstairs there is a spacious salon divided down the middle; in one half there is a row of tables separated one from the other by wooden screens...In the other half there is a dais where the prostitutes parade in all their finery; seeking to arouse the men with their glances and their remarks...

Towards midnight the regular clients begin to arrive..the cream of aristocracy...young noblemen recline on the sofas, smoking and exchanging pleasantries with the women; then, when they have drunk enough...the very honourable members of Parliament remove their coats, untie their cravats, take off their waistcoats and braces and proceed to set up a private boudoir in a public place...

A former Victorian gin-palace

...The orgy rises to a crescendo; between four and five o'clock in the morning it reaches its height...How fine and generous they are when they have lost the use of their reason and offer fifty, even a hundred guineas to a prostitute if she will lend herself to all the obscenities that drunkenness engenders...

One of the favourite sports is to ply a woman with drink until she falls dead drunk upon the floor, then to make her swallow a draught compounded of vinegar, mustard and pepper, this invariably throws the poor creature into horrible convulsions, and her spasms and contortions provoke the honourable company to gales of laughter and infinite amusement.

Another diversion much appreciated at these fashionable gatherings is to empty the contents of the nearest glass upon the women as they lie insensible on the ground. I have seen satin dresses of no recognisable colour only a confused mass of stains; wine, brandy, beer, tea, coffee, cream etc...daubed all over them in a thousand fantastic shapes...

A lower class of gin-palace on a Sunday afternoon, engraving c.1870s

The air is heavy with the noxious odours of food, drunk, tobacco, and others more fetid still which seize you by the throat, grip your temples in a vice and make your sense reel: it is indescribably horrid...However, this life, which continues relentlessly night after night, is the prostitute's sole hope of a fortune, for she has no hold on the Englishmen when he is sober. The sober Englishman is chaste to the point of prudery.

It is usually between seven and eight o'clock in the morning when people leave the finish...anyone still on his feet gathers up his clothes and returns home; as for the rest, the pot-boys dress them in the first garments that come to hand, bundle them into a cab and tell the cabmen where to deliver them. Often nobody knows their address; then they are deposited in the cellar and left to sleep in the straw...”

The London Journals of Flora Tristan, trans J. Hawkes (Virago,1982) are available on amazon.

Hannah Cullwick's "stolen love"

“For freedom & true lowliness, there's nothing like being a maid of all work...” Hannah Cullwick, 1872

Hannah Cullwick was born a working-class Shropshire girl in 1833. But she went on to live one of the most bizarre cross-class romances of the Victorian period....

At eight years old Hannah started out in service at a “petty place” where she learned domestic skills before becoming a nursemaid to a family with eight children. There she had “all their boots to clean & the large nurseries on my hands & knees, & a long passage & stairs, all their meals to get & our own...water to carry up & down for their baths & coal for the fire, put all the children to bed & wash & dress of a morning by eight.”

When Hannah was 14, both her parents died and her employers refused to let her travel the three miles home in case she brought back infection.

In 1858, she went to Aqualate Hall in Foxton as a housemaid, where she loved the “splendid park” and became fond of John, the postillion, “a good-looking little fellow [who] used to take me for a walk in the park”. But after eight months, she was dismissed for high spirits, "playing as we was cleaning our kettles” and moved to work in the scullery for Lady Louisa Cotes at Foxton Hall.

This was a considerable slide down the scale in service and Hannah was dismayed by her new circumstances: “I couldn't help crying when I came to clean the stew pans and great spits & dripping pans & live only in a rough outhouse next to the kitchen, & could only get out through the coalhouse.” 

 

But Lady Louisa took Hannah to her London house several times and there, just after her 21st birthday, Hannah met Arthur Munby. At 26, Arthur was an attractive upper class solicitor, with literary pretensions, good connections – and a secret obsession with working women – pit girls, mudlarks, scullery maids, trotter-scrapers – whom he photographed and questioned about their lives.

Arthur was attracted by Hannah’s five foot seven, twelve stone bulk and calloused hands. With her 13 ½ inch biceps, Hannah could easily lift him off the ground. They began exchanging letters. Around another 'gentleman', Captain Humphries, tried to kiss her in a country lance, but strapping Hannah was unafraid: “I said 'Sir, if you offer to touch me again I'll do something you won't like'.”

Arthur Munby, man of letters and fan of 'dirty girls'

Hannah moved around central London, trying to find positions close to Arthur's lodgings. Her life revolved around her employers' demands, but she always found ways to meet Arthur. He trailed her through the streets and watched her scrubbing steps or beating carpets. 

They played games with Hannah as "slave" and Arthur, "Massa". Hannah enjoyed abasing herself for Arthur, being the “blackest servant in the street” and having hands “ingrain'd with black lead.” She believed that her domestic service was loving service and she cleaned Arthur’s chimneys naked; wore a padlock and chain; and licked his boots clean. 

 

Unlike many servants, who sought to move up the scale to higher paying, less physically demanding jobs, Hannah remained in the dreariest roles – scullion, maid of all work, char woman, although she did work once or twice as a cook. At the end of 1860, she proudly records having cleaned “937 pairs” of boots that year. She was uncomfortable with getting “above” her station and instructing other staff and she claimed to enjoy rough work.There was plenty of it among her monotonous daily duties: 
 
“[28 July 1860] Lighted the fire. Brush'd the grates. Clean'd the hall & steps & flags on my knees. Swept & dusted the rooms. Got breakfast up. Made the beds & emptied the slops. Cleaned & wash'd up...Cleaned the stairs & the pantry on my knees. Clean'd the knives & got dinner. Clean'd 3 pairs of boots. Clean'd away after dinner & began the preserving about ½ past 3 & kept on till 11, leaving off only to get the supper & have my tea...Went to bed very tired & dirty.”

Hannah's lifestyle was her own choice: “I like the life I lead – working here & just going to see M. when I can,” she wrote in 1871. But even Hannah was “overpowered” by one demanding place, where she had to constantly answer the door, first breaking off from dirty chores to tidy herself. Arthur sent her to Margate in 1864 and she found work in a lodging house. Arthur came to stay there and Hannah waited on him, secretly pleased when her mistress remarked on his good looks.

In her diary Hannah speculated about whether she could have loved a man of her own class. “I made up my mind it was best and safest to be a slave to a gentleman, nor wife nor equal to any vulgar man,” she concluded. The illicit nature of their relationship also appealed to her: “ours is a stolen love & when it's known it seems like a shame, it seems as it the charm was broken.”

In 1869, Hannah went to work for the Sanders, whom she got on well with until they discovered her relationship with Arthur and dismissed her. Hannah was dismissed twice more due to their relationship and in 1872, she finally moved into Arthur’s lodgings – as his servant. 

After 20 years, Hannah reluctantly agreed to secretly marry Arthur in 1873, but marriage seemed to her “to have so little to do with our love & our union.” Keen to preserve his social position, Arthur concealed their true relationship. One of his friends Mr Thornbury, unaware of their relationship attempted to flirt with Hannah, much to her amusement.

Eventually, the stress of living with Arthur, as neither as a lady nor his servant, caused Hannah to have a nervous breakdown. In 1877 she returned to domestic service in Shropshire and later lived with relatives. Arthur visited and even lived with her for short periods, until her death from heart failure in 1909. Hannah’s gravestone was inscribed:"the wedded wife of Arthur Munby."

Find out more about Hannah:

Diane Atkinson, Love and Dirt: The Marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick (Macmillan, 2003).

Liz Stanley, ed.The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant (Virago, 1984).

Channel 4 made a documentary about Hannah and Arthur, Upstairs Downstairs Love, in 2008. It is still available to watch online on the Channel 4oD website.

The Tate have the Munby collection of photographs Arthur took of Hannah and other working class women.