As I’ve said elsewhere I spent part of yesterday afternoon in the library researching Ethel Voynich’s early life to see what I could glean from the England Wales census records

Ignoring the 1871 census which unsurprisingly confirms she was living at home and was a ‘scholar at college’, in the England and Wales1881 census , when she was 16, she is described as a music teacher, which fits, as once she secured a small legacy when she was 18, she took herself off to the Hochschule fűr Muzik in Berlin.

I can’t tell you if she was living at home, as she is listed as a ‘visitor’ which means exactly what it says, but there are two other visitors in the house, also from Ireland but  considerably older, so there’s the possibility that visitor was used as a euphemism to cover the fact she was living there long term – one wouldn’t of course want the census people to know you were taking in lodgers, however genteel.

It was in Berlin where she became involved with the Russian dissident community and learned Russian, smuggled banned books into Russia, and spent time as a governess to the family of Sergei Kravchinski’s sister in law in Russia.

By 1891 she was back in London, working for a group supporting Russian dissidents. She still gave her name as Ethel Boole, although she was possibly in a relationship with Wilfrid Voynich by then, and listed her profession as that of journalist and translator.

She was not living at the same address as Wilfrid, but is again listed as a visitor, and was staying with Arthur and Charlotte Wilson.

Interestingly Charlotte Wilson is also listed as a journalist and translator, so it is possible that they both worked together on translating material. Charlotte Wilson is today principally known for her work with the Fabian Society, she was involved with various proto Marxist and anarchist groups, as well as her work supporting Russian dissidents.

It’s also an intriguing thought, to me at least, that Madeleine Smith, who was by then known as Lena Wardle, would have met both Charlotte Wilson and Ethel Voynich through her involvement in the Fabian society.

Fast forward another ten years, and after her 1895 affair with Sidney Reilly, she was listed as Ethel Voynich in the 1901 census and her profession is listed as a novelist. Wilfrid is also listed as living at the same address and his profession is listed as a bibliographer and bookseller.

Despite what they told the census people, they weren’t actually married – that happened a year later in 1902, when Wilfrid listed his profession as an analytical chemist.

However the Voyniches claimed to have been married in 1892, which was clearly a lie, and probably dates the start of their relationship.

In the 1901 census both she and Wilfrid have their surname as Voynich, but in1911, she was listed as Ethel Voynicz, which would be the Polish rendering of Voynich and is still listed as a novelist and author.

There’s possibly quite a simple explanation for this apparent change in the spelling of the surname – as you can see from this listing for a second hand Russian language edition of the Gadfly (Овод in Russian) Ethel’s name is given as Этель Лилиан Войнич, which would normally be transliterated into English as Etel’ Lilyan Voynich.

Perhaps Wilfred was a little unsure of the English names of the letters and asked Ethel to spell the names out, and she would of course spell the name the transliterated Russian way.

Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t feature in the 1921 census, as Wilfred had moved the antiquarian book business to New York by then and Ethel had followed him to New York.’

She does feature in the passenger lists on ships to and from Europe after Wilfred’s death in 1930, but I havn’t investigated them extensively, but a list of the voyages can be found on Colin Mackinnon’s website.