stuff 'n other stuff

Eadweard Muybridge was undoubtedly a most peculiar man, but his huge collection of photographs of naked people doing quite simple things has proved an invaluable resource for studies of human locomotion.

His images also help give us an idea of how nineteenth century people did some quite ordinary tasks such as washing themselves.

Muybridge doesn’t have (as far as I can find) an image of someone using a hip bath but he does have this photograph of a naked woman helping another wash while using a bath not that different from the classic hip bath

which gives a general idea of how one might use a hip bath. I’ve also found a wood cut of a woman being helped to bathe by her maid

which is not dissimilar from Muybridge’s photograph, and reminding us that having a bath was not a totally private experience – there would have had to be servants to heat the water and sluice one down.

Bathing with a ewer and basin would have been a bit more private, as seen in this animated gif based on a Muybridge set of images of a nude woman washing her face

but even so someone would have had to heat the water in the ewer first showing how dependent the nineteenth century middle classes were on their servants.

(incidentally Muybridge’s models seem to have had fun doing the bath sequence – there’s a photograph of one woman pouring presumably cold water over the other closely followed by a woman jumping from the bath…)

While delving into the Okhrana’s presence in London I came across a few snippets about Lenin, and his time in London.

Lenin did not really like London. Too grey, too polluted and and the continual damp of an English winter gave him a series of colds.

But there was one thing he liked about London – fish and chips – apparently he and his wife would regularly pick up fish and chips from a chip shop on Gray’s Inn Road, when out for a Sunday afternoon walk.

And perhaps that’s not really so strange.

Ivan Beshoff (at the time the usual English transliteration of ов was off, while today we would use ov), was a veteran of the Battleship Potemkin mutiny during the abortive 1905 revolution, knew Lenin in London, and later went on to found a fish and chip restaurant in Dublin.

And who knows, it could have been meeting Lenin in London that gave him the idea …

Amy Faulkner was clearly a troubled young woman.

Only 16, she had had some sort of argument with her parents and was no longer living at home.

In May 1892 she boarded a train in Bradford, and somewhere near Leeds station she threw herself out of the train sustaining non fatal injuries, but nevertheless sufficient to require a night in hospital.

She initially claimed that she had been attacked by a tall dark man and had been thrown out of the train. She later admitted that this was a lie and she had deliberately thrown herself from the train.

In the 1890s, attempting suicide was still a crime and my guess is that Amy’s first instinct was to lie and claim she was attacked.

After all the punishment for attempted suicide could be a fine, or a period in prison. Amy, while she was employed as a dressmaker probably would not have been able to pay a fine, and certainly would have wanted to avoid prison.

It’s a sad case, but what it shows is that the idea that women travelling alone on trains were at the risk of attack, and even though the reporting of incidents was on the whole sensible and restrained, the commonness of such occurrences can only have produced a heightened sense of fear.

The other strange thing about this case is the hast sentence or two – clearly the excuse of trying to avoid an attacker was a common excuse when young women attempted, and failed, suicide, which again reinforces the idea that attacks on women travelling alone were distressingly common.

This is reinforced by the case of Fanny Elizabeth Bull, who despite her nervousness in court was encouraged by the railway company’s solicitors to take her case to a higher court to make an example of her attacker, something not only in her interests, but in the interest of every woman travelling to work (remember this was a time when increasing numbers of women travelled to work) and cycnically, in the interests of the railway company to promote train travel as safe for women commuting alone…

Not all assault cases ended in favour of the victim.

In 1888 a young woman named Harriet Daniels claimed that she had been assaulted by a coal miner, one John Phillips in a first class railway compartment in a train near Ruabon in Wales, close to the border with England

It seems to have been a violent assault leaving Harriet dazed at the very least.

Unfortunately no there are no reports of the proceedings as the press were excluded from the hearing

I’m not sure why the press were excluded, perhaps because of the graphic nature of the victim’s deposition. The case did go forward to the assize court, but it did not end well for Harriet

Why and how, I simply don’t know, and not having access to the court records I can’t take it further.

While I was at it I tried using the free search facility at  UK census online to find Harriet, or at least give me some clues as to where to look. This wasn’t a great success. There’s no Harriet Daniels listed in the 1891 census returns for the pre 1974 counties of Denbeighshire, Merionethshire, Montgomeryshire or Flintshire, or the adjacent English counties of Cheshire or Shropshire.

In the 1881 census, there is a Harriet Daniels listed as living in Merioneth

who is listed as being a 21 year old servant. None of the press reports give enough detail to confirm that this is the same Harriet Daniels, and as domestic servants sometimes moved about checking the census records on Ancestry probably wouldn’t help much.

I’m guessing that after her failed case she left the area for somewhere, such as Liverpool, Birmingham or Manchester where no one would know her and she could start anew.

Searching more widely there is a Harriet Daniels of roughly the right age listed in the Staffordshire return for the 1891 census

which I’m guessing is the same Harriet Daniels. Since the name ‘Harriet Daniels’ seems to be relatively uncommon, searching the census records would probably confirm if the Merioneth and Staffordshire Harriets were one and the same, but I have no way other than wild supposition to show if she was the same Harriet Daniels as that involved in the failed court case (and just to add to the fun, there’s a Harriett Daniels in the 1881 census for Staffordshire who doesn’t appear in the 1891 census raising the possibility of a typo …)

While train travel undoubtedly revolutionised life for Victorians, it did, especially in the days of non corridor trains, expose women to the risk of being sexually assaulted.

The most prominent case that I’ve come across is that of Kate Dickinson, who was assaulted by Colonel Valentine Baker, which is unusual in that she went to court and prosecuted him for assault.

Most women preferred to keep quiet due to the risk of having their reputations dragged through the courts and snide insinuations made by lawyers about what today we would call their sex lives.

And in an assymentric society such as Victorian Britain, rich powerful men who could afford lawyers would always would always win in a case brought by a woman of lower social status.

However, I’ve just come across the case of Fanny Elizabeth Bull, a young governess, who was subject to an attempted rape in 1885 on a local train in London.

Fanny fought back, bit her assailant on the cheek, and as in other cases opened the door on the moving train and at some risk to herself, stepped out on the running board to attract attention.

There are two interesting things about the case – Fanny is decribed as a governess, which while she might be badly paid was seen as a respectable occupation for a young woman – it is notable that some newspaper reports are headlined ‘Assault on a Lady’, a governess having higher social standing than a clerk.

The other interesting thing is that in the longer accounts of the court case, such as in this one from the Sunday Times, we see an attempt at the initial hearing to persuade Miss Bull to take the case further, despite her fears of damage to her reputation should she appear in the Central Criminal cour in London

which neatly demonstrates the reluctance of young women to risk damage to their reputations and perhaps marriage prospects, by appearing in court in a sexual assault cases, with the consequence that such cases were not prosecuted with the full rigour of the law.

It also shows that, as in the case of the Lauriston assault, the judges and lawyers were well aware of the problem and tried where possible to work round the problem and reassure the victim that she had done nothing to damage her reputation…

In this case, the lawyers were obviously successful in persuading her to go to trial in a higher court and Miss Bull’s assailant was tried in September 1885 at the Central Criminal Court (aka the Old Bailey) where he was sentenced to three months hard labour