Arthur Munby

Arthur Joseph Munby (19 August 1828 – 29 January 1910) was a British diarist, poet, portrait photographer, barrister and solicitor. He is also known as Arthur J. Munby and A. J. Munby.

Biography Arthur Munby was born in York on 19 August 1828. He was educated at St Peter's School, York and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1851, and was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn in 1855. Munby became a barrister in accordance with his father's wish, a traditional role for an eldest son in his class. He worked as a civil servant in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners' office from 1858 until his retirement in 1888.

His published poetry included the collections Benoni (1852) and Verses New and Old (1865).

He taught Latin at the Working Men's College for more than a decade and helped promote the Working Men's College Volunteer Corps, a response to the national call in 1859 for Volunteer Rifle Corps in response to a perceived war threat from Napoleon III. Munby penned verses of support, the Invicta: a Song of 1860, for the 19th Middlesex Regiment, a regiment to which the W.M.C.V.C. was attached. In 1864, a sister Working Women's College was established; Munby was a leading spirit of the new college and taught there.

He kept journals from 1859 to 1898 that recorded the details of his interactions and in them he expressed his desire for the strength and care of a working woman. He was an amateur artist, and his diaries contain sketches of working women. He collected hundreds of photographs of such subjects as women who worked at collieries, kitchen maids, milkmaids, charwomen, and acrobats. His diaries and images provide historical information on the lives of working-class Victorian women.

In 1854 Munby met Hannah Cullwick (b. 1833), a Shropshire-born maid-of-all-work who had been working in London since her late teens. They formed a relationship in which Munby was the master, whom Cullwick addressed as 'massa', and Cullwick the slave, with him training her in the virtues of hard work and loyalty. However, Cullwick used this master/slave dynamic to prove her own worth outside of Munby and put herself in a place of power. For example, she used the slave band Munby gave her to display the fact that she was a working-class woman, and that she was not ashamed of it; this can be seen in Cullwick’s journal when she says, "my hands and arms are tho' chief to me, to get my living with."

Munby and Cullwick experienced their roles differently. He once visited Cullwick at her workplace, where she is actually a servant. He wrote: "But to see her stand in a drawing room in her servant's dress and know that she is a servant and that the piano, the books, the pictures belong to her mistress... this I could not endure." in Pyrford, Surrey, on 29 January 1910.

His papers are housed at Trinity College, Cambridge. He required they remain sealed until the 77th anniversary of his wedding day in 1950.

Selected works

Verses New And Old 1865I. Of Men and Women GenerallyIII. Woman's RightsVII. Of Decay and DeathVioletIV. Auld Lang SyneVestigia RetrorsumUnder the PorchV. Of Love in Various AspectsIn the DesertThe Whaler FleetAnamnesisNudum Remigio LatusDucie of the DaleAfter Long YearsThe FlyfisherShady ValleySonnetIn the ForestMary AnerleyGreen and DryOctoberRomney MarshQueen SophiaAn ExceptionSeamer MereA PartingAt PerivaleCasque and PlumeA ConsolationAutumnFive-and-ThirtyA Talk on Filey BrigN'importeDorisSeaside QuestionsThe WolfA Husband's EpisodesLucy's GarlandIn the Marshes at LandwickII. Of Common FolkA JiltQuestion and AnswerT' Moossel GatherersIn FlorenceOne in BedlamT' Runawa LassVI. Of IronyDe ProfundisT' StattiesLongo Intervallo"Followers Not Allowed"One Way of Looking at itSix FarewellsThe Serving MaidEvanderMaid MargeryDisciplineMary AnnLucinda's StoryAt SempachPost MortemThe Poet Jobson

Transcriptions Faithful Servants: being epitaphs and obituaries recording their names and services, 1891 Sometimes catalogued with J.W. Streeten as co-author. Munby did not collect all of the 692 epitaphs he published himself. His volume includes 311 epitaphs collected by Streeten which were published anonymously in 1826 in a volume titled Epitaphia.