The Match Girl and the Heiress

by Seth Koven

  231. Virginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” in Leonard Woolf, ed., Collected Essays, vol. 1 (London, 1966), 334, 320. George Dangerfield, like Woolf, emphasizes the pre–World War I demise of Victorian values enacted through politically motivated violence in his brilliant, much criticized but still influential 1935 study, The Strange Death of Liberal England.

  232. Susan Kent argues that this culture of violence led Britons to seek solace in “an English version of what might be called a fascistic sensibility” (193) that paradoxically limited the appeal of formal membership in fascist organizations. She cites George Lansbury’s 1931 critique of the National government as “the essence of Fascism.” See Kent, Aftershocks, Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918–1931 (Basingstoke, 2009), 192–93. On shifting postwar narratives about the war as rupture, see Janet Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge, 2004). See Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-End, A Social History of Great Britain 1918–1939 (London, 1940).

  233. While using very different materials and stressing radical rather than conservative cultural-political strands, my approach resembles Alison Light’s to interwar Britain as a period of particularly intense dialectical tensions between “old and new … between holding on and letting go, conserving and moving on.” Light does preserve the concept of the “modern” as necessarily a “revolt against Victorianism.” See Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London 1991), 11, 19, and chap. 1.

  234. This chapter adds to the growing body of scholarship that highlights “the resilience of pre–war social structures and attitudes” and their adaption to war and postwar; see Gerard J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in an Era of Great War (London, 1996).

  235. See Muriel Lester to “Dear Comrades of Number Sixty,” n.d., internal evidence suggests 1923, Lester/2/2, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  Afterlives

  1. Muriel wrote two popular books about her time in India and Gandhi’s visit to London. See Muriel Lester, My Host the Hindu (London, 1931) and Entertaining Gandhi (London, 1932). See also Muriel Lester, Gandhi: World Citizen (Allahabad, 1945); Gandhi’s Signature (New York, 1949); and “Gandhiji, 1926–1949,” in C. Shukla, ed., Incidents of Gandhiji’s Life (Bombay, 1949).

  2. Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, eds., Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge, 1997), 440.

  3. Voysey, son of the eminent Arts and Crafts architect, had previously designed Children’s House for the Lesters, which opened in 1923, as a combined Montessori-inspired school and residence for workers. It too had a flat roof, used extensively as a playground and sleeping space for the children.

  4. For descriptions of the building, see “Kingsley Hall, Bow, Designed by C. Cowles Voysey,” The Architects’ Journal (July 16, 1930): 79; and Muriel Lester, It Occurred to Me (London, 1937), 152.

  5. See Rosa Hobhouse, Mary Hughes: Her Life for the Dispossessed (London, 1949), 62.

  6. Lord Knebworth apparently stood in for his father, Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India with whom Muriel had met before leaving India in late-December 1926. See draft letter, Muriel Lester to Lord Lytton, December 31, 1926, Lester/2/7, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  7. “The New Kingsley Hall. Opened By Lord Knebworth. Beautiful Home of Social Work,” East London Advertiser, September 22, 1928.

  8. Ida Dellar lived with Willie at 58 Bruce Road and was Treasurer of the Kingsley Hall Club in the 1930s and headed the Young People’s Fellowship. I don’t know what her relationship to Willie was since he later married Isabelle Dellar. For Ida Dellar’s work at Kingsley Hall, See Minutes for April 12, 1932 and July 12, 1932, Kingsley Hall Sunday Evening Fellowship, Lester/1/1/5, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  9. Lester, It Occurred to Me, 107.

  10. See “Mr. Chaplin Meets Mr. Gandhi,” Daily Telegraph, September 23, 1931; and “Mr. Chaplin and Mr. Gandhi,” Daily Mail, September 23, 1931.

  11. Lester, It Occurred to Me, 75.

  12. On maternalist politics, see Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in Britain, France, Germany and the United States,” American Historical Review 95:4 (October 1990): 1076–1108. See also Seth Koven, “Borderlands: Women, Voluntary Action, and Child Welfare in Britain,” in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York, 1993).

  13. For Lester’s version of events, see It Occurred to Me, 98–100. See also Poplar Borough Council Minutes, Report of Maternity and Child Welfare Committee, January 22, 1923, Tower Hamlets Local History Library.

  14. Lester, It Occurred to Me, 155.

  15. “Open House,” Kingsley Hall, Annual Report (London, 1930), 4.

  16. Lester, It Occurred to Me, 155.

  17. Grace Neary, interview by Louise Joly, 2009, Oral History Project, Kingsley Hall, audio recording in author’s possession.

  18. Transcripts and tapes from the Oral History Project associated with the National Heritage Lottery Grant, Kingsley Hall, and the Legacy of Muriel Lester. Louise Joly interviewing Sylvia Parrott Bishopp (born 1925) on April 2, 2009 in Mayfield Road, Sanderstead, Croyden.

  19. Edgar Lansbury, Poplarism: The Truth about the Poplar Scale of Relief and the Action of the Ministry of Health (London, 1924), 1.

  20. The Parrotts’ involvement with Kingsley Hall seems to confirm Edwin Pugh’s observation in 1913: “There are socialistic Countesses, but never a flower-girl, that is not an individualist.” Pugh as quoted in Gareth Stedman Jones, “The ‘Cockney’ and the ‘Nation,’ 1780–1988,” in David Feldman and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., Metropolis, London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London, 1989), 304.

  21. She chronicled this work in It So Happened (New York, 1947).

  22. Lester and the household members asked themselves, “Are our ideals wrong after all?” but remained optimistic even as they “stare[d] at our own failure.” See Lester, It Occurred to Me, 149–56.

  23. My interpretation is indebted to Isaiah Berlin’s critique of the utopian pursuit of perfection and the impossibility—and undesirability—of producing a single set of rules to resolve moral conflicts. See his “On the Pursuit of the Ideal,” New York Review of Books 35:4 (March 17, 1988).

  24. Muriel Lester to Dear Child [Doris Lester], n.d., “Saturday 8 pm [1934],” Lester/2/7, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  25. Doris Lester, unpublished typescript and manuscript autobiography, Lester/3/1, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  26. Muriel Lester to Darlingest Precious [Doris Lester], no date, 1934, Lester/2/7, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  27. Muriel Lester to Alan and Elizabeth Hunter, March 4, 1934, Lester/2/7, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  28. Muriel Lester to Darlingest Precious (Doris Lester), n.d. [1934], Lester/2/7, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  29. Doris Lester, “The Pattern Changes,” Typescript and manuscript autobiography, Lester/3/1, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  30. See Tara Booth, “Heritage Lottery Fund Grant of £49,900 Aids Muriel Lester Legacy,” Culture24, (September 26, 2008), accessed on September 26, 2013.

  31. On the history of blue plaques in London, see Blue Plaques on Houses of Historical Interest (reprint of Commemorative Tablets, London, 1960), Forward by the Countess of Dartmouth. For the administrative rules governing blue plaques as well as extant nomination forms and correspondence controlled by the Historic Buildings Board, see “Commemorative Plaques, The Twenty Year Rule,” Report, July 8, 1974, GLC/DG/PT1/H/2/113, London Metropolitan Archives.

  32. Lyn Olley, “Cash Squeeze Hampers Plans for Flats and Centre,” Essex and East London Newspapers, January 30, 1978.

  33. Muriel Lester to Victor Gollancz, June 9, 1963, MSS 151/3/P/ME/2, Gollancz Papers, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.

  34. Electoral registers for Bromley North-East Ward for 1933 indicate that Alice Whipps lived at Kingsley
Hall with Muriel and seven other residents. Her father was a general laborer. Alice appeared regularly in the early 1930s in the Minutes of the mixed-sex Fellowship that emerged out of the Bruce Road Men’s Adult School.

  35. Muriel Lester, “Our Al,” Lester/5/1, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  36. Alice Whipps to Victor Gollancz, November 10, 1963, MSS 151/3/P/ME/2, Gollancz Papers, Modern Record Office, Warwick.

  37. “Notebook with advice to her executors, January 29, 1968,” p. 102, Lester/1/2/12, Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  38. See Gertrude Himmelfarb’s eloquent and influential analysis of these so-called virtuous Victorian understandings of charity and philanthropic action and their withering in the twentieth century in Poverty and Compassion: The moral imagination of the late Victorians (New York, 1991) and The Demoralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York, 1995). On Lester’s partnership with Gandhi, see Thomas Weber, Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women (New Delhi, 2011).

  Index

  Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations

  adult schools: inception of, 271

  Alden, Sir Percy, 67, 87

  allopathic medicine, 141, 190, 191, 204, 206–8, 218, 407n83

  altruism: Christian, 32, 52, 87, 89; and homosexuality, 246, 247

  Andersen, Hans Christian, 77–78, 81, 83, 84

  Anglo-Boer War, 131, 135

  anti-German protests, 304–5, 305, 306–8, 312. See also Lusitania Riots

  antiwar activities, 6, 12, 145, 201, 282–84, 294, 303, 321; and internationalism, 288

  Asquith, Herbert Henry (First Earl of Oxford and Asquith), 97, 221, 278, 279

  Attenborough, Sir Richard: role in preserving Kingsley Hall Bow, 6

  auditory consciousness, 228, origin of phrase, 410n119

  Balfour, Arthur James (First Earl of Balfour), 178, 278, 312; The Foundations of Belief, 139

  Banbery, Harry, 144

  Baptists, 1, 58, 61, 165, 173, 182, 183, 208

  Barnardo, Dr. Thomas John, 49, 91, 172

  Barnett, Dame Henrietta, 41, 71, 283, 418n37; and Forest Gate, 50–52, 54–56, 267, 372n107

  Barnett, Rev. Samuel, 50, 55, 200. See also Toynbee Hall

  barrack schools, 1, 21, 40, 48, 63, 71, 119, 178, 371n102

  Bartholomew, Gilbert, 94, 95, 100, 102, 113. See also Bryant and May

  Bell, Charles R. E., 96, 103, 106, 107, 115

  Berger Hall, 91, 174, 176, 203, 231, 380n42, 399n123. See also Grattan Guinness, Dr. Henry; Hayes, Rev. Daniel; Regions Beyond Inland Mission

  Besant, Annie, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90–95, 99, 102, 127, 144, 179

  biography: and Carlyle, 15–16; Plutarch on, 9–10, 359n18

  Black, Clementina, 85, 89

  Bishopp, Sylvia Parrott: life at Kingsley Hall, 339–41

  Blavatsky, Helena, 91, 145, 173. See also Theosophy

  Bloomsbury, 13, 19, 70, 262

  Bloomsbury Chapel, 262

  Bloomsbury “moderns,” 261–62

  Boarding Out committee, 38–39

  Bolshevik/Russian revolution, 259, 297, 298

  Booth, Catherine, 148

  Booth, Charles, 24, 386n109

  Booth, Gen. William, 31; In Darkest England and the Way Out, 148

  Bow, 2, 102, 155, 159, 165, 208, 222; Sunday school class, 205. See also Kingsley Hall

  Bow and Poplar district, 16–17, 145, 167, 177, 181, 262, 305, 307, 341; Nellie Dowell and Women’s Political Culture, 276–80

  Bow Church, 155

  Bow Evening Mission and Night School, 101

  Bow Lodge, 93, 144

  Bowtle, George 162, 164–65, 209, 222, 266

  Brethren of the Common Table, 3, 299, 319

  Broad Church, 138, 146

  British Labour: and Lansbury, 279; roots of, 259

  British Mother’s Magazine, 48

  Bromley-by-Bow (also called South Bromley), 28, 21, 77, 95, 105, 106, 108, 109, 117, 119, 121, 124, 129, 130, 132, 165, 172, 201, 261, 263–65, 276, 278, 288, 293, 300–303, 312, 315, 330, 332, 335, 336, 340, 342, 325, 346, 348, 352

  Brotherhood Church, 137, 144, 147, 152, 207, 300, 391n5

  Bruce Road (nos. 58–60), 1, 290, 301; contemporary appearance, 345; Dinner Club at, 335; Dowells at, 238, 235, 245, 301, 324, 325, 334, 336, 342; daily life at, 299; expenses of, 261; Lesters at, 8, 168, 170, 184, 264, 279; openness at, 316; respectability of, 166. See also Kingsley Hall; Kingsley Rooms

  Bruce Road Congregational Church, 165–66, 166, 167–68, 170, 205, 263

  Bruce Road Men’s Adult School, 261–63, 267, 271, 272, 272, 273–75, 288, 341

  Bruce Road Methodist Church, 166, 345; social outreach programs of, 167

  Bryant and May, 31, 78, 85–90, 92–97, 99, 100, 102, 105, 109, 113, 119, 120, 121, 125–27, 131, 276; home workers, 31, 279, 379n31; strike at, 379–80nn33 and 34, 380n34. See also match girls

  Burns, John, 97, 100

  Burrows, Herbert, 90, 91, 96, 99, 103, 107, 383n72

  Campbell, Rev. Reginald J., 136, 149, 149, 150, 173, 177, 182, 183. See also New Theology

  Canning Town Women’s Settlement, 67

  capitalism, 156; global, 3, 10, 17, 78, 117, 119, 121, 131, 294; industrial, 76, 82, 89, 132, 133, 185, 288; and wage slavery, 86

  Carpenter, Edward, 89, 207, 217–18, 246

  Casement, Roger, 175

  Charity Organisation Society (COS), 34, 55, 128, 196, 289–90

  Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 140; on the Sermon on the Mount, 289

  childhood: in Victorian culture, 22, 23, 36, 40–42, 46–49, 55–57, 89, 341. See also Dowell, Nellie; Forster Education Act; Lester, Doris; Lester, Muriel

  child labor, 48, 80–83, 379n30.

  child prostitutes, 84

  Christ/Christian/Christianity, 18, 46, 57, 58, 61, 144, 145, 147, 150, 171, 173, 224, 233, 239, 247; and idealism, 2; and love, 2, 42, 239, 255; and moral paternalism, 19; and mysticism, 144, 212, 412n147; and social justice, 5. See also “God is Love” theology

  Christian revolution, 3, 4, 9, 11, 12, 18, 19, 57, 79, 137, 128, 144, 182, 186, 201, 241, 250, 256–61, 286, 288, 290, 294, 315, 326, 329, 330, 337–39, 341, 345, 346, 351, 352; and reconciliation, 288–315. See also Kingsley Hall; Lester, Muriel; Marx, Karl; Tolstoy, Leo

  Christian Science/Scientists, 185, 206, 212, 214; in Great Britain, 207. See also Eddy, Mary Baker

  Christian Social Union, 289

  Church of England, 43, 61, 221, 259

  Clare Linton’s Friend (Hart), 63, 64, 65, 66, 75

  class/class relations, 1–3, 12, 103, 131, 132, 134, 142, 146, 158, 208, 235, 245, 251, 265, 292, 295, 298, 316–17, 336, 338–41, 359n17, 362n4, 363n6, 377n5, 391n1, 418n45; and childhood, 21–23, 30, 46–47, 55–56, 63–66, 75–76; and Christianity, 143–45, 147, 148, 150, 166–67, 218, 264, 293; and cross-class, 8–9, 83, 101, 129, 161–62, 236, 238–39, 251, 268, 285, 308; and Dowell family, 26, 31; and Gareth Stedman Jones, 17; and welfare, 8–9, 16, 38–39, 82–83, 133, 140, 177–81, 274, 327, 338; and Virginia Woolf, 13; and working-class motherhood, 32–36, 40, 191, 277–78, 283

  Clifden House, 92, 93

  Collet, Clara, 94

  Cobden, Jane, 276

  Cobden, Richard, 276

  coeducation: and schools, 67–68

  colonialism, 171, 300, 357n5

  Congo, 136, 171, 172, 174–77, 182

  Congo Reform Association, 136, 171, 175, 176

  Congregationalism/Congregationalists, 61, 67, 144, 148, 149, 165–68, 170, 173, 263

  conscientious objectors, 185, 220, 222–24, 225, 301, 335, 409n109, 410n116

  conscription, 221; anti-conscription groups, 294

  Conway, Ellen, 97–98, 100, 383nn73 and 74

  Cook’s East London Soap Works, 129, 130, 155, 339

  Corn Laws, 265–66

  cosmopolitanism: Henry Hodgkin’s critique of, 292; and Nellie as Cockney, 8, 78, 110, 154; and Regions Beyond Inland Mission, 173, 398n110

  Courtney, Dame Kathleen (Kate),
142, 283

  Craven, Cicely, 271

  Cressall, Nellie, 275, 277, 277

  Crooks, Will, 34, 54, 178, 180, 180, 181, 372n106

  Davison, Emily Wilding, 204

  Davy, J. S., 181

  Defense of the Realm Act (DORA), 258

  Dellar, Florence (Dowell), 24, 25, 77, 108, 109, 128–29, 245, 321

  Dellar, William, 109, 128, 301, 303

  Dellar, Willie, 128, 230, 301–3, 334

  Dendy, Helen (Bosanquet), 34

  Despard, Charlotte, 145, 275, 282, 292, 285, 301, 312

  Dickens, Charles: and All the Year Round, 25, 157; Muriel Lester’s reading of, 139; and Mrs. Jellyby, 8; and Oliver Twist, 47

  Diamond Match Company, 120–21

  Doan, Laura, 244, 412nn147 and 150

  dolls: and middle-class girls’ play, 62–66.

  Doric Lodge, 171–73, 176, 398n110. See also Regions Beyond Inland Mission

  Dougall, Lily, 144

  Dowell, Alice, 24, 39, 55, 77, 128, 376n1

  Dowell, Harriet, 8, 14, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 33, 50, 52, 54, 55, 63, 77, 88, 102, 109, 129, 133, 157, 178, 180, 190, 208, 230, 235, 245; and Charity Organisation Society, 196, 289–90; descent into poverty, 30, 34–36, 39; and Nellie’s hospitalization, 186, 192, 194–96; takes in grandson, 301–3; working life of, 31–32. See also “From Birth to Death”

  Dowell, Nellie: at Berger Hall, 174; citizenship of, 124–25; compared to Gertrude Stein, 226–27; death of, 8, 326; death certificate of, 336, 337; early education of, 23–30; as feminist, 125; financial independence of, 76, 132, 201; at Forest Gate, 16, 39–46, 126, 267, 366n39; friendship with Doris, 46, 170, 235, 241, 250, 257; gift of a Bible, 239–41; and job security, 79, 101; lack of true childhood, 22, 24, 46–50; letters of, 6, 7, 7, 9, 11–14, 189, 190, 226–37, 227, 233, 240, 240–55, 249, 252, 309–10, 324–25, 325, 326, 334; love of family, 133, 301–2; love by/for Muriel Lester, 1, 92, 134, 226–52, 308; in match industry, 1, 2, 8, 10, 101–3; in New Zealand, 8, 10, 17, 78, 108–12, 116, 119, 120, 123, 130, 277–78; nicknames for, 7; as nurse and patient of Muriel, 230–32; as pacifist feminist, 275, 286; as pauper lunatic, 187, 188, 192, 194–96, 198, 200, 202; physical illnesses of, 101, 129, 184–90, 197–98, 201, 208, 210, 303–14, 324, 326; political life of, 276–80; as Poor Law half-orphan, 1, 8, 11, 22–24, 102, 119, 132, 133, 195, 244, 255; in Poor Law institutions, 8, 10, 16, 76, 77, 102, 109 (see also Forest Gate); pride, 195–96; pseudonyms of, 7; questions authority, 126–27; as radical Christian, 286; as radical Christian socialist, 103; religious instruction of, 43–44; self-improvement efforts, 101–2, 127 (see also factory girls’ clubs); and the Sermon on the Mount, 18, 260, 288, 289, 301, 314, 315, 324, 327, 329; as socialist, 276; “Stolen Goods,” 308, 310–12; struggle for peace of, 1; supports family, 102, 116, 128–29, 132, 195–96, 278; in Sweden, 17, 18, 125, 126, 134; takes in Willie Dellar, 301–3; and trade unionism, 276, 278; visits Bow neighbors, 265. See also Cook’s Soap Works; R. Bell and Company; slum motherhood