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In Love and Dirt: The Unconventional Romance of Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby

When Arthur Munby died in 1910 at the age of 82, he made headlines not for his death, but for how he had lived his life. He had been a friend and colleague of John Ruskin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and other influential artists and writers in the circles surrounding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Munby himself was an accomplished author and photographer fascinated by the lives of working-class women. His favorite subject was one working-class woman in particular: his long-time lover and later secret wife, Hannah Cullwick.

How they managed to keep their relationship secret for fifty-four years was anyone’s guess. Munby was a gentleman, and Cullwick was a maid-of-all-work from Shropshire. Most of what we know about Cullwick comes from her diaries, which she kept throughout her life. Extensive, detailed, and unflinchingly honest, Cullwick’s diaries offer an unparalleled insight into not only her own life, but the lives of working-class women of this period, who were otherwise routinely ignored.

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Hannah Cullwick in men’s wear in 1860, giving precisely zero fucks

Cullwick was not a woman who could easily be ignored. Born in Shifnal to a housemaid and saddler in 1833, she trained in domestic service and worked full-time from the age of eight. Cullwick met Munby in London in 1854, and she took a job there to be closer to him in 1856. She distinguished herself as a particularly tireless worker, and though she had served as a cook, housemaid, and housekeeper, she preferred to work as a lower servant because she saw the position as a way to escape the confines of traditional femininity and service.

What we would now think of as a thoroughly “modern” woman, Cullwick took pride in her position, strength, and ability to take care of herself. No shrinking violet, she was 5’8” and 161 pounds of muscle, with thirteen-and-a-half-inch biceps and large, coarse hands. She usually worked sixteen-hour days doing exhausting manual labor, but she wasn’t the only one; while about half of all working-class women were in service, Cullwick’s generation was the last where large numbers of women were employed to do heavy manual labor. Until the mid-nineteenth century, women frequently did what was later regarded as “men’s work”: working fields, pulling trucks, digging roads, fishing, and working in coal mines. Outside of her job, she came and went as she pleased, visiting friends and roaming London alone without incident like many other women in her position did. She was self-assured, knew her own mind, and was more than capable of handling herself.

While Munby appreciated working-class women, his view of them was as condescending as one might expect for a man of his class in this period. Cullwick stood out to him for her intelligence and love of poetry, and Munby attempted to instruct her in the redemptive power of hard work.

Although Cullwick took his “instruction” to heart, she didn’t need it. She had taken pride in her work long before she’d met Munby, and his attraction to women in service complimented her unwavering dedication to her work, as difficult and ugly as it could get. Cullwick was assertive and even prideful in public, but in private, she became Munby’s willing submissive in what we would now recognize as a consensual Dom/sub relationship.

Munby was not Cullwick’s employer, and though she worked for a friend of his during their courtship, Munby was never in a position to threaten her job. She knew her worth and could have found other employment easily if it came down to it, and their relationship had started before she took the job to be closer to him. Though their relationship involved more than a little power play, they entered into it on as equal footing as anyone from such different classes could.

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Cullwick with boots, 1864

Cullwick loved to meet Munby “in her dirt,” as she described her physical state after spending a long day cleaning filth without washing afterward. She submitted to his requests, served him, and even referred to him as “Massa,” their idea of how a black servant might say it. Though slavery had ended in Britain in 1833, they played with the concept in private, Cullwick darkening her skin with lead or soot. Less about race for her and more about subverting the Victorian ideal of femininity, Cullwick found submitting in this way liberating; outside the bounds of acceptable behavior, Cullwick was free to be herself, even if what she wanted was unconventional.

Her relationship with Munby certainly defied convention. For years, Cullwick wore a short chain around her neck joined with a padlock only Munby had the key to. She took particular pleasure in cleaning boots, and she would sometimes clean Munby’s boots with her tongue. In her diary, she claimed she could tell where he had been by how his boots tasted.

Though their differences made them an odd couple, it’s hard to imaging Munby and Cullwick finding the same happiness with anyone else. From Cullwick’s breathless diary entries about sneaking time with Munby or the delicious secret knowledge that he had passed the house and watched her scrubbing the steps, her feelings about him are more than clear. Though they lived apart during their first two decades together, she found ways to express her feelings. She wrote to him, sent him valentines, and even went to the excruciating lengths of polishing brass with her bare hands because she knew he liked them hard, rough, and red.

Given Munby’s position and love of working women, it has been suggested that his instruction of Cullwick in the virtues of service was enough to convince her to devote herself to it, but Cullwick knew her own mind and never needed convincing. In spite of the submissive role she played with Munby in private, she was not afraid to assert herself or make her wishes clear. Her diary hints that her love of being dirty outweighed his interest in seeing her that way; on more than one occasion, she would arrive intentionally filthy and he would ask her to bathe.

Even when she was on her own, Cullwick reveled in dirt, describing it with a sensuality bordering on the erotic. In this diary entry from October of 1863, she details the pleasure she took in cleaning a chimney:

“I work’d till eight o’clock & then had supper. Clean’d away & then to bed at ten o’clock. I’d a capital chance to go up the chimney, so I lock’d up & waited until ½ past ten till the grate was cool enough & then I took the carpets up & got the tub o’ water ready to wash me in. Moved the fender & swept ashes up. Stripp’d myself quite naked & put a pair of old boots on & tied an old duster over my hair & then I got up into the chimney with a brush. There was a lot o’ soot & it was soft & warm. Before I swept I pull’d the duster over my eyes & mouth, & I sat on the beam that goes across the middle & cross’d my legs along it & I was quite safe & comfortable & out o’ sight. I swept lots o’ soot down & it come all over me & I sat there for ten minutes or more, & when I’d swept all round & as far as I could reach I come down, & I lay on the hearth in the soot a minute or two thinking, & I wish’d rather that Massa could see me. I black’d my face over & then got the looking glass & look’d at myself & I was certainly a fright & hideous all over, at least I should o’ seem’d so to anybody but Massa. I set on & wash’d myself after, & I’d hard work to get the black off & was obliged to leave my shoulders for Massa to finish. I got the tub emptied & to bed before twelve.”

After twenty years as lovers, Munby and Cullwick married in secret in 1873. Cullwick was forty, and Munby was forty-five. Having spent thirty-two years as a full-time servant, Cullwick finally had the opportunity to move up in the world, but she didn’t want it. While Munby encouraged Cullwick to explore her new role as his wife, she refused and insisted on remaining his servant. This was not because she felt unworthy of it, but because she had no patience for the societal restrictions that came with the change in status and preferred to keep the freedom she’d had in service. Keeping her own last name, she lived with him as his servant until 1877, when she left to return to service in Shropshire. Their relationship wasn’t over, though—Munby visited her regularly until her death in 1909.

Jessica Cale

Further reading:

The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant. Liz Stanley, Ed.

9 Comments Posted on 19th Century, Beauty, Georgian Britain, London, Sex, The Regency, Victorian

Everything Old is New Again: Surprisingly “Modern” Fashion Trends of the Victorian Period

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Mourning portrait

Looking through Victorian portraits, you’d be forgiven for thinking that all anyone ever wore was black. Mourning had its own trends and traditions—enough of them that we could write another entire article about them—but what about the rest of the time? Surely people didn’t wear black every day.

Black wasn’t even common for menswear before Beau Brummell set the trend that was to last through the next two hundred years (and counting). Famous for his hours-long morning routine as well as his feelings on boot maintenance*, Brummell’s true legacy surrounds us every day. Prior to his championing simple and elegant menswear in dark colors, many men of fashion dressed as ostentatiously as women, wearing bright colors, makeup, wigs, and high heels. Brummell’s influence changed all of that and set the tone for fashion for the rest of the nineteenth century and beyond. All clothing became more conservative, serviceable, and monochrome, right?

Not exactly.

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Studio portrait

With fashion history, there are two major things that lead to serious misunderstandings: portraits and survival bias. Photography was still rare, and mainly used for special occasions. If you only had one chance to preserve your likeness, you would probably want to present yourself in the best (and most universal way) possible—serious, capable, well-dressed. What people wore in pictures wasn’t necessarily what they liked to wear every day.

Survival bias is a term used to describe the skewed view we get by assuming pieces that have survived to the present day are representative of common sizes, styles, etc. The opposite is true: unless carefully preserved for posterity, most pieces that survived did because they were too small to be of any use to anyone. Clothing was incredibly expensive, and it was often patched until it fell apart, or deconstructed and re-fitted as a hand-me-down for someone else. Finer fabrics and useful shoes would have been worn until they were useless or actually disintegrated, while clothing and shoes too small to wear might have been kept just in case someone else needed them. Very few people could fit into a dress with a twenty-inch waist; it’s worth noting that there are far fewer surviving examples closer to the thirty-inch mark, which is where most women probably fell. Likewise, stranger trends or things that would have fallen out of fashion more quickly may be harder to find because they were rarer to begin with, not to mention less likely to be passed down.

With all that out of the way, today we’re going to be looking at a few nineteenth century fashion trends that feel like they should be too modern for the period. Every generation wants to think they’ve invented something new, but inspiration doesn’t often come out of thin air. Let’s take a look.

Unnaturally Colored Hair: Wig powder in colors like pastel pink, purple, and blue had been popular throughout the eighteenth century, but bright colors didn’t entirely leave when wigs started to go out of fashion. In the beginning of the century, Henry Cope became known as “the Green Man of Brighton” because he powdered his hair green. No one could doubt his devotion to his favorite color—his clothes, apartment, and even his poodle were also green, and he was never seen eating anything other than green fruit and vegetables.

Hot pink: In 1860, two new aniline dyes were developed for clothing: magenta and solferino (like fuchsia). Magenta was so popular that it was referred to as “the queen of colours” and was used to dye dresses, underwear, petticoats, ribbons, bonnets, and stockings. That’s right—the most popular color of the 1860s was neon pink. Black and white photography doesn’t really do it justice.

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Unknown woman, 1896. I think we can all agree she is absolutely killing it

Menswear for women: Anne Lister wasn’t the only woman rocking a waistcoat. During the 1860s, traditionally masculine items like coats, jackets, waistcoats, and cravats became popular for women—who wore them tailored properly, of course. Years before Marlene Dietrich wore that tux, Victorian women slayed in top hats and cravats. While the definition of ideal womanhood became more and more constrained, there were always women who pushed boundaries and did exactly as they pleased—and more than you might expect. In the early 1860s, one of the most popular items for women was the Garibaldi jacket – a very masculine military coat in bright red with gold trim. Even when menswear went out of style again, some continued to wear more masculine clothing for their own reasons. While we don’t know for sure how common this was, the fact that menswear for women existed at all indicates that there was demand for it and that many tailors may have been more open-minded than you’d expect. Either way, it’s a good look.

Brightly colored underwear: Around the mid-nineteenth century, elaborate undergarments became a necessity for giving those enormous skirts their fashionable bell shape. Along with crinolines to hold the skirts up, women would wear corsets, petticoats, chemises or chemisettes, and sometimes knickers. Underwear could be as detailed as the dresses that covered it, and it was designed to be seen—even if only in private. To keep it interesting, all of these pieces were often dyed bright colors—especially brilliant red.

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Hannah Cullwick wore a chain padlocked around her neck. Here she is in menswear giving exactly zero fucks

Patterned tights: Stockings came in more varieties than just black or beige. They came in plaid, stripes, any solid color imaginable, and some had embroidery or different patterns on them as well.

Fetish gear: In the 1870s, there was a trend for women to wear a scarf tied around their knees or very low around the hips and across the pelvis. These scarves were nicknamed “fig leaves,” and they were worn to attract men with the suggestion that the woman was “tied up at his mercy.”

Less about fashion and more about submission, Victorian housemaid Hannah Cullwick used to wear a chain padlocked around her neck to show her devotion to her lover—and later husband—Arthur Munby. They were involved in a decades-long Dom/sub relationship, and only Munby had the key.

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Johanna von Klinkosch in fishnet sleeves

Goth accessories: In 1875, dog collars, chokers, and chains were some of the most popular jewelry trends. Bats, crucifixes, and insects were common motifs for accessories throughout the decade, and daggers that opened into fans were a must-have. Although it’s difficult to find written references to fishnet or fishnet clothing prior to about 1900, here’s an actual photo of Johanna von Klinkosch wearing fishnet sleeves in the 1870s. Madonna, who?

Cosmetics: The idea that no one bathed prior to 1900 is ridiculous. Victorians bathed regularly, and while being fully immersed in water might not have been as common, people would still wash with cloths, water, and a variety of soaps and skincare products. Showers had taken on their modern form by the end of the nineteenth century. Makeup did tend to focus on skincare, but rouge was worn on the lips and cheeks, and lamp black was used as mascara, eyeliner, or to darken the eyebrows. That’s right—eyebrows in the 1800s could be just as on fleek as they are today. Application was subtle, but some products packed more of a punch. Pale, semi-translucent skin was so popular that some—like Virginie Gautreau, John Singer Sargent’s Madame X—dusted themselves with violet powder to neutralize the warmth in their skin and make it appear ghostly white. By the end of the nineteenth century, cosmetics weren’t discussed as vice or virtue, but were seen as a logical part of any lady’s daily beauty regime.

edith-burchett-via-Pinterest-320x444Tattoos: Before the nineteenth century, tattoos in the Western world tended to be something one got on religious pilgrimages, but all of that changed during the Victorian period. Initially more common among sailors, soldiers, and convicts, tattoos grew in popularity across society throughout the nineteenth century and were even instrumental in a high-profile court case. In the 1870s, a man claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy. The claim was thrown out when it was discovered that the real Tichborne had several tattoos, and the claimant had none.

Tattoos became popular among the elite in the 1880s. The Prince of Wales and his son, Albert Victor, both had them, and they weren’t the only ones. Several members of the aristocracy—both male and female—got them, and from there, the craze only really expanded. A number of professional tattoo artists set up shops during the late nineteenth century, and following the invention of the electric tattooing machine in 1891, the were available to almost anyone. Some tattoos were even permanent makeup—some women preferred to have their eyebrows and rouge tattooed on.

Nipple piercings: In the late 1890s, a woman wrote into Society magazine about the

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Chokers and crucifixes were popular in the 1870s and the 1990s

trend for nipple rings, detailing her own experience getting them and reporting that they gave her an “extremely agreeable titillating feeling.” Society wasn’t exactly a serious publication, but this wasn’t the only report of the phenomenon. In the late 1890s, there was a trend for women—usually wealthy women because of the prohibitive cost of the jewelry—to get nipple piercings. Many had to travel to Paris to do it, but one Bond Street jeweler reported that he had pierced the nipples of no fewer than forty ladies and young women. They wore rings or studs of gold, with or without jewels, and often connected the piercings with a chain. One actress at the Gaiety Theatre was said to wear a chain of pearls connecting hers with a bow at each end. The trend was so far-reaching that near the end of the century, a New York physician published a brochure warning young American women off of them as they would encourage “unhealthy sexuality.”

This list is by no means exhaustive, and we’ll probably add to it at a later date. History is full of surprises if you’re paying attention. Next time you hear someone praise a portrait of some dour-looking Victorian lady, just remember—know in your heart—that it’s entirely possible she’s got red underwear and at least one tattoo.

Jessica Cale

Sources

Alker, Zoe and Shoemaker, Robert. How Tattoos Became Fashionable in Victorian England. The Conversation.

Blanch, Lesley, ed. Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs.

Bloch, Iwan. Sexual Life in England, Past and Present.

Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women’s clothing in the Nineteenth Century.

Murden, Sarah. The Green Man of Brighton – Henry Cope. All Things Georgian.

Pointer, Sally. The Artifice of Beauty.

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

 

*they should be polished with champagne, because of course

3 Comments Posted on 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Crime, Death, Georgian Britain, Literature, London, Medical History, Persons of Interest, Sex, The Occult, Vice, Victorian

Deadly Euphoria: A Short History of Erotic Asphyxiation in England

1 CRIMINAL CONVERSATION BON TON 1791

Bon-Ton Magazine, 1791

When Frantisek Kotzwara died in September of 1791, he was an accomplished man of only forty-one. A notable Czech composer famous for his sonata “The Battle of Prague,” he was working in London as a multi-instrumentalist for the King’s Theatre Orchestra. In spite of his successes in life, today he is better known for the manner of his death.

Standing trial for murder at the Old Bailey, Susannah Hill explained what happened. Hill was a sex worker, and Kotzwara was a client. On the 2nd of September, they had dinner and drinks together, then she took him back to her room, “where a number of most indecent acts took place.” So far so normal, but Kotzwara had a special request. He wanted Hill to hang him.

Claiming it would add to his pleasure, he asked to be hanged for five minutes, then released. He gave her money and sent her out to get rope, and she came back with two thin cords, placing them around his neck at his request. He hanged himself off her door, but when she cut him down after five minutes as he had told her to do, Kotzwara collapsed and died.

Although the jury returned a verdict of “wilful murder” with the intention of discouraging other young women from attempting the practice, the judge refused to make an example of Hill for her part in the tragic accident. He ultimately ruled Kotzwara’s death manslaughter, and Hill was free to go. Due to the sensitive nature of the case, the judge ordered all of its documents destroyed to protect the public.

That went about as well as you’d expect. In spite of his best efforts to bury it, the story got out. Hill’s full testimony was printed in the pamphlet Modern Propensities, not unlike a tell-all gossip magazine today. Bon-Ton magazine took it further, detailing the Kotzwara case and discussing the appeal of strangulation. It would have been on people’s minds. In 1791, the same year Kotzwara died, the Marquis de Sade had also published Justine, which featured a lurid scene depicting erotic asphyxiation.

Kotzwara was not the first to experiment with asphyxiation in Britain, and he certainly wasn’t the last. Erotic asphyxiation—or autoerotic if practiced alone—had been used in several cultures around the world as a spiritual as well as sexual practice. In England, it was recommended as a cure for erectile dysfunction from the early 17th century. Public hangings were routine and well-attended, with crowds of sometimes thousands watching the condemned slowly strangle to death over a period of several minutes. That the men often became erect or even ejaculated before death would not have been missed. This effect was caused by damage to the spinal cord or brain rather than actual sexual pleasure, but many were still curious enough to try it.

Two years after Kotzwara’s death, Bon-Ton reported that the well-known dangers of erotic asphyxiation had not dissuaded people from attempting it. They detailed the experience of a gentleman from Bristol with erectile dysfunction, which they referred to rather euphemistically as “(requiring) assistance in the secret affairs of Venus.” During a visit to London, the gentleman repeated Kotzwara’s experience with another sex worker on Charlotte Street. Well aware of the case, the young woman only reluctantly agreed, and cut him down the moment he started to have “alarming symptoms,” well within the first minute of suspension. Because of her quick thinking, the gentleman survived and wrote favorably of the experiment.

Not everyone was so lucky. Cutting off oxygen or blood flow to the brain is incredibly dangerous, and it can result in cardiac arrest, sudden loss of consciousness, suffocation, and brain damage. Even with partners or safety measures in place, death can occur so quickly that there is no way to do it safely. Because of its taboo nature, accidental deaths due to erotic or autoerotic asphyxiation have always been under-reported or misinterpreted as suicide, so outside of a few high-profile cases, it is impossible to know how many people have died in this way. Statistics have never been recorded in Britain, but a recent study estimated that as many as 1,000 deaths occur every year in the United States from autoerotic asphyxiation.*

In spite of the serious and well-publicized dangers, interest in erotic asphyxiation endured in no small part because of its effects on the mind. Kotzwara did it for the dream state it induced. In addition to heightened physical sensations, depriving the brain of oxygen could produce a hallucinogenic effect that, as Modern Propensities put it, would help people to “ascend the upper sphere of conjunctive transports.” The aim was not only to orgasm, but to straddle the boundary between life and death to see what was on the other side.

As dangerous as it was, the high produced by the combination of hypoxia and orgasm could prove addictive, so demand for it continued. Throughout the nineteenth century, a number of Hanged Men’s Clubs opened for the purpose in London, staffed with sex workers who claimed to be able to do it safely every time. It was an impossible guarantee, and medical professionals continued to make the risks known to the public. With these warnings, its use as a cure for impotence was eclipsed by its ability to help one transcend physical reality into a euphoric dream state. It was a specific, dangerous high not unlike opium or laudanum, but with the added promise of orgasm as well.

For some, interest in it might not have been in spite of its close association with death but because of it. Throughout the nineteenth century, the dead or dying were often fetishized, and a lot of popular literature depicted death in a romantic light. As interest in spiritualism and seances took off, asphyxiation may have felt like the next logical step for some—a way to not only contact the other side, but to see it for oneself.

Jessica Cale

Further Reading

Bloch, Ivan. Sexual Life in England Past and Present.

Ober, William B. The Sticky End of Frantisek Koczwara, composer of “The Battle of Prague.” The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology: June 1984. Volume 5, Issue 2, 145-150

Seidl, Stephen. Accidental Autoerotic Death: A Review on the Lethal Paraphiliac Syndrome. Forensic Pathology Reviews, Vol 1. Edited by Michael Tsokos.

Tarr, Clayton Carlton. Pleasurable Suspension: Erotic Asphyxiation in the Nineteenth Century. Nineteenth Century Contexts, 2016. Vol 38, No 1, 55-68.

*Really, really, REALLY do not try this at home

 

Leave a comment Posted on 19th Century, Ancient History, Death, France, London, Sex

Harlots, Night Moths, Huntresses of the Tombs: The Enduring Legacy of Rome’s Bustuariae

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Street of Tombs, Pompeii. From the Handbook of Archaeology by H. Westropp (1867)

By the first century AD, there were more than 32,000 sex workers registered in the city of Rome. There were likely just as many who were unregistered in the city, and countless more worked throughout the empire. To get an idea of their popularity, you only have to look at how many words they had for the profession. Meretrices were regulated and paid taxes, prostibulae were free agents, ambulatae walked the street, delicatae were high-class courtesans, and famosae were daughters of the patrician families who did it more for fun than anything else. Most operated within the cities, but a select few worked just outside.

The bustuariae worked out of cemeteries, catering to mourners and those with darker desires. By day, they were professional mourners and were known to write their services and prices on the tombstones in chalk. They would meet their clients at the cemeteries again at night, sneaking into mausoleums or using the graves as beds. Also known as noctilucae (night moths*), they cultivated a certain look. Known for pale skin and severe expressions, they themselves appeared to be dead.

As it so happens, that was part of the appeal. Some widowers sought them out, working out their grief through sex. Others paid the bustuariae extra to pretend to be dead. Questionable kinks aside, working in cemeteries may have been as practical as fanciful. The women knew the cemeteries better than anyone and could entertain in any number of concealed locations, and they were guaranteed a steady stream of new clients.

Mentioned with a certain degree of derision by Martial, Juvenal, and even Catullus, bustuariae were considered to be among the lowest of the sex workers, and some seem to have lived in the cemeteries as well. While there are legends of ghoulish bustuariae (such as Nuctina, a woman who apparently slept with coins over her eyes in a grave with her name on it), they appear to be just that–legends. Nevertheless, the trade thrived. Bustuariae could be found throughout the empire as far as Roman Londinium to the north, but their true legacy extended further still.

19th century mournerThe connection between sex and death endured long after Rome fell, and the bustuariae survived as well. Writing in the 1880s, Guy de Maupassant describes an encounter with one in Montmartre Cemetery in his short story, Graveyard Sirens**. Montmartre, of course, is the exact place you’d expect to find one. (See also Ghouls’ Night Out: Sex, Death, and Damnation in Fin de Siècle Paris)

Encountering a beautiful young woman in deep mourning with a ghostly pallor, the hero begins an affair with her after he goes to visit his late mistress’s grave. Even after he ends it, he remains obsessed with the unnamed woman:

“I did not forget her. The recollection of her haunted me like a mystery, like a psychological problem, one of those inexplicable questions whose solution baffles us.”

Finding her a month later with another man in mourning in the same cemetery, the hero asks himself:

“To what race of beings belonged this huntress of the tombs? Was she just a common girl, one who went to seek among the tombs for men who were in sorrow, haunted by the recollection of some woman, a wife or a sweetheart, and still troubled by the memory of vanished caresses? Was she unique? Are there many such? Is it a profession? Do they parade the cemetery as they parade the street? Or else was she only impressed with the admirable, profoundly philosophical idea of exploiting love recollections, which are revived in these funereal places?”

Guy de Maupassant, we suspect, already knew the answer.

Jessica Cale

Arnold, Catharine. The Sexual History of London. 
Catullus. Poem 59, Rufa Among the Graves.
Gill, N.S. Prostitution Notes from the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter. 
Juvenal. Satires, Book XXII.
Martial. Epigrams, I: 34,8 and III: 93,15
Maupassant, Guy de. Graveyard Sirens.
Roberts, Nickie. Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society.

*Noctilucae. Now defined as any creature that shines in the dark. 

**Sometimes called “Tombstones” in English

1 Comment Posted on 19th Century, 20th Century, Art, Death, Disease, France, Religion, Sex, The Occult, Victorian

Ghouls’ Night Out: Sex, Death, and Damnation in Fin de Siècle Paris

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The Cabaret du Ciel (left) beside the Cabaret de l’Enfer (right) on the Boulevard de Clichy

Every generation likes to think they’re the first to invent counterculture, but today’s goths and Murderinos are part of a tradition of gleeful creepiness that goes back centuries. We’ll be looking into more of this in future posts, but tonight we’re going to start in Montmartre.

In Bohemian Paris of Today (1899), William Chambers Morrow describes Montmartre as “that strange Bohemian mountain with its eccentric, fantastic, and morbid attractions,” and that’s a good start. It was home of the Moulin Rouge, Le Chat Noir, the famous stairs of the Rue Foyatier, and the Sacré-Coeur. Now one of the most recognizable parts of Paris, Montmartre was (and continued to be) the red light district, inhabited by countless sex workers as well as some of the most influential writers, musicians, and artists of the late nineteenth century.

So much of Western art and literature can be traced back to Montmartre in the 1890s that it’s really worth of a blog of its own. We already looked at Toulouse-Lautrec and some of the famous figures who appeared in his art, so today we’re looking a bit closer at some of Montmartre’s hottest nightspots–the magnificently goth heaven and hell nightclubs the Cabaret du Ciel, l’Enfer, and the Cabaret du Néant.

neant postcardCabaret du Néant

At the Cabaret du Néant (Cabaret of Nothingness), the morbid nihilism sweeping fin de siècle Paris found its natural home. If you were thirsty after a long day of morgue tourism*, you could pull up a bench at a coffin of your own in their Salle d’Intoxication, a bar decorated with human bones.

Every aspect of the décor had been chosen to make an impact. The entrance was draped in heavy black curtains with white details, the same ones that hung in the houses of the dead around the city. Even the iron lanterns gave off a sickly green light, giving anyone who passed beneath them the pallor of a corpse. The drinks themselves were named after poisons and diseases and served in cups shaped like skulls**, and the waiters dressed as monks and pallbearers.

After a glass of “spitting tuberculosis”, you could proceed into the adjoining room for entertainment of another kind. With the Pepper’s Ghost illusion, the bar used light and a series of carefully angled mirrors to create some very alarming effects. While Pepper’s Ghost is great at simulating apparitions, Néant took it a bit further. Seated on coffins, the guests would watch as a young woman wrapped in a shroud appeared to fully decompose into a skeleton then slowly come back to life. How they managed it, we can only guess, but they did recreate the experience for their guests; anyone could pass through the coffin, decompose, and be brought back to life in Néant’s “Cave of the Dead.”

neant chandelier

Néant’s chandelier

First established in Paris on the Boulevard Rochechouart as the Cabaret de la Mort (Cabaret of Death) in 1892, it relocated to the Boulevard de Clichy and took the name Néant, because apparently it was the name frightening the residents and not the chandeliers. (right)

In spite of the grim theme, contemplation of one’s own mortality was not the aim—or it didn’t stop there, at least. Néant was above all else a place to hook up. Whether sipping “Asiatic cholera” in the Salle d’Intoxication or taking in a show in the “Cave of Gay Ghosts” or “Cave of Sad Specters,” guests were known to engage in a fair bit of PDA. Secret Montmartre explains it thus:

“It is a constant of eroticism to be bound to the ephemeral and to death. (…) The show does not discourage the libido of spectators who do not forget that in Pigalle, sex has the last word. We kiss each other, we caress each other under the empty gaze of the skeletons.”

Cabaret du Ciel

After passing through the coffin and being dramatically reanimated at Néant, you could stagger a bit farther down the Boulevard de Clichy to the Cabaret du Ciel (Cabaret of Heaven, “the sky”) or l’Enfer (Hell) just beside it. If you’d been good—or didn’t mind a fairly blasphemous drinking session—you might make it up the stairs to le Ciel, where you would be greeted by angels, priests, and St. Peter dripping holy water on you from above.***

Cabaret_du_Ciel_promo_photo

Angels surround the Golden Porcus. That’s not weird.

If the nearly naked angels cavorting to harp music wasn’t enough to keep you entertained, you could listen to their naughty confessions or watch them perform scenes from Dante’s Inferno. It must have been quite a scene–some of them were also dancers at the Moulin Rouge.

Bizarrely, le Ciel also had a massive golden pig (“the Golden Porcus”) that was worshiped like a deity, decorated in flowers, and surrounded by candles. (right)

Like Néant, le Ciel had their own names for common drinks. Morrow describes his experience:

“Brothers, your orders! Command me, thy servant!” growled a ferocious angel at our elbows, with his accent de la Villette, and his brass halo a trifle askew.

Mr. Thompkins had been very quiet, for he was Wonder in the flesh, and perhaps there was some distress in his face, but there was courage also. The suddenness of the angel’s assault visibly disconcerted him,–he did not know what to order. Finally he decided on a verre de Chartreuse, green. Bishop and I ordered bocks.

“Two sparkling draughts of heaven’s own brew and one star-dazzler!” yelled our angel.

“Thy will be done,” came the response from the hidden bar.

Throughout the night, they would invite guests to become “angels” and suspend them on wires from the ceiling, allowing them to fly above the other patrons until Father Time appeared with his scythe to collect tips and send them on their way to l’Enfer.

enfer

Cabaret de l’Enfer

As over the top as Néant and le Ciel must have seemed, l’Enfer was another story altogether. Just downstairs from le Ciel, it couldn’t have been more different:

“We passed through a large, hideous, fanged, open mouth in an enormous face from which shone eyes of blazing crimson. (…) Red-hot bars and gratings through which flaming coals gleamed appeared in the walls within the red mouth. (…) Near us was suspended a cauldron over a fire, and hopping within it were half a dozen devil musicians, male and female, playing a selection from “Faust” on stringed instruments, while red imps stood by, prodding with red-hot irons those who lagged in their performance.

the cauldron at lenfer

A cauldron at l’Enfer. Note the devils lighting the fire beneath it. You can see the walls and ceilings were covered in sculptures of the damned.

“Crevices in the walls of this room ran with streams of molten gold and silver, and here and there were caverns lit up by smouldering fires from which thick smoke issued, and vapors emitting the odors of a volcano. Flames would suddenly burst from clefts in the rocks, and thunder rolled through the caverns.

“Numerous red tables stood against the fiery walls; at these sat the visitors. Mr. Thompkins seated himself at one of them. Instantly it became aglow with a mysterious light, which kept flaring up and disappearing in an erratic fashion; flames darted from the walls, fires crackled and roared. One of the imps came to take our order; it was for three coffees, black, with cognac; and this is how he shrieked the order: ‘Three seething bumpers of molten sins, with a dash of brimstone intensifier!’”

The glasses glowed with “phosphorescent light,” and dapper man dressed as the devil would make the rounds and tell the guests which of their sins had led them to eternal damnation. From there, you could go to “the hot room,” where a contortionist would change from snake to devil and back again. Morrow writes that he was disappointed to find that although the walls appeared to be half melted, the hot room was disagreeably chilly.

Antonin_Alexander

Antonin Alexander, professor turned devil, owner of literally the hottest club in Paris. Dapper AF.

If it seems like these clubs go together a little too well, it might not surprise you to hear that le Ciel and l’Enfer were owned by the same man, former literature professor Antonin Alexander. Alexander himself appeared as the devil in l’Enfer. (right)

After Néant was moved to the Boulevard de Clichy in 1892, le Ciel and l’Enfer joined it in 1896. Jules Claretie, then director of the Théâtre Français, viewed the clubs as essential to understanding Belle Epoque Paris and described them as “Putting Dante’s poem within walking distance.”

Even after its heyday at the turn of the century, l’Enfer continued to be a place of interest. André Breton’s Surrealists met above it in the 1920s. Eerily enough, serial killer Guy Georges was caught at the site in 1998 and confessed inside the same building where a costumed devil once confronted visitors with lists of their sins.

In case you’re curious, le Ciel and l’Enfer were at 53 Boulevard de Clichy, and Néant was at number 34. Today, 53 is a Monoprix, and 34 is a “fully naturist swinger sauna.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

Jessica Cale

Further Reading

Bohemian Paris of To-Day by William Chambers Morrow and Édouard Cucuel (1899)

*Yes, really. 
**You thought you were so original.
***I really hope it’s holy water.

1 Comment Posted on 19th Century, 20th Century, America, Crime, Disease, Edwardian, Guest Posts, Law, London, Medical History, Politics, Religion, Sex, The Regency, Victorian, Violence

Sex and the Asylum: Imprisoning Inconvenient Women

f95ddecebd8d712ca785b34b065d7231Nymphomania, masturbation, sexual derangement: just some of the reasons a nineteenth century—and indeed twentieth century—woman could find herself locked away in a lunatic asylum. In fact, many of the reasons women were incarcerated were related to their sex or sexuality. Around one third of female patients were diagnosed with nymphomania. Some had born illegitimate children, been engaged in prostitution, or been raped or sexually assaulted.

For others, being deemed promiscuous or flirtatious was enough to seal their fate. In both Great Britain and the United States, it was perfectly legal for a husband or father to have their wives or daughters committed to an asylum without any right of appeal. Cures for nymphomania included separation from men, induced vomiting, leeches, straitjackets, and, in some cases clitorectomies.

In 1867, seventeen-year-old Alice Christina Abbot was accused of poisoning her stepfather after he threatened to send her to a reform school. At her trial, Abbot claimed that her stepfather had put her through years of sexual abuse, and that she had told other people, but they had mostly considered her mentally deranged. The court rejected her allegations as singular, and in August of that year she was committed to Taunton Insane Asylum, where she seems to have vanished into the dark realms of history. Whether or not Abbot really was a murderer, or whether she saw poisoning as the only way of freeing herself from her stepfather, we shall never know. The fact remains that she was treated neither as a victim of sexual abuse, nor a sane woman who had committed murder. Instead, she was labelled as insane, and her identity was effectively erased.

Edna Martin was fifteen when her grandfather saw her going to the pictures with a sixty-two-year-old married man. He called the police, and Edna was taken to juvenile court. The judge asked her whether they’d had intercourse, but she had no idea what that meant. Her grandfather said he never wanted to see her again, so she was taken to Parkside Approved School, where she was diagnosed as an imbecile, mentally defective, and feeble-minded, and transferred to Calderstones Asylum. Edna described twenty years of hell moving between various asylums:

They kicked the chamber pots into you . . . they also kicked in your food on a tin plate and you had to eat it off the floor. They used enemas for punishment . . . they thought nothing of giving you a cold-water bath, or they’d get a wet bath towel, put it under a cold tap, twist it, and hit you with it.

In the wider community, asylums were used as tools to control large numbers of women who were considered a threat to the status quo. Prostitution was seen as a social disease, and those fallen women associated with it needed to be shut away for the greater good, until such time as they were fixed. Correcting women who had taken the wrong path was the main idea behind three different kinds of establishments: Magdalene asylums, benevolent societies, and lock hospitals.

Magdalen-asylum

A Magdalene Asylum in Ireland, early 20th century

Madgalene asylums were established by the Catholic Church for sex workers, as well as other women who had deviated from sexual norms, for the sake of penitence and redemption. Life in Magdalene asylums was grueling: the women were given new names, forbidden from talking about their past or talking to their families, and had to work (usually doing laundry) in complete silence.

In London, any sex worker found to have a venereal disease could be forcibly put in a lock hospital for up to a year, while benevolent societies gave the women huge amounts of religious instruction, and then retained them as seamstresses and servants.

Many lesbian women were also labelled as mentally ill, with doctors claiming that life without continued male interaction could cause anemia, irritability, and tiredness. Women who had chosen alternative lifestyles and defied accepted gender norms were considered a threat to the patriarchal society. In asylums—supposedly places of safety— they could face sexual abuse under the care of doctors, who believed that repeated sexual activity with men could cure them.

This put women in an incredibly vulnerable position: those who refused to obey their husbands or fathers, behaved in a manner which was deemed immodest or unwomanly, or refused to submit to their husbands’ demands faced being torn away from their children and families, and were often subjected to the most brutal conditions.

Asylums became a convenient place to put society’s inconvenient women. These stories are more than just reminders that we’re lucky not to have been born two hundred years ago—they are also reminders of how much people in the past were entrenched in ideas of feminine norms, and the lengths they would go to in order to preserve patriarchal dominance.

e70af166925101afcb722a622b94505d (1) 1

Emma Rose Millar was born in Birmingham—a child of the seventies. She is a single mum and lives with her young son. Emma left school at sixteen and later studied for an Open University degree in Humanities with English Literature. She has had a variety of jobs including chocolatier, laboratory technician and editorial assistant for a magazine, but now works part-time as an interpreter.

Emma writes historical fiction and children’s picture books. She won the Legend category of the Chaucer Awards for Historical Fiction with FIVE GUNS BLAZING in 2014. Her novella THE WOMEN FRIENDS: SELINA, based on the work of Gustav Klimt and co-written with author Miriam Drori was published in 2016 by Crooked Cat Books, and was shortlisted for the Goethe Award for Late Historical Fiction. Her third novel, DELIRIUM, a Victorian ghost story, will be published in 2018, also by Crooked Cat Books. It was shortlisted for the Chanticleer Paranormal Book Awards in 2017.

Follow Emma Rose Millar on Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads. Her new book, Delirium, is out now.

9 Comments Posted on 18th Century, 19th Century, America, Art, Beauty, Death, Disease, Georgian Britain, London, Medical History, Sex, The Regency, Victorian

Drop Dead Gorgeous: 19th Century Beauty Tips for the Aspiring Consumptive

swoonPicture the ideal nineteenth century English beauty: pale, almost translucent skin, rosy cheeks, crimson lips, white teeth, and sparkling eyes. She’s waspishly thin with elegant collarbones. Perhaps she’s prone to fainting.

It shouldn’t be difficult to imagine; numerous depictions survive to this day, and the image is still held up as the gold standard for Caucasian women. At this point, it’s so embedded in the Western psyche as beauty that it doesn’t occur to us to question it. Of course that’s beautiful. Why wouldn’t it be?

By the nineteenth century, beauty standards in Britain had come a long way from the plucked hairlines of the late Middle Ages and the heavy ceruse of the Stuart period. Fashionable women wanted slimmer figures because physical fragility had become associated with intelligence and refinement. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes, and red lips had always been popular, particularly among sex workers (they suggested arousal), and women had been using cosmetics like belladonna, carmine, and Spanish leather for years to produce those effects when they didn’t occur organically.

Bright eyes, flushed cheeks, and red lips were also signs of tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis—known at the time as consumption, phthisis, hectic fever, and graveyard cough—was an epidemic that affected all classes and genders without prejudice. Today, an estimated 1.9 billion people are infected with it, and it causes about two million deaths each year. At the time, it was mainly associated with respectable women (although there are no few depictions of sex workers dying of it*) and thought to be triggered by mental exertion or too much dancing.** Attractive women were viewed as more susceptible to it because tuberculosis enhanced their best features. It was noted to cause pale skin, silky hair, weight loss, and a feverish tinge to the face (along with less desirable symptoms including weakness, coughing up blood, GI upset, and organ failure), and it was treated with little to no effect with bleeding, diet, red wine, and opium.

Although having an active (rather than latent) case of consumption was all but a death sentence, it didn’t inspire the revulsion of other less attractive diseases until the end of the 19th century when its causes were better understood.

In 1833, The London Medical and Surgical Journal described it in almost affectionate terms: “Consumption, neither effacing the lines of personal beauty, nor damaging the intellectual functions, tends to exalt the moral habits, and develop the amiable qualities of the patient.”

keats

John Keats. Joseph Severn, 1819.

Of course it didn’t only affect women. The notion that it was caused by mental exertion—along with the high number of artists and intellectuals who lost their lives to it—also led to its association with poets. John Keats died of it at 26. His friend Percy Shelley—also infected—wrote tributes to Keats that attempted to explain consumption not as a disease, but as death by passion. Bizarrely, a symptom that is unique to consumption is spes phthisica, a euphoric state that can result in intense bursts of creativity.*** Keats’ prolific final year of life has been attributed to his consumption, and spes phthisica was viewed by some as necessary for artistic genius.

As Alexandre Dumas (fils) wrote in 1852: “It was the fashion to suffer from the lungs; everybody was consumptive, poets especially; it was good form to spit blood after any emotion that was at all sensational, and to die before reaching the age of thirty.”

Because of its association with young women and poets, the disease itself came to represent beauty, romantic passion, and hyper sexuality. As far as illnesses went, it was considered to be rather glamorous, and in a culture half in love with death, it inspired its fair share of tributes. There are numerous romantic depictions of young women wasting away in death beds at the height of their beauty. Women with consumption were regularly praised for the ethereal loveliness that came from being exceptionally thin and nearly transparent.

Picture that ideal nineteenth century beauty again: that complexion is almost a pallor, and you can see her veins through it. Those lips, eyes, and cheeks are all indicative of a constant low-grade fever. Her teeth are so white they’re almost as translucent as her skin. And her figure? She’s emaciated due to the illness and the chronic diarrhea that comes with it. If she faints, it’s more to do with the lack of oxygen in her blood than the tension of her corset. The sicker she gets, the more beautiful she becomes, until she’s gone; the beauty is all the more poignant because of its impermanence. This beauty can’t last, and it’s as deadly as it is contagious.

Only a fool would wish for it, so what’s a healthy girl to do?

If you didn’t have consumption but wanted the look, there were two things you could do: wait (at its peak between 1780 and 1850, it is estimated to have caused a quarter of all deaths in Europe. Statistically, you would have had a fair chance of getting it), or fake it. Corsets could be made to narrow the waist and encourage a stooped posture, and necklines were designed to show off prominent collar bones. As for the rest, people could try:

Arsenic Complexion WafersAHB2009q11701

Although arsenic was known to be toxic, it was used throughout the nineteenth century in everything from dye to medication. Eating small amounts of arsenic regularly was said to produce a clear, ghostly pale complexion. Lola Montez reported that some women in Bohemia frequently drank the water from arsenic springs to whiten their skin.

Stop Eating

In The Ugly-Girl Papers, S.D. Powers offers her own advice for achieving consumptive skin: “The fairest skins belong to people in the earliest stages of consumption, or those of a scrofulous nature. This miraculous clearness and brilliance is due to the constant purgation which wastes the consumptive, or to the issue which relieves the system of impurities by one outlet. We must secure purity of the blood by less exhaustive methods. The diet should be regulated according to the habit of the person. If stout, she should eat as little as will satisfy her appetite.”

How little? Writing in the third person, she uses herself as an example: “Breakfast was usually a small saucer of strawberries and one Graham cracker, and was not infrequently dispensed with altogether. Lunch was half an orange—for the burden of eating the other half was not to be thought of; and at six o’clock a handful of cherries formed a plentiful dinner. Once a week she did crave something like beef-steak of soup, and took it.”

Olive-Tar

For “fair and innocent” skin that mimics the effects of consumption, The Ugly-Girl Papers offers the following recipe: “Mix one spoonful of the best tar in a pint of pure olive oil or almond oil, by heating the two together in a tin cup set in boiling water. Stir till completely mixed and smooth, putting in more oil if the compound is too thick to run easily. Rub this on the face when going to bed, and lay patches of soft old cloth on the cheeks and forehead to keep the tar from rubbing off. The bed linen must be protected by old sheets folded and thrown over the pillows. The odor, when mixed with oil, is not strong enough to be unpleasant—some people fancy its suggestion of aromatic pine breath—and the black, unpleasant mask washes off easily with warm water and soap. The skin comes out, after several applications, soft, moist, and tinted like a baby’s. The French have long used turpentine to efface the marks of age, but olive-tar is pleasanter.”

White Lead

800px-Madame_X_(Madame_Pierre_Gautreau),_John_Singer_Sargent,_1884_(unfree_frame_crop)

Madame X. John Singer Sargent, 1883-4

Lead had been used as the primary ingredient for ceruse and other forms of foundation and powder for centuries. It was known to cause skin problems over time (and, you know, lead poisoning). In the nineteenth century, it was still used for the same purpose and appeared in paints and skin enamels in Europe and the United States.

Lavender Powder

If the pallor of consumption didn’t occur naturally or with the aid of arsenic, it could be imitated with the use of lavender colored powder. Usually applied over ceruse or other foundation made from white lead, it gave the skin a bluish, porcelain shade. Perhaps the best known example of this is John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. The model, Virginie Gautreau, was known to use lavender powder to create her dramatically pale complexion. She was said to be a master of drawing fake veins on with indigo, and she painted her ears with rouge to add to the illusion of translucence.

Rouge

Commonly sold and sometimes made at home, rouge was everywhere. Made from toxic bismuth or vermilion, or carmine from cochineal beetles, it was applied to cheeks, lips, ears, and sometimes even nostrils to make them appear transparent. It came in liquid, cream, and powder forms, and Napoleon’s Empress Josephine is said to have spent a fortune on it. The Ugly-Girl Papers offers this recipe for Milk of Roses, which sounds rather nice:

“(Mix) four ounces of oil of almonds, forty drops of oil of tarter, and half a pint of rose-water with carmine to the proper shade. This is very soothing to the skin. Different tinges may be given to the rouge by adding a few flakes of indigo for the deep black-rose crimson, or mixing a little pale yellow with less carmine for the soft Greuze tints.”

Ammonia

The Ugly-Girl Papers recommends ammonia for use as both a hair rinse and, worryingly, a depilatory. For healthy hair, Powers recommends scrubbing it nightly with a brush in a basin of water with three tablespoons of ammonia added. Hair should then be combed and left to air dry without a night cap.

Lemon Juice and Eyeliner

To achieve the ideal feverish “sparkling eyes,” some women still used belladonna (which could cause blindness) while others resorted to putting lemon juice or other irritants in their eyes to make them water. Eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows could also be defined. Powers advises: “All preparations for darkening the eyebrows, eyelashes, etc., must be put on with a small hair-pencil. The “dirty-finger” effect is not good. A fine line of black round the rim of the eyelid, when properly done, should not be detected, and its effect in softening and enlarging the eyes is well known by all amateur players.”

Jessica Cale

 

 

Sources

Day, Carolyn. Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease. (2017)

Dumas, Alexandre (fils). La Dame Aux Camélias. (1852)

Klebs, Arnold. Tuberculosis: A Treatise by American Authors on its Etiology, Pathology, Frequency, Semeiology, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Prevention, and Treatment. (1909)

Meier, Allison. How Tuberculosis Symptoms Became Ideals of Beauty in the 19th Century. Hyperallergic. January 2nd, 2018.

Montez, Lola. The Arts of Beauty: or Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet. (1858)

Morens, David M. At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art. Emerging Infectious Diseases, Volume 8, Number 11. November 2002.

Mullin, Emily. How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion. Smithsonian.com, May 10th, 2016.

Pointer, Sally. The Artifice of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics. (2005)

Powers, S. D. The Ugly-Girl Papers, or Hints for the Toilet. (1874)

Zarrelli, Natalie. The Poisonous Beauty Advice Columns of Victorian England. Atlas Obscura, December 17th, 2015.

Notes

*Depictions of sex workers dying of tuberculosis: La Traviata, Les Misérables, La Bohème, and now Moulin Rouge, etc. In the 19th century, consumption was portrayed as a kind of romantic redemption for sex workers through the physical sacrifice of the body.

**Although dancing itself wouldn’t have done it, the disease was so contagious that it could be contracted anywhere people would be at close quarters—dancing at balls with multiple partners could have reasonably been high-risk behavior.

***You know what else does that? Tertiary syphilis. How do you know which one you have? If you’re coughing blood, it’s consumption. If your skin is falling off, it’s syphilis. Either way, you’re going to want to call a doctor.