Hannah Cullwick

Hannah Cullwick (26 May 1833 – 9 July 1909) was a working-class English woman whose diary depicts her immense pride in her work and reveals themes of domestic and racial fetishism that structured both her life and the society of the British Empire in which she lived.

While working in domestic service, Hannah Cullwick had a chance encounter with prominent barrister and philanthropist Arthur Munby, who was conducting a close study of the conditions of working women. The two embarked on a lifelong, unconventional relationship. Both of their diaries – as well as letters and photographs – document the role-playing, cross-dressing, and other fetish rituals that differentiate their relationship from the perceived norms of Victorian England. Cullwick's diary also reveals the autonomy she was able to keep even in the throes of extreme social inequality.

Early life and immediate family Cullwick was born on 26 May 1833 and raised in Shifnal, Shropshire, England. Her father was Charles Fox Cullwick (1803–1847), a Master Saddler of Shifnal and a Burgess of Bridgnorth. The family had been Master Saddlers in Shropshire since one of Charles's great-great-grandfathers, Richard Cullwick (1648–c1720), of Newport, set up his saddlery business, about 1670. Hannah's mother was Martha Owen (1800–1847), a Lady's Maid to the aristocratic Mrs Eyton. Cullwick had more than a dozen uncles and aunts, and more than fifty first cousins. All were literate, and most were in business as farmers, publicans, and saddlers.

Hannah's father, Charles, appears to have suffered business losses; the family was subsequently very poor. There were five children: Hannah, James (1830–1915), Dick (1836–1887), Ellen (1839–1915), and Polly (1844–1924). James was a master wheelwright and later owned houses. Dick was a master saddler and became a harness maker in London. Ellen married William Cook, the Registrar for Poplar in London. Polly owned a large haberdashery store in the Ipswich Buttermarket.

The five children received a rudimentary schooling; Hannah was sent to the Bluecoat Charity school in Shifnal, and had to contribute financially to the family from the age of eight—first in the home of a solicitor's wife, Mrs Andrew Phillips, a friend and neighbor of the Cullwicks, and then in the Red Lion Inn before becoming the sole nursemaid to the large family of the Reverend Robert Eyton at Ryton Rectory.

When Cullwick was fourteen, both of her parents died suddenly. Her mother died of an infection, at the age of 47, and Hannah's employer, Rev Robert Eyton, refused to let her travel to visit her family, fearing that the fever would spread to Ryton, the nearby village. Hannah's father died two weeks later, at the age of 44, leaving the five children (ages 3-16) as orphans. The three youngest children needed to be housed: Dick was placed in a saddlery apprenticeship in Horsley Fields, Wolverhampton, with his uncle, William Cullwick (1781–1853); Ellen lived with Aunt Small (née Sarah Owen) on her large farm, in Albrighton near Shrewsbury; and Polly went to live with her spinster aunt Elizabeth Cullwick (1789–1866), in Haughton, Shifnal.

Their courtship lasted for 18 years until they married on 14 January 1873. Cullwick reported enjoying the degradation involved with cleaning boots and sometimes cleaned them with her mouth. In reality, many middle-class women were working tirelessly to maintain the upkeep of their homes, desperately trying to preserve their station in the "respectable" class. The concept of the ideal woman, who performed the "conspicuous labor of leisure," devalued the work that women were actually doing, hiding this work from society's view.