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WORKING WOMEN IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN, 1850-1910

The Diaries and Letters of Arthur J Munby (1828-1910) and Hannah Cullwick (1833-1909)

from Trinity College, Cambridge

Publisher's Note

“A collection which highlights in a unique way the class and gender contradictions of Victorian England.”
Dr Philippa Levine
Department of History
University of Southern California

“One of those obsessive recorders of private life whose papers conjure an era into startling life… .”
Derek Hudson
Writing in Man of Two Worlds: The Life and
Diaries of Arthur J Munby, 1828-1910
(John Murray, 1972)

Arthur Joseph Munby (1828-1910) was a poet, barrister and civil servant. He travelled widely and was a noted raconteur. He was a talented amateur photographer and a Fellow of the Society of Arts. However, his greatest legacy was the record that he kept of his private passion - an obsession with the circumstances, habits and aspirations of working women.

Much of Millet, Breton, Courbet and, later, Van Gogh were drawn to record the everyday experiences of farm labourers in their art, Munby felt compelled to venture out to collieries, farms, docks and factories to seek out, interview and describe working women.

Munby recorded what he saw in sketches and photographs and - most importantly - in a massively detailed written record. He filled sixty-four diary volumes (averaging at least 200 pages each) and twelve notebooks with descriptions of these women and their places of work, accounts of their hours of work and wages, and excerpts from their conversations with him concerning their views on male/female working relationships, industry and exploitation, child-rearing, marriage and other issues.

Initially, it is likely that he began to compile this record as raw data for his poems. Victor Hugo (1802-1885), Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) were among the many writers swelling the tide of Social Realism in fiction. Munby’s poetry, in works such as Verses New and Old (1865), Dorothy - a Country Story (1880) and Susan, A Poem of Degrees (1893), were all based on his research on working women. Indeed, Austin Dobson noted that “Munby’s poetry is characterised by its absolute sincerity, its scholarship, its technical skill, its descriptive power, and its keen feeling for and close observation of nature and rural life” (Dictionary of National Biography).

However, the collection of data soon became an end in itself and Munby travelled all over Britain and Europe in order to meet women in different occupations. Some of the Professions examined are:

Female acrobats, artist’s models, barge women, bondagers, bookbinders, brick-makers, charwomen, cheese-makers, clerks, Belgian coal workers, Wigan colliery girls, comic singers, female criminals, crossing sweepers, drivers, dust women, farm labourers, ferrywomen, fisherwomen, female gaffers, gatekeepers, glassworkers, governesses, gypsies, iron-workers, milkmaids, mudlarks, market gardeners, newspaper girls, nailers, orange girls, ostlers, pecheuses, prostitutes, reapers, sackmakers, saltworkers, sempstresses, servants, shepherdesses, shop girls, shrimpfishers, telegraphic clerks, tinkers, washerwomen, waitresses, Whitby whale fishers, and wifesellers.

As the length of the list suggests, Munby’s observations were far more substantive and particularised than the philanthropic journalism of Henry Mayhew (1812-1887). Munby’s work might more properly be compared with the vast sociological surveys of Charles Booth (1840-1916) and Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1859-1947 and 1858-1943 respectively). However, while Munby indexed many of his notebooks and kept totals of the number of interviews carried out, he never set about a systematic interpretation or analysis of his data - this task awaits the modern scholar.

In the course of his work, Munby got to know many of the women extremely well and he visited some of the individuals many times over a period of years. This enables us to follow their fortunes over time and to understand the pattern of working women’s lives in the late Victorian period.

Many of the diary and notebook entries continue for a number of pages and allow Munby to show his talent for acutely observed description of persons and places and his ear for dialect. An extract from his diary of 1864 offers a foretaste of this evidence:

"A gate on the left led into a large ploughed field, bounded on two sides by woods of oak and fir, and on the third side commanding a view down into the Wye (?) valley, with the hills beyond purple, with a foreground of bright green. I went to this gate to look; and at the other end of the field, two women, clad in what seemed to be white garments were moving as if from work, each with a hoe upon her shoulder. One of them turned, and came striding and plunging through the loose friable sod - out of which the green was just springing - towards me. I opened the gate for her, and spoke, as she came up; she looked hard and wide-eyed at me, as one who sees not strangers often. But she stopped readily to talk. She was a young married women (but she wore no ring) of about thirty or so; slight made but healthy, and of a shrewd and not uncruel countenance; the skin of her face and of her bare arms and hands of a pale brown. Her fellow, she said, had gone to pick up faggots amongst the felled timber under the wood; and she had brought her hoe as well as her own . . ."

The account continues for several pages as their conversation covers wages, hours and the nature of work. Another extract, from his diary of 1870, captures the atmosphere of an early suffrage meeting:

"From thence I went, at 5, to the meeting of the Women’s Suffrage Society at the Hanover Square Rooms. The large room was full: the audience chiefly well drest [sic] women, old and young, whose carriages filled the square outside; but on the platform were many men . . . in the chair was my friend Mrs Taylor herself . . . the two best speeches I heard . . . were made by women: Mrs Helen Taylor, who did the rhetoric ably, and Mrs Fawcett, who was logical and calm . . ."

Munby similarly conjures into life episodes such as the proceedings of a divorce court, the hard slog of a collier girl, work in a Victorian factory, and entertainment in a music hall.

As a perfect foil to the thousands of interviews with, and descriptions of, working women the Munby Collection also offers the most detailed evidence available concerning a single life of a Victorian maid of all work - that of Hannah Cullwick.

Hannah Cullwick (1833-1909) was not only Munby’s servant, she was also his wife. They were married secretly in 1873 and the marriage was never declared beyond Munby’s immediate family and three close friends (one of whom was RD Blackmore (1825-1900, author of Lorna Doone (1869) and other works, and Munby’s closest friend). While Munby lived in London, Hannah kept house for him at Pyrford, near Ripley, in Surrey, and he visited her whenever he could.

Her life, before and after her marriage, is described in a number of overlapping sources. Munby’s 32-volume record of his “Visits to Hannah” record their conversations, her past life and her daily routine. For example:

"Hannah was up before 6: in five minutes, she had on her rough servant’s clothes, and was off to her dirty work downstairs. At 8, she came back, bringing her husband’s hot water; and having put his bath ready, she gaily told him of her doings during the last two hours. She had cleaned the grates; she had got in coals and wood from the yard; she had made and lighted the two fires - her own kitchen fire, and his fire in the brickfloored parlour; she had raked out the ashes under the grates with her hands, and caries [sic] them out to the ashpit; she had swept the brick floors of kitchen and parlour; she had cleaned the front doorsteps on her hands and knees; she had swept the road in front of her cottage; she had been down the village street, in her peasant’s bonnet and coarse apron, and brought back a pail of water from Martin’s pump. “Did any one see you?” “Oh yes! Mr Martin seed me, an’ Mrs Martin, an’ owd Clarke, an’ Mr Pye wi’ his milk; an’ they all said good mornin’ . . ."
(AJM MS 83, Vol XVIII, Aug-Dec 1892 & Mar-Apr 1893)

There are shades of Pygmalion in the recollections of Munby’s attempts to educate and better his wife - none more so than the episode in which Anna Karenina is read aloud (AJM MS 94, Volume XXIX). Shaw’s play was not published until 1912, just after Austin Dobsen’s obituary in The Times (5 February 1910) and DNB had broken the secret of the gentleman and his servant wife.

Hannah’s own hand-written autobiography (AJM MS 98.17) and 16 volume diary (AJM MS 98.1-16) provide Hannah’s story in her own words. These are complemented by her letters to Munby (c.850 in all). Munby notes at the start of these letters:

"No one I think, can read these letters without perceiving the intelligence and good sense of the writer, and her general kindness and helpfulness as a servant, and her love of her own class and its rough work; and most of all, her steadfast and unselfish devotion to the man whom she loved and still loves, and who loved her and lovers her still, with a love as deep and pure as hers."

But he erred greatly; . . . in allowing her to call herself his ‘slave’ and his ‘drudge’, and to be so, as far as she could . . .

The manuscript of Faithful Servants, also included in this collection, is another mine of information about working women. It consists of (literally) thousands of obituaries of servants in the Victorian period - miniature biographies which will help scholars to understand life below stairs in the period from 1850 to 1910.

Munby’s photographs are also a valuable source of information about the women he interviews. Most are taken at the women’s place of work and provide visual evidence of women’s dress and appearance, the tools that they worked with and the conditions that they worked in. We include all seven albums of Munby’s photographs in the collection. While discussing the visual evidence in the collection it is also worth noting that the diaries, notebooks and loose papers include many sketches made by Munby, showing figures such as “Boomping Noll”. We are pleased to include in this Guide a comprehensive list of the illustrations in the collection made by Diana Chardin of Trinity College Library (see pp.37-44).

If the principle interest in this collection is the vast body of evidence that it offers for the study of issues of Class and Gender, then there is also much of interest to literary scholars as well.

The section of the archive devoted to Autograph poetry includes no fewer than 147 of Munby’s original poems. Examples are: ‘I was low’, ‘The Servant Wife’, ‘Basel’, ‘A Misalliance’, ‘Her History’, ‘Man and Wife’ and ‘Black Hannah kneels before the kitchen grate . . .’ We have also taken the opportunity to include Munby’s long poem - Susan, a Poem of Degrees from Cambridge University Library (MS Add 6974). Many of the poems first appeared anonymously and Robert Browning gave an enthusiastic response to ‘Dorothy - A Country Story’ when it was published in 1880. The poems are noteworthy for their realism and display Munby’s fine ear for dialect.

The diaries are also a rich source of information concerning literary and artistic circles in Victorian Britain. Friends and acquaintances who feature regularly include RD Blackmore, Ruskin, Rossetti, Arthur and Mary Severn, Helen Taylor and Thackeray.

For instance, an early diary note records in detail an account of one on Munby’s meetings with Ruskin:


"After luncheon he showed us the pictures round the room - two large Turners in oil, a Sir Joshua/Angelica Kauffman, and several charming W Hunts, and others. Apropos of a Capital head of a village girl by Hunt, which Ruskin took me aside to look at, I spoke to him of my favourite project - namely that someone ought to paint peasant girls and servant maids as they are . . . and so shame the false whitehanded wenches of modern art.”
(AJM MS, 1 f.103, Diary for 1859)

Other memorable episodes include a walk in the night air with Dickens, discussing realism in fiction, discussions with the Fawcetts concerning women’s rights, and evening meetings of the Gargoyles - a dinner club devoted to the performance of plays.

Major figures of the Victorian period who crop up are: Dr Arnold, Madame Bodichon, Robert Browning, Hartley Coleridge, JA Froude, WE Gladstone, Holman Hunt, Charles Kingsley, Sir Edwin Landseer, Harriet Marinteau, John Stuart Mill, John Millais, Monckton Milnes, Lord Palmerston, Baden Powell, Algernon Swinburne and Thomas Woolner. Many are met at luncheon, in clubs, at exhibitions, at plays or at political meetings. More than anything else it is probably this aspect of the diaries that prompted Austin Dobson to comment “If his Diaries should ever be published they cannot fail to be interesting . . .” (The Times, 5 February 1910).

These sources have hitherto remained largely unpublished. Derek Hudson’s Munby - Man of Two Worlds (John Murray, London, 1972) drew attention to the source, and provided some brief extracts from the diaries and letters. Liz Stanley’s The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant (Virago Press, London, 1984) concentrated purely on Hannah, and in 328 pages could only hope to sample her autobiography and diaries. Michael Hiley’s Victorian Working Women: Portraits from Life (Gordon Fraser, London, 1979) featured some of Munby’s photographs.

Here we offer all of Munby’s diaries (64 volumes averaging at least 200 pages each); his 12 notebooks on working women; the 29 volumes of Visits to Hannah; Munby’s 2 volume life of Hannah; 12 further notebooks on Hannah; Hannah’s own 16 volume diary; Hannah’s autobiography; over 850 letters; the manuscripts of Faithful Servants, 2 boxes of manuscript poetry; 7 albums of photographs; and other miscellaneous material.

This collection offers an almost inexhaustable quarry of researchers and will be of particular value to scholars of women’s studies and working-class historians, literary scholars, and all those studying Victorian Britain.

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