An English Governess in Egypt

Little is known about Englishwoman Emmeline Lott, other than the facts published in her 1865 memoirs, The English Governess in Egypt. In 1863 she gained a post as governess to the son of Ismail Pacha the Viceroy of Egypt. 

Miss Lott was initially excited about her exotic new life within the Viceroy's Harem, but she was quickly disillusioned.

Of meeting the Harem women, she wrote: “I failed to discover the slightest trace of loveliness in any of them. On the contrary, most of their countenances were pale as ashes, exceedingly disagreeable; fat and globular in figure; in short, so rotund that they gave me the idea of large full moons...as hideous and hag-like as the witches in the opening scene of Macbeth...Their hair and their finger-nails were dyed red with henna; many of them looked like old hags...They had been favourites in their youth.”

Some of her views, which would now be considered extremely racist, did not help her to settle in. She eyed the “disgusting looking negresses with low foreheads, sure sign of cunning, malice, deceit, and treachery.”

 A Cairo harem c.1870

Dejected by the absence of her favourite tipples – pale ale and claret – and her bare lodgings, Miss Lott was glad to meet her charge, the Grand Pacha Ibrahim, “a happy, round-faced cherub.” But he was not as cherubic as he seemed, commanding his governess to play at banking, and charging her extortionate interest. At times he could be wilful, even violent:

“...one of the female slaves, whom I afterwards found was his half-sister...offended him. He immediately seized hold of her by both her arms, pinched them most violently, and like a Tiger bit them until he drew blood, after which he put his fingers into the poor little creature's mouth, and tore both sides of it until the blood streamed down her chin like water.” On another occasion a slave was chattering loudly, so “the Prince took up a shovel, full of burning charcoal, and flung it into the poor creature's face.”

Miss Lott despised “the filthy manners, barbarous customs, and disgusting habits of all around me,” which were compounded by the mosquitoes and insects, the heat. Even worse, in her view, she was not treated with proper respect, rather as the servant she was – forced to give fashion shows to the Prince's mother, who laughed at her bonnets, and endured “the mortification of having the German laundry-maid as my companion.” She began writing a diary, which became a “catalogue of annoyances.”

She also felt the ill effects of dining on “dry bead and a little pigeon or mutton” (as she found the Arab food “nauseous”) and living in the Harem, where most of the women smoked large quantities of tobacco and opium. Finally, suffering from a “frightful melancholy,” Miss Lott feared for her sanity.

She tried to take solace in educating the little Prince, but this was a constant battle with Harem authorities: “Sometimes I received orders from the Grand Eunuch, which were issued at the caprice of HH the Princess Espouse...to take the Grand Pacha out walking at six o'clock in the morning...And when once the little Prince was in the gardens, it was exceedingly difficult to get him to return. His will was law...”

A few women in the Hareem were concerned that Miss Lott might be transferred to the Viceroy's bed, and they watched her “with the closest interest...lest HH the Viceroy should bestow upon me...attention too marked.”

 The European glamorous view of an Egyptian Harem, by French photographer Hippolyte Arnoux c.1880. Source.

She also observed them with a critical eye: “A most erroneous impression has been drawn by authors as to the manner in which the inmates of the Harems pass their social life. It is certainly true that the greater portion of the day is spent in doubling themselves up on divans....generally [in] dirty, filthy, crumpled muslin dresses...smoking their Tchibouks or cigarettes, and drinking coffee à la Turque, as dark as porter...

...their Highnesses were about and stirring as early as four o'clock in the morning...At the dawn of the day the Princesses partook of coffee and smoked cigarettes; then they remained quite motionless, apparently in a dreamy state...About seven o'clock they received a visit from the Grand Eunuch...The morning toilette began by the slaves bringing into the Grand Pacha's room several small pans, not deeper than soup plates....They only combed their hair (which was full of vermin) once a week, on Thursdays."

After breakfast “Khanum Kaleouns, 'pipes', into which are placed small pills of opium...were handed to them, and each Princess retired to her own apartment.” In the afternoons and evenings they might walk in the gardens or play dominoes. Miss Lott heartily disapproved of the custom of story-telling “the most lascivious tales about women and their immoralities” while “munching away at bonbons, fruit, and most luscious sweetmeats, and smoking cigarettes.”

Finally after less than two years, sick with a “nervous fever” and “troubled” in mind, Miss Lott was close to breakdown and she was forced to resign her post.

Miss Lott's fortunes improved when she returned to England and penned several books about her experiences. The New York Times commented snippily in 1867, “It seems to us that [Miss Lott] has brought home much that is utterly worthless and a great deal that is particularly nasty...the quality known as 'delicacy' has little place is Mrs Lott's composition....Harem life is not a subject about which ordinary readers want to know much.” Happily for Miss Lott, the Times were quite wrong – in fact her books were bestsellers.

There are plenty of reprinted copies of Emmeline Lott's The English Governess in Egypt: Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople (London, 1865) available on amazon.

Margaret Hervey has written an interesting piece about Ellen Chennells, another English governess to an Egyptian royal at the Guild of Hypatia blog.

Arsenic Century

While James C Whorton's The Arsenic Century, will leave you feeling slightly queasy it's a fascinating introduction to the history of poison in Victorian England...

Practically everything the Victorians touched was laced with arsenic. If they weren’t accidentally consuming the white powder, easily mistaken for sugar or flour, they were pasting arsenical green wallpaper in their drawing rooms; decking themselves in arsenic green fabrics and devouring food adulterated with the poison. 

Arsenic Century is a gripping read, moving easily from scientific explanations of arsenic detection to stomach-churning descriptions of poisonings. Whorton reveals that the true danger of arsenic wasn’t in the hands of poisoners – with only 98 trials for criminal poisoning in the 1840s at the height of the arsenic scare – but greedy manufacturers slipping the poison into ordinary household objects.

Ladies decked out in green: 'killingly' beautiful

Although there was clear evidence of the dangers of arsenic there were over 100 million square miles of arsenical wallpaper in British homes by 1858. Young ladies scrubbed their faces with Dr Simms' Arsenic Complexion Wafers, devour green jellies and then donned green crinoline frocks which could contain up to 1000 grains of arsenic. Far worse off, however, were the thousands of young artificial flower makers who suffered terrible health problems from working with – you guessed it – green dyes.

Arsenical food adulteration was a silent killer. Sugar, flour and beer were all laced with small doses of arsenic, with manufacturers often failing to realise the danger. When one manufacturer experimented with arsenic in violet baby powder, 13 infants died in agony after their mothers dusted their skin with the poisonous powder.

Arsenic can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin and just one hundredth of an ounce is enough to kill. Victorian chemists sold a “penn'orth an ounce” as rat poison – enough to poison 50 people and innumerable rats. While French chemists added dye to their arsenic, the British were slower to catch on. Between 837 and 1839 alone there were 506 accidental arsenic poisonings in England and Wales. One illiterate servant, who dosed a child from a bottle labelled ‘arsenic’ mistaking it for sulphur. Thankfully this also worked the other way: in 1849 a Nottingham tailor thought he had dosed himself with arsenic, only for the doctor hastily pumping his stomach to find flour in place of the deadly powder.

Arsenic has been largely abandoned as a murder weapon and it is no longer used to give an added kick to pints of beer or sherbet dips. But there are still odd cases of arsenic poisoning – the last one in Britain was in 1992 when Zoora Shah from Bradford poisoned her husband and as recently as 2007 a Californian woman was convicted of using arsenic to kill her husband for insurance money.

James C Whorton, The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play (OUP, 2010).

White Slavery in early 20th century America

I've been informed by Brett from the excellent Photo Sleuth blog that the page is from Fighting the Trade in Young Girls or War on the White Slave Trade (1909) by Ernest A. Bell. Bell focuses on cautionary tales (which use heavily melodramatic language) of American 'white slavery'. 

A preview of the book is available on googlebooks and there is also a full version at archive.org.

In this extract, Bell explains how the white slavers operate:


"The systematic traffic in girls from American homes is carried on by male parasites, who live lives of luxury from their gains from this work as procurers and panders. Women are also used to beguile other women...These infamous creatures sometimes go as agents for books, gramophones, or machines...Victims are looked for in railroad depots, and trains are watched for young women travelling alone. General deliveries in post offices are watched where young women call for letters.

 Recruiting stations are found in dance halls, in the cities, and amusement parts with drinking places are attachments. Ice cream parlours and fruit stores sometimes serve as spiders' webs for entanglement.

 The villanous men engaged in this work assume the guise of friends and sometimes will even talk to parents about getting fine jobs for their girls...Sometimes the procurer professes to have fallen in love and marries his victim and then sells her in the market...

After girls are caught in the net and drawn into a vile resort various plans are made to complete their ruin and hold them in absolute bondage. Their street clothes are taken away, they are not allowed to write letters to their friends, and some are confined under lock and key.

 Their owners keep them in debt for clothes, charged for at exorbitant prices, their wages often paid to the parasite who has claims upon them and often these ties of debt and vice so fasten the bonds of slavery that they become broken and desperate. All of these things and many more unprintable details of these cases have been made matter of court record and show that this systematic traffic in American girls is not a fiction..."

Some of their victims, noted by Bell: Helen Chambers, sent to her ruin by drink and a two week  absinthe bender; Kitty Schay, whose fondness for dances halls proved her undoing; Estelle Ramon, whose ambitious mother encouraged her to marry an 'artist' (in fact a slaver) rather than a nice steady local admirer.

And Daisy, dying at 19 "after one year of sinful indulgence and one year of lingering death"...? 

"We found her one day in March in the venereal ward at Cook County Hospital. She was unconscious, and it was five weeks before she could tell us her story. One of those great blue eyes was sightless. One hand was crippled. Her lower limbs were paralyzed. She was dying - dying of the horrible, loathsome, putrefying disease of the life of shame...the work of but one year of this life...
 
During that miserable year of sin, she was ill, but recovered sufficiently to resume the service of lust. Then came the break and the long weary months she lay helpless in the resort amidst the revellings of her stronger companions and their consorts...
 
About two years ago Daisy was left an orphan under peculiarly sad conditions. She resented the solicitude of an only sister - tho' her senior - and as neither was a Christian, the friction grew into a quarrel...

She entered the employ of a man whose family and business standing gave her reason to believe that she could trust him...Then in an hour of need when she was in search of a new place, he directed her to No. --- West Madison Street. He did not take her in, lest he be charged with selling her as a white slave, but left her on the brink of ruin to take the plunge alone...

[There is no mention of what happened next and the scene shifts back to Daisy dying raddled with disease but penitent in the poorhouse].

Her love for Jesus grew so strong that one desire possessed her - that she might live to warn girls of the sure end of the evil way and win them to Christ..."Tell the girls for me always to confide in and obey their mothers," was her common message."

'Daisy' died on 2nd September 1909 in Cook County Poor House.

Heroes & Heroines exhibition

"Fashion from film" on now at Leeds City Museum

 

Sequins, gold braiding, flounces and folds, intricate patterns, clever corsetry - all worn by the biggest stars, and all on display now at the Leeds City Museum Heroes & Heroines Exhibition.

The costumes sourced by curators span hundreds of years of sartorial history. There are carefully recreated Elizabethan ruffs, Georgian gowns and daring 1920s designs. Many of the pieces are on loan from the actors who once wore them and most are usually hidden away in private collections or wardrobe departments.

All of the outfits are impressive. Displayed on headless tailors dummies, a discreet caption notes the film and star, but the clothes speak for themselves. Keira Knightley's girly 18th century floral print morning gown from The Duchess stands alongside a sumptuous red evening dress worn by Madonna in Evita. 

A special computerised changing room booth allows you to 'try on' outfits by lifting up a card, which transmits a silk confection or debonair jacket on to your image on a screen.

I felt hungry just looking at Nicole Kidman's impossibly corseted (or is she really that thin?) dress from Portrait Of A Lady. Cate Blanchett's equally wasp-waisted dancing dress used in Elizabeth, a lovely soft green and coral pink, was the most eye-catching.

Jane Austen fans can feast their eyes on Mr Darcy and Miss Bennet in the shape of Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle's Pride And Prejudice outfits from the BBC adaptation. Emma Thompson's Sense And Sensibility ball dress is a surprisingly frivolous-looking lilac.

And there are plenty of riding boots and gold buttoned coats for the gentlemen to admire. There's one of Johnny Depp's elegant outfits from The Libertine. A slightly grubby set of clothes worn by Daniel Craig in the Second World War outlaw film, Defiance are on show, as well as his more dashing highwayman costume from Moll Flanders.

My personal favourite is a stunning light blue embroidered coat with multi-coloured panels, from the BBC 90s TV series, The House Of Eliott, and worn by Beatrice (Stella Gonet). I was longing to slip it on and run away with it!

The exhibition will run from 23rd July 2010 to 9th January 2011. 

See Leeds City Museum website for more details. The museum is free and exhibition tickets are at the bargain price of £2.50 and £1.50 for concessions.

How to be a Victorian Country Gentlewoman

Six suggestions for "ladies who have been brought up in a town, but who from circumstances have been induced to reside in the country," from Mrs Loudon, The Lady's Country Companion or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally (1845).

1. Go for walks: "You enjoy in the country the inestimable advantage of being able to procure as much fresh air as you like...you will probably find the beauty of the scenery quite sufficient to interest you; but after a time, as your walks must all necessarily partake of the same character you will want a little variety, and you must make sources of interest...a mole caught and hanging in a trap...a rather small bird with a dead mouse in its beak...a bit of stone that appears composed of various particles.”


2. Polish your badminton skills: "If you do not like battledore and shuttlecock, perhaps you may billiards...Archery is a favourite amusement with ladies in the country, as few exercises display an elegant form to more advantage.”

3. Decorate: Try out "plain white muslin over the silk of the piano and the chiffonier, to save them from the flies" or procure "a few cabinet pictures, which should be characterised by delicacy and beauty." 

 4. Patronise the poor: "keep up as much as possible the kindly feeling which existed in olden time between the lords of the soil and its cultivators...call frequently on your poorer neighbours...with the ostensible appearance of employing them in some little work, and in reality to see how best you can be serviceable....make enquiries into what your poor neighbours have for dinner...get the daughters taught the best way of cooking food suitable to their rank in life."

Caption reads: "I suppose, like me, you have your troubles?"
"Oh yes mum; just like you."

5. Enjoy a leisurely afternoon...on the swing? “A swing is a very useful adjunct to the amusements of the country, as many grown-up people are as fond of swinging as children.”

6. Take up sketching: "an amusement in which a lady can, without any impropriety indulge.”

Polish your country house manners with Thomas Hill's amusing Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette.

Girls of the Woolwich Dusthole

“There is scarcely a lower class of girls to be found than a girls of the Woolwich 'Dusthole'. The women living and following their dreadful business in this neighbourhood are so degraded that even abandoned men will refuse to accompany them home.

Soldiers are forbidden to enter the place, or to go down the street, on pain of twenty-five days' imprisonment; pickets are stationed at either end to prevent this. 


One public house is shut up three or four times a day sometimes for fear of losing the licence through the terrible brawls which take place within. A policeman never goes down this street alone at night – one having died not long ago from injuries received there – but our two [Salvation Army] lasses go unharmed and loved at all hours, spending every other night always upon the streets.

The girls sink to the 'Dusthole' after coming down several grades. There is but one on record who came there with beautiful clothes, and this poor girl, when last seen by the officers, was a pauper in the workhouse infirmary in a wretched condition.

The lowest class of all is the girls who stand at the pier head – these sell themselves literally for a crust of bread and sleep in the streets.”


William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way out (1890) p.55.

Woolwich 'Dusthole' consisted of what is now Woolwich High Street and the area around the station. Although the local authorities had named the surrounding streets after illustrious admirals, due to their proximity to the Dockyard, only the very poorest as well as tramps, criminals prostitutes and dock labourers crammed into the lodging houses and tumble down houses in the area.

Victorian London life - in colour

I love the London Library. Browsing through the shelves especially in the S. section, which has hundreds of bizarre categories on anything you can think of (S.Embalming, S.Etiquette, S.Devil Worship).

One of my favourite recent finds was Charles Hindley's The true history of Tom and Jerry, or, The day and night scenes of life in London, from the start to the finish (1888) which has these amazing coloured drawings by Cruickshank. I had to take it home and scan it!

Click on the image to see the larger version.

A fancy dress ball East End-style...

Living it up in the gin shop...

And vomiting it out on the pavement later...

The text reads "Life's a jest all things show it" - routes to destruction through "billiards and wine, gaming, dissipation, vice, seduction, poverty, folly, idleness".

There are lots of copies of books with Cruickshank illustrations available on amazon, like an 1867 edition of Dickens' Sketches by Boz illustrative of every-day life and every-day people.

Brenda Dean Paul - 1920s "society drug addict"

Although Brenda Dean Paul became a famous drug addict, her background was anything but squalid. Born in 1907, her mother was a Belgian pianist and her father, Sir Aubrey Dean Paul. As a teenager she haunted the theatre to “strain her eyes at the leading stars.”

In 1924 she landed a role in a theatre company touring “filthy little” towns where she shouted down jeers and cat-calls. But when her chance came in 1927 Brenda blew her film test in Berlin, because she was more interested in “the intriguing, highly coloured underworld.” 

Bright Young Thing?

Back in London she joined the infamous 'Bright Young Thing' set and rubbed sequinned shoulders with Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton at “massed drinking orgies,” never going to bed “before four or five in the morning.” But when she became seriously after an abortion or miscarriage, Brenda grew dependent on morphine, using it as “a barrage between herself and reality, mentally and physically.”

“One of the most discussed young women in London”
 

Brenda's morphine-medicated hold on reality was growing thin. In February 1931 she made her first court appearance charged with bouncing a cheque. During the next two decades she was in and out of the courts, receiving sentences of up to six months in prison for: possession of dangerous drugs; obtaining goods on false pretences (buying goods on other people's accounts several times); incurring debt by fraud (refusing to pay taxi drivers). Soon she was “one of the most discussed young women in London.”

In 1932 she was at her lowest ebb. As Prisoner 54086 in Holloway she developed bulimia, dropping to five stone. Over the next few years she was in and out of nursing homes and her doctor told the police that she would never be completely cured.

“I want to become an actress, perhaps a great actress”

By 1935 Brenda somehow managed to go stop taking drugs – and her ghost-written memoirs, My First Life, were published, concluding with her ambition to “become an actress, perhaps a great actress.” Sadly, the closest Brenda came to the stage was tottering to Boots the Chemist in Coventry Street, where hertame doctor supplied her with “Cocain Hydrochloride...large quantities of Tincture of Opium...[and] Heroin".

As Brenda's behaviour became increasingly bizarre, she started using false names (Penelope Page, Isolla Hampton, Penelope Paul, J. Beard) “because I am treated as a cross between an imbecile and a crook if I use my own name.” In 1939 she was evicted from her flat because she “walked about naked” and “answered the door in the nude.” In court for buying goods on other people's account in 1940, she wore “a black balaclava helmet,” and protested that she was unable to get work because she “dressed in trousers.”

“there is nothing smart, sensational or clever in the habit...it is not even fashionable"

Partying with artists, tottering about London on high heels, clutching a lapdog, Brenda was notorious. Although she claimed to have worked “as a waitress in a club....a confidential maid to a lady and later a store saleswoman” Brenda's real professional was drug addict.

In the mid-1950s, young artist Michael Wishart watched her sitting in a restaurant, taking a syringe of heroin from her handbag and filling it “from a vase of flowers on the table.” In 1951 she bragged to a reporter that she was cured and preparing to open her own addiction clinic: “there is nothing smart, sensational or clever in the habit and this it is not even fashionable now.”

But she hadn't recovered. In 1952 her former flatmate wrote to the police to tell them that Brenda “augmented her income by allowing sadists to whip her” and had tried to make him take cocaine. Raddled with addiction but still beautiful, “mummified...in her prime,” Brenda finally achieved her ambitions to act when she played the lead in Ronald Firbank's play The Princess Zoubaroff. 

“One of the sweetest people you could ever have known”

By the late 50s Brenda was a celebrity in the drug world, receiving “a string of...queer callers at her flat and allegedly “creating addicts” and consuming a “fantastic” amount of cocaine. In 1957 she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Rome “intoxicated and suffering from neuropsychic depression” with a parcel of cocaine in her possession. The parcel wrapping paper is still in her file at The National Archives.

The police must have been relieved to finally close Brenda's large file when she died in London on 26 July 1959 of natural causes. She was 52. A friend from her Bright Young Thing Days told the newspapers, “She really was one of the sweetest people you could ever have known.”

The National Archives holds a fat Metropolitan Police file on Brenda Dean Paul in series MEPO 3/2579.

Frances Kidder – The last woman to hang in public

Just before noon on 2 April 1868, executioner William Calcraft went into the condemned woman’s cell at Maidstone prison, accompanied by the prison chaplain. Calcraft swiftly pinioned her, winding a strap around her arms and her body, then binding her wrists. The prison officers marched the woman across the prison yard and outside the main gate, where she was confronted with a crowd of between three and four thousand people – and the gallows. 
 
Only the year before Frances Kidder might have been in another crowd outside the gaol, watching 29-year-old Ann Lawrence swing from the same gallows. Mad with jealousy over her lover’s affairs, Lawrence from Tunbridge Wells, had slashed her four-year-old son’s throat with a bill hook and hacked off two of her lover’s fingers before he fled.

Now reporters scribbled notes, as Frances trembled on the scaffold. The Standard reported: “Before the cap was put over her face she turned...smiled and the last words she uttered were ‘Lord Jesus, forgive me!’" Other papers claimed that Frances “went into hysterics and had to be supported on to the drop by two warders.” The noose was placed around her neck and Frances' body hurtled through the trap door.
 
Calcraft, an old fashioned executioner, used the short drop method, where prisoners were slowly strangled by the rope. Frances dangled, kicking and choking “before life was extinct.” She was 25, mother to a three-year-old girl.

Barely two months later Parliament passed the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill, which would have spared her.

  Maidstone prison

Frances was born in 1843 to a farming family in New Romney, Kent. She was “of good character” before she met William Kidder, a Hythe greengrocer and became pregnant with his child. She gave birth to their daughter Emma in 1865 just before they married. At some point she discovered that William already had an illegitimate daughter, Louisa, whose mother Eliza Staples, had lived with William as his "housekeeper" and had died a couple of years earlier. Louisa seems to have been a personable child. According to her uncle, she was “very sprightly.” But Frances did not take to her and Louisa told her uncle that Frances hit her, often appearing with “black eyes and [a] bruised body.”

In July 1867 Frances fell from a cart while helping William with his potato dealing. William told the court: “she was in a fit for about four hours and she has been strange in her head ever since.” Whatever the state of her health within a few weeks Frances’s resentment of her step-daughter had taken a sinister turn.

On 24 August 1867 Frances took Louisa and Emma to visit her parents in New Romney. Frances was “low spirited” and ate little, complaining to a neighbour: “I mean to get rid of that bitch Kidder’s child. I hate the sight of her because she is always making mischief...I do not like other people’s bastards.”

The next day Frances’s parents and sister were out of the house, and Frances took Louisa out for a walk. A passerby noticed the pair walking together, Louisa “very shabbily dressed...two or three yards behind” Frances. When Frances and Louisa failed to return home, the family searched for her. A few hours later Frances stumbled into the house, her clothes “very wet and dirty." She refused to say where Louisa was, hitting William and swearing at him. Fearing the worst they called the local constable.

Eventually Frances revealed where Louisa was. Aspinall described what he found: “It was a clear star lit night and we were furnished with lamps. There was a very heavy dew on the grass. Someone noticed something white in the ditch...I threw my light in that directions...it was the body. She was lying on her back, her head was under the water.”

Louisa had drowned in just one foot of water in the ditch below Cobb’s Bridge, in the Romney Marsh. There were no marks on her body. Frances was taken before the magistrates and remanded in custody to appear at the Kent Spring Assizes at Maidstone. She protested her innocence, claiming "the child tumbled into the ditch and she went in after her.” At Maidstone prison, the chaplain, Reverend Frazer spent a great deal of time with her and helped her to read the Bible.

  After Frances's execution, women were execution inside the prison walls. Margaret Waters’s death is depicted in the Illustrated Police News on 15th October 1870.

Finally on 12 March 1868 Frances was tried at the Maidstone Assizes. William Kidder had understandably refused to pay for her defence, so a court-appointed barrister defended her. He argued that some of the witnesses had exaggerated in light of Louisa’s death and the lack of marks on Louisa’s body. Frances stuck to the explanation that “two horses frightened us into a ditch...I went in after her and tried to get her out.” But after brief deliberation, the jury found her guilty.
 
Although sympathetic locals petitioned the Home Secretary, Frances’s fate was sealed and she was sentenced to be publicly executed. Awaiting her fate Frances had “has fits of ill-temper,” and was “very sullen,” telling people she was “ill-used.”
 
William eventually visited her, but as he was now living with her 17-year-old sister, Adelaide it was not an easy reconciliation. Frances "taunted" William and "became dreadfully excited. Her shrieks were painful to hear.” Afterwards William headed to “a public house near the goal, with the prisoner’s own child, joking with the people about within view of the scaffold, upon which the life of his wretched wife was within a few hours to be sacrificed.”

Despite the scandal William stayed on in Hythe. The 1881 census shows that he was living with 16-year-old Emma at 1 Prospect Place. In 1891 Emma married and ten years later, at 74, William was living alone, still working as a greengrocer. He died in 1908.

This piece was researched from contemporary newspaper reports and the original depositions used in Frances’s case, which in series ASSI 36/14 at The National Archives.

Cooking for the working woman - 1930s style

I came across this fabulously retro 30s cookbook in the library:
Mrs. Allen on cooking-menus-service.

1) A business woman can rustle up a breakfast of "fruit, fried tomatoes and bacon, toast, coffee" in half an hour. "Paper dishes and doilies help out - so does electrical equipment."

2) If you're too busy get the kids in the kitchen. "It's never too soon to begin to train the little home partners," says Ida.

3) Get creative. Who doesn't love a "jellied vegetable salad, with lemon baskets filled with whipped cream mayonaise"?

4) Long lunches are for sissies - office cafeterias should be about as comfortable as a battery chicken shed.

5) Christmas dinner should be served in a maid's costume

6) "French pastries any woman can make."

7) Frozen salads are...a good thing?

8) Working mothers don't have time to make packed lunches. "When 'mother' steps aside the school has to step in."

9) But every mother should be able to make a birthday cake (giving your child a massive knife is optional).

Who was Ida?
Ida Bailey Allen (1885-1973) was the American Delia of the 1920s and 30s. She was a 'name' with a magazine, columns, books, and radio cooking show (The National Radio Homemaker’s Club), as media savvy as an modern day celeb chef. She allowed companies like Pillsbury Flour, Sunshine Biscuits and Coca Cola to use her name. One in three American households were said to own a copy of one of her books.