The mention of Victorian asylums often evokes images of despairing souls, incarcerated by sadistic wardens. While we might sigh with relief at our good fortune at living in more enlightened times, archivist Mark Stevens’s insightful new book offers a completely different perspective. Cleverly written in the style of a handbook for new arrivals, Stevens deftly adopts a Victorian tone, but with twenty-first-century sensibilities.

The reader is invited to join the guide on a virtual tour of a typical nineteenth-century asylum – a composite based mostly on the model of Moulsford Asylum in Berkshire. We learn about the architecture, the daily routine, and treatments offered through what is described as “the very latest in lunatic healthcare”. The guide calmly explains the possible reasons for admission, which might include “wandering aimlessly”, exhibiting “unusual facial expressions”, or “a belief that you can predict high tides”. Everything is carefully designed to provide a sanctuary from the outside world, with thoughtfully designed surroundings and professional staff. Well, not all the staff behave professionally. The guide reluctantly relates the story of the chaplain who eloped to Uxbridge with the local schoolmistress, and the porter who couldn’t resist dropping nuts down the dresses of younger colleagues.

It’s clear that the patient is treated as someone who ought to be helped, rather than a burden on the state. As our guide explains, three times the weekly allowance for a pauper in the workhouse is spent on the asylum inmate. This is in recognition that they are not responsible for their condition: they are the deserving poor. The contrast is keenly apparent in the architecture. With generously proportioned windows, elaborate brickwork, and plentiful fireplaces, the asylum presents a welcoming edifice, unlike the minatory appearance of the workhouse. And there’s no pointless labour. Instead, the patients are provided with plenty of reading material and stodgy food – a regime thought to promote well-being and an amenable temperament (it would certainly work for me).

The second half of the book includes a real-life history of Moulsford Asylum, accompanied by an illuminating discussion of Broadmoor – perhaps the most famous institution of its type. Stevens is also the author of Broadmoor Revealed, which explores the lives of its more notorious inmates. The book concludes with some compelling thoughts on the legacy of the Victorian asylum. Stevens acknowledges the views of those who believe the asylum system was simply another instrument of poor law oppression, but urges us to reconsider these institutions as the embodiment of an altruistic belief in the possibility of a better life for those suffering from mental health problems. As he argues, the current provision in the UK is woefully adequate in comparison. While none of us would want to be swaddled in cold flannels or medicated with toxic substances, such treatment was based on imperfect understanding, rather than on deliberate sadism. Victorianists will rejoice in the absorbing detail, acuity, and compassion of this book.

Life in the Victorian Asylum: The World of Nineteenth-Century Mental Health Care by Mark Stevens is published by Pen & Sword Books and currently available in hardback and ebook editions. The publisher kindly sent me a review copy.

Eliza Lynn Linton is an unlikely heroine for me, given she is best known for her anti-feminist articles ‘The Girl of the Period’ for the Saturday Review. While her journalism alerted readers to the dangers of the New Woman in all her guises, Linton’s novels – quite literally – tell a different story.

First published in 1867, Sowing the Wind features an emancipated woman who bears a remarkable resemblance to Linton herself. Like her creator, Jane Osborn works as a journalist on a daily newspaper, managing to thrive in a masculine environment and to earn the respect of her male colleagues. Linton was actually the first woman journalist in England to earn a salary, and was described by Charles Dickens as “good for anything, and thoroughly reliable”.¹ Jane works to support her mother, an endearing but unworldly woman, and her recently discovered cousin, Isola.

The bewitchingly beautiful Isola leads a stultifying existence as the wife of St. John Aylott, a tyrannical popinjay more interested in his appearance than in her happiness. He is a grotesque caricature of the Victorian husband, denying Isola her subjectivity and insisting they must share one mind – i.e. his. As an independent and capable woman, Jane is horrified by her cousin’s circumscribed life:

Sacrifice yourself for a good cause if you like – for the progress of principles, for truth, freedom, humanity – but not to foolish whims and fancies like your husband’s.²

Jane memorably dismisses St. John as an “idiotic bit of millinery”, unable to see the point of a man who is neither manly nor strong. She encourages Isola’s steady transformation from passive ornament to woman of convictions, offering both moral and financial support. Once Isola displays even a modicum of resistance to her husband’s demands, he quickly descends into paranoia, then madness. His tempers and pettifogging are contrasted with Isola’s poise and Jane’s unflagging good sense. As a few scholars have identified, there are marked similarities between Sowing the Wind and Anthony Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, published two years later.

By pathologising St. John’s behaviour, Linton emphasises that his behaviour is exceptional, rather than representative of Victorian husbands. Yet Isola’s situation is emblematic of that faced by many women before the legal reforms of the late nineteenth century. With no right to control her own money, she is entirely dependent upon the whims of a domestic god. Having recently separated from her husband, Linton was painfully aware that marriage had very different implications for men and women. She might have been terrified by the potential repercussions of a powerful women’s rights movement, but Linton was far too independent-minded to accept the role of conventional wife. Surely, it is the author who speaks through Jane when she declaims:

Ah, you may talk as you like, Isola!—babies, and love, and the graces and prettinesses are all very fine, I dare say, but give me the real solid pleasure of work — a man’s work — work that influences the world—work that is power! To sit behind the scenes and pull the strings[.]³

Jane Osborn is an intriguing avatar. She is described as a “rude, unlovely boy-woman”, and her colleagues call her “good fellow”, Jack, or Johnnie O. Her ‘otherness’ is stressed throughout the narrative – particularly her unkempt appearance and refusal to acknowledge male superiority – but she is undeniably the hero(ine) of the story. Almost twenty years later, Linton would perform an act of literary transvestism by telling her life story as a man in The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (1885). Perhaps influenced by the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, she felt that she was the soul of one sex in the body of the other. With lesbianism yet to be or understood, she could express her sexuality only through male-identification.

By the end of the novel, Jane is still an outsider, while Isola’s appropriately feminine behaviour is rewarded. Although Linton isn’t making an especially radical statement about marriage itself, the novel is, nevertheless, highly provocative in presenting a clear alternative for women. Jane might think wistfully of a life partner, but, like Linton, she’d rather be single than married to a man like St. John Aylott. Her attraction to Isola, revealed in tantalising hints, cannot be recognised – instead, her passion must be channelled into work.

Quite apart from Linton’s exploration of sexuality and gender, Sowing the Wind is also a joyous example of the sensation novel, with themes of inheritance, concealed identity, and miscegenation. There’s even a parrot. Linton might be infuriating, but she’s never dull.

Sowing the Wind by Eliza Lynn Linton, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Kate Holterhoff, is published by Victorian Secrets and available in paperback and Kindle editions.

The cover photo for this edition was very kindly provided by Paul Frecker, who runs The Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography. The image actually shows a carte de visite of a man suffering from toothache (a curious choice), but I thought it suggested St. John Aylott’s mental anguish.

1. Fix Anderson, Nancy, Women Against Women in Victorian England: Life of Eliza Lynn Linton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p.66 [↩]
2. Linton, Eliza Lynn, Sowing the Wind, ed. by Deborah T Meem and Kate Holterhoff (Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2015) [↩]
3. Sowing the Wind, p. 248 [↩]

Although Queen Victoria was supposedly prudish, she popped out nine tiny Saxe-Coburgs and the population more than doubled during her reign. We might think of the Victorians as sexually repressed, but they were clearly at it like stoats. In The Victorian Guide to Sex, Fern Riddell synthesises a wealth of material from marriage guides, newspapers, and the archives to bring us a more sophisticated and composite view of our ancestors.

Unusually, the material is presented through fictional characters, members of The Society of Social Morality, who seek to further human social understanding. Dr Dimmock takes us on a tour of the human body, acknowledging the ghastliness of puberty and issuing a stern warning on the dangers of celibacy. Eschewing the pleasures of the flesh led to blindness, deafness, and “many various foul diseases of the skin”. No wonder monks are always mad in Victorian novels. Dimmock’s message is clear: “Choose Love, Choose Life”. It’s that simple. Of course, one shouldn’t choose a partner indiscriminately. Large-footed men and women are awkward yet reliable, but small-footed persons are “dangerously prone to gaiety and evolutions across the ballroom”.

The modern world, says Mrs Dollymop, is “a befuddling place to navigate”. Fortunately, she is brimming with advice on hair, make-up, and choosing a husband. She advises playing a long game, as “husbands cannot be returned once you have got them home and discovered their flaws” (although if you take counsel instead from Lady Audley, they can be pushed down a well). While Mrs Dollymop apparently suggests a rather limited sphere for women, she takes time out to celebrate the achievements of nineteenth-century rebels such as Annie Besant, Ada Lovelace, and Cora Pearl.

Preserving masculinity is the concern of the Rev. J J James, who urges young men to follow the example of strongman Eugen Sandow, deemed to embody physical perfection. James helpfully includes a guide for flirting: winking the right eye announces “I love you,” while placing the right little finger to the right eye means “Aren’t you ashamed?” It’s a minefield. One should be particularly wary of nervous tics in the presence of women with heavy legs and flat shoes – signifiers of a coarse nature: “Avoid this as you would the pox,” he advises.

Lady Petronella Von Hathsburg brings a certain worldliness to her chapter, eager to ensure marital felicity for both husband and wife. The mysteries of the marriage bed are unveiled and the importance of the female orgasm is stressed. For the woman, “this will arrive as a tinkling pleasure … which she must advertise to her husband immediately”. To ensure that conception occurs, the woman must avoid a “downward situation” by not talking, sneezing, or coughing.

Among Mr Mandrake’s Compendium of Practical Aids is a cure for hysterical behaviour: lay the victim on a waterproof sheet and douse them with a jug of cold water. I might try this on the next UKIP candidate who knocks on the door. While most of the other remedies are quaintly obsolete, a “decent glass of hot gin-and-water at bedtime” certainly sounds like a solution to most ailments. Some of Mr Mandrake’s practical aids are of a more, errrm, manual nature. The Vee Dee Vibrator, which looks for all the world like a giant rotary whisk, was designed to cure muscular pain and debilitating nervous diseases. Well, it would surely take your mind off them. Princess Alexandra was, apparently, an enthusiastic user of Vigor’s Horse-Action Saddle, an odd contraption that was supposed to stimulate the liver (among other things). Filthy cow.

Thanks to his correspondence with ‘Walter’, author of My Secret Life, Lord Arthur Cleveland is able to advise us on “extreme tastes,” such as homosexuality, prostitution, and flagellation. Having attended boarding school, Lord Arthur is under no illusions regarding the sexual nature of men, evidenced in the popular playground game of ‘Cocks-all-around’, where the little savages would compare their lower portions.

While much of this material is authentic, Riddell readily admits (albeit reluctantly) that ‘The Femme de Voyage or Artificial Fanny’ might have been a spoof, with no existence beyond the privately circulated magazine in which it appeared. This inflatable device was perfect for travellers, but only those who could afford the equivalent of £12,000. That would pay for an awful lot of prostitutes, but then I suppose they’re more difficult to conceal in your hat.
The Victorian Guide to Sex is part sourcebook, part pastiche, so is difficult to categorise as a book. Although the sources are listed at the back, the lack of footnotes means it’s unsuitable for academic study. What it does provide, however, is an enjoyable read and an informative survey of Victorian sexual tastes and preoccupations. Riddell knows her stuff and succeeds in presenting a rigorously balanced account of this complex subject. From her absorbing book, the Victorian era emerges as no less surprising or contradictory than our own.

The Victorian Guide to Sex: Desire and Deviance in the 19th Century by Fern Riddell is available in paperback.

Anyone who saw the recent BBC documentary Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home knows that arsenic was everywhere in the late nineteenth century. It was used as a beauty product, as a medicine, and also to achieve a vibrant green colour in wallpaper. This ubiquity made it devilishly difficult to prove cases of deliberate poisoning and many murderers probably got away scot-free. When a case did make it to court, the nation was transfixed. Kate Colquhoun’s engrossing book recounts the 1889 trial of Florence Maybrick, a young American woman accused of poisoning her respectable English husband, James. This cause célèbre dominated the press and divided opinion and Did She Kill Him? evokes the febrile atmosphere of the courtroom.

The Maybricks met on ship in 1880, their romance blooming in the middle of the Atlantic. James was a 41-year-old cotton broker and Florence a 17-year-old ingénue, accompanied by her mother. Marrying the following year, they lived in Virginia before finally settling down in their suburban villa in Liverpool. Ostensibly a respectable middle-class marriage, outward appearances masked James’ infidelity and violence. While he spent much of his time in London with his long-term mistress, Florence amused herself by running up large debts and reading questionable novels. As the trial was to reveal, this was a deeply unhappy marriage.

James Maybrick wasn’t just a love rat, he was also a self-medicating hypochondriac who believed small quantities of arsenic to have an invigorating effect. When in 1889 he became ill, James’s response was to dose himself up with even more toxic potions; in the week leading up to his death, he was given no fewer than 20 harmful “medicines” by his doctors. The fatal dose was believed to lurk in a bottle of meat juice, this revolting beverage becoming central to the trial. Florence claimed that James had asked her to add arsenic to his dose, believing it would act as a restorative. While this was initially deemed plausible, the revelation that Florence had been entertaining herself with a flashy young man by the name of James Brierley made her actions appear deeply suspicious. Her habit of soaking arsenic-impregnated fly-papers for cosmetic use strengthened the claims of those who suspected her of mariticide. A bewildered Florence was soon arrested and taken into custody.

As Colquhoun explains, a jury comprising plumbers, grocers, and farmers was “charged with determining one of the most complicated toxicological cases of the day,” trying to establish whether a man addicted to arsenic could have been poisoned by that very substance. In the absence of any hard scientific evidence, Florence’s infidelity soon obscured the facts of the case. Judge James Stephen, uncle of Virginia Woolf, thought Florence had done her husband a “dreadful injury” by having an affair, believing this sufficient grounds for convicting her. Given the death penalty was still in place for murder, this was a staggeringly harsh attitude. The trial became “a national morality fable, the inevitable result of too much spirit or too little independence, depending on your point of view”. For some, Florence was a foolish and impressionable young woman who had attempted to care for her cold-hearted husband; for others, she was a callous adulterer who sought to free herself from a loveless marriage. Queen Victoria, never one to sit on the fence, thought Florence’s infidelity proof of her guilt and demanded that she be judged accordingly. Ultimately, the verdict proved inconclusive, and the debate raged for decades afterwards.

Colquhoun is rigorously impartial throughout her story, refusing to divulge her own verdict on Florence’s guilt, and presenting this labyrinthine case with clarity and verve. She doesn’t spare any gory details, although it’s hard to say whether the account of James’s autopsy or the forensic analysis of a profoundly dysfunctional marriage is more uncomfortable to read. There are no conclusive answers here, but through her effervescent narrative Colquhoun exposes bizarre medical practices, the public appetite for sensation, and the precarious position of the Victorian wife. Like Queen Victoria, I’m not one to sit on the fence: I thought Florence innocent of murder. She struck me as a naive and not very bright woman who was trying to relieve the ennui of her circumscribed existence through a fairly inept attempt at adultery. Even her own mother described her as a “woman of little penetration”. With hardly any money of her own, it was in her interests to maintain this sham of a marriage. You might not agree with my verdict, but you can’t fail to be stirred by a dramatic and moving story told by a gifted historian. This is quite possibly one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in recent times, although we’ll never know for sure. The Maybrick coat of arms bore the motto “Time reveals all” – but not in this case.

Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale of Deception, Adultery and Arsenic by Kate Colquhoun is available in hardback and Kindle editions.

Last year saw the 100th anniversary of the death of Emily Wilding Davison, the brave and determined suffragette who attempted to stop the King’s horse during the Epsom Derby. Many have decried the foolishness of such acts, believing that female suffrage would somehow have happened spontaneously, if only these silly women had been patient; others, however, knew that direct action alone would stimulate a response from an apathetic political elite.

Elizabeth Robins, an American actress and author, advocated militancy as the only way of achieving equality, lending her considerable talents to the campaign. Her play Votes for Women! was performed to packed houses after premièring at the Royal Court Theatre in 1907. Directed by Harley Granville Baker, and with input from Henry James and George Bernard Shaw, the production was a resounding hit with critics. As part of her research, Robins attended numerous suffragette meetings and rallies, using some of the dialogue verbatim. In a scene set during a Trafalgar Square protest, the actresses playing the suffragettes even interacted with the audience – much to their delight.
Having divided the proceeds between the WSPU and NUWSS, Robins decamped to the country and started re-writing the play to produce what is now her best-known work, The Convert, published in 1907. As an established novelist, Robins correctly predicted that this format would garner even more publicity for the suffrage cause. The dramatic structure of the play is evident in the novel, giving it tautness and pace; the lively and authentic dialogue also brings some of the atmosphere of the theatre production to the page.

The story centres on Vida Levering, a society beauty who turns personal tragedy into political triumph by throwing her considerable intellect and energy behind the campaign.  She also uses a guilty secret to gain the support of her ex-lover, rising Tory politician Geoffrey Stonor. In Robins’ novel, the militants are portrayed as noble women who care passionately about their cause, rather than as the bitter troublemakers of popular myth. The quotes from hostile men who turned out to heckle the campaigners are taken from real events, showing the danger these women were prepared to endure in order to stand up for their principles.

Although this is a polemical novel, it is also funny and poignant, giving the reader a sense of what it would have been like to have witnessed these tumultuous and momentous times.

The Convert is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

This is a preprint of a review published in Britain and the World, Volume 6, pp. 298-300.

The title of this book is slightly misleading, as the reader learns little of Alice Liddell, the girl who famously inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Instead, in this slim volume, Simon Winchester focuses his attention on Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and his adventures in photography. We learn about Dodgson’s experiences as an awkward youth and his circumscribed life following admission to Christ Church College, Oxford, where he took holy orders and, therefore, a vow of celibacy.

While living at Oxford, Dodgson acquires his Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, which arrives with considerable ceremony in a straw-packed wooden crate. His excitement is almost palpable as he unpacks the paraphernalia associated with this pioneering medium, a “confection of shiny mahogany and brass and glassware” (50). Winchester deftly captures the sense of wonder surrounding this magical blend of art and science, with its complicated equipment and eye-wateringly acrid chemicals. This shy and partially-deaf mathematician found the world much easier to deal with when mediated through his camera lens.

Unusually in a book about photography, there is only one photograph: the notorious “Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid”. This collodian picture, taken in the garden of Christ Church on a summer’s day in 1858, has formed much of the evidence for Dodgson’s alleged paedophilia. It shows the six-year-old Alice, dressed as an urchin and leaning against a wall. Her ragged dress is slipping off the shoulder and her left nipple is just exposed. Her facial expression is difficult to interpret: some see it as sultry or seductive, others as boredom. Given the interminable exposure times in the early days of photography, the latter seems far more likely. The provocative pose has meant that the subject matter has completely overwhelmed Dodgson’s technical achievement in producing such a clean, sharp image when still in the early days of mastering his technique.

In telling the story of this controversial photograph, Winchester tackles many of the popular myths surrounding Charles Dodgson. He discusses the fact that the Victorians (about whom we are all fond of generalising) would have viewed this image as one of innocence, rather than sexual precocity or exploitation. They were able to appreciate the sensuousness of childhood without recourse to the sensual. The author also makes clear that Alice’s family were in attendance for all of the eleven portraits Dodgson took over the course of thirteen years. In fact, Winchester shows that Dodgson was more interested in courting Alice’s sister Ina, who was three years her senior. To the 21^st-century reader, that doesn’t place him in a much better light, but such May-December arrangements were unremarkable at the time. Although we shall probably never know the reason behind the subsequent irrevocable rift between Mrs Liddell and Dodgson, Winchester argues that it is just as likely to have been caused by the disruption of his visits as by any unease as to his motivation. Few harassed mothers of large families would appreciate the continual presence of a bumbling academic.

Winchester handles the issues of paedophilia with great sensitivity, avoiding sensation, and considering Dodgson’s behaviour within the context of nineteenth-century sensibilities, rather than our own. Ultimately, Winchester gives Dodgson the benefit of the doubt. This might come across as equivocation in some writers, but instead he is thoughtful and fair-minded, avoiding either simplistic condemnation or peremptory exoneration. The most obvious limitation of the book is the lack of photographs – there is only one small picture of Alice Liddell, although Winchester does examine it in meticulous, almost forensic, detail. While the author does a masterful job of recreating the other visual images in his sumptuous prose, it is, nevertheless, an odd experience not actually seeing them on the page. The book is also frustratingly short – just 93 pages – although its brevity does belie its density, encompassing as it does the history of photography, along with an insightful account of Dodgson’s life. The Alice of the title remains largely hidden, however.

Ironically, even the author himself was unable to view the original photograph that has so profoundly influenced our view of Dodgson. It remains locked inside a basement vault at Princeton University’s Firestone Library, safe from the destructive elements, thereby contributing further to the sense of mystery surrounding this pivotal episode in photographic and literary history. As Dodgson’s diaries were extensively redacted and the adult Alice Liddell declined to discuss her relationship with him, the truth behind this intensely unsettling photograph will never be known. This book, therefore, seeks to discuss the issue calmly and objectively, rather than to reach conclusions or to pass judgement. In a sympathetic, but not indulgent, account, Winchester is successful in conveying, but not defending, the complexities of a curious and enigmatic man.

The Alice Behind Wonderland is available in hardback and Kindle editions

To be decadent in an age of utility was unforgivable, as Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton were to find out in a trial that scandalised London in 1870. Better known as Fanny and Stella, the two young clerks were arrested and charged with outraging public decency by dressing as women and “conspiring to incite others to commit unnatural offences”.  As there were no specific laws against cross-dressing and “unnatural offences” (ie buggery) were difficult to prove, the court case was as oblique as it was sensational.  In this enthralling account, Neil McKenna chronicles the arrest and cross-examination of Ernest “Stella” Boulton and Frederick “Fanny” Park by using court transcriptions and letters between the accused and their circle. Where there are gaps, McKenna uses his imagination, inhabiting their world seamlessly and appropriating the colourful language of fin-de-siècle London.

The jury took just fifty-two minutes to find Fanny and Stella “not guilty”, but the damage to their reputations had already been done, and they were obliged to adopt an uncharacteristically low profile. The building was already surrounded by a crowd baying for the “He-She Ladies,” as they were dubbed, and the press were obsessed with exposing them to ridicule.  Both had tried desperately to conform to traditional ideas of Victorian masculinity, but it wasn’t for them. They delighted in the camp seediness of the demi-monde, putting on performances and attracting attention (and business) from handsome young men. Stella had even managed to bag herself an aristocrat, Lord Arthur Clinton, with whom she lived as husband and wife. As her elective “sister”, Fanny often stayed with them, too. Their lively milieu included gaudy prostitutes called Lady Jane Grey and the Maid of Athens.

Although some of their activities would raise eyebrows even in today’s more permissive society, Fanny and Stella’s “crimes” were victimless. It came as a great surprise, therefore, to find themselves in a police station and subjected to deeply humiliating examinations. Even more surprising was the revelation that they had been under surveillance for a whole year, with police officers watching them day and night and also rummaging through their belongings. The court case served only to expose the hypocrisy and bigotry of those who sought to entrap them, especially those who derived perverse pleasure from their ordeal. The failure of the authorities to prosecute Fanny and Stella came as a huge relief to the liberal-minded, who feared that a guilty verdict would have initiated a crusade against anyone who dared to be different.

While Fanny and Stella had more detractors than supporters, their own families were surprisingly sympathetic.  Indeed, Mrs Boulton almost steals the show when she takes to the witness box. She loved her son for who he was, tenaciously supporting him throughout and not giving a hoot what anybody thought. Her refusal to believe that Stella was touting for business came across at the time as affecting innocence, but a modern cynic might see it as craftily disingenuous.

McKenna’s writing style is unashamedly camp as his subjects, but it suits the book perfectly, giving a sense of their exuberance and vivacity. His genuine enthusiasm and affection for the subject is evident on every page. The research is impeccable and story placed firmly within its historical context, without distracting the reader from the stars of this show.  Usually consigned to the footnotes of Victorian history, here Fanny and Stella are given the prominence they deserve.

Fanny and Stella is available in hardback and Kindle editions.

The trouble with reading a lot of Victorian potboilers is that they start to seem like reality. The madwoman in the attic is a pervasive image throughout nineteenth-century culture, from Bertha Mason, through to Laura Fairlie and Lady Audley. In this gripping and insightful study, Sarah Wise reveals that it was actually husbands who were most at risk of being detained against their will. It makes sense when you think about it: men were the main inheritors of wealth, also assuming their wife’s property upon marriage. Consequently, there was a “high bar” set for men to prove themselves fit to control that wealth, and every incentive for their enemies to demonstrate otherwise.

In Inconvenient People, Wise focuses on twelve case histories, embellishing them with details from many more, and the depth of research builds a rich narrative. Some of the stories are harrowing, other plain bizarre, and there’s also the occasional moment of levity, such as the man who thought one of his legs belonged to Madame Vestris. Wise has an acute eye for comic detail, but never trivialises the subject.

The case I found most haunting was that of Edward Davies, a socially awkward tea trader from London, whose mother confined him to a lunatic asylum so that she could seize his share of their flourishing business. His gaucheness was almost his undoing, with every action seen as confirmation of his insanity. He suffered greatly from the loss of privacy and dignity; continuously under surveillance, even his bowel movements were observed and measured.

Of course, the stereotypical madwoman in the attic did have some basis in fact, perhaps epitomised by the unhappy wife of the uncelebrated author, Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Wise made me squeal with delight when she described his “flatulent, mouldy prose style’. He didn’t have much to commend him as a human being, either – sending his children to a boarding house when they were will, and insisting they addressed him as “Mr Bulwer”. Bulwer-Lytton also mistreated his bewitchingly beautiful wife, Rosina. When eight months pregnant, he made her repeatedly climb the library stairs to fetch books, kicking her in the torso when she protested. This was one of many violent attacks. Unlike many Victorian women, Rosina refused to suffer in silence, publicly humiliating her husband whenever she got the chance. When he campaigned to be elected as an MP, Rosina made a surprise appearance at the hustings, prompting him to run away in terror (some accounts claim he fainted). She then lectured the assembled throng on her husband’s shortcomings. Bulwer-Lytton wreaked his revenge by having her confined to an asylum, beyond the reach of friends and family. Even there she was able to attract attention, loudly proclaiming to passers-by that Disraeli was a sodomite and having an affair with her husband. Although her remaining years were marred by bitterness and ostracism, Rosina did at least have the satisfaction of outliving her husband by seven years.
The redoubtable Georgina Weldon was more effective at curtailing her own husband’s attempt to bury her away. In court, she successfully challenged both him and the mad-doctors who had tried to snatch her at his behest. Her experiences subsequently influenced a change in the lunacy laws, as she had clearly demonstrated how a sane person could be detained for no good reason.

As Wise observes, part of the problem lay in the definition of “sanity”, which she describes as “a Mad Hatter’s tea party of shifting positions”. All too often, “insanity” meant a failure to conform to somebody else’s expectations. Unfortunately, some lessons were not learned, and the book concludes with the depressing story of three women discovered languishing in an asylum in the 1970s. Between them, they had served 110 years for having a child out of wedlock in the 1920s. It’s a particularly chilling example and one that illustrates perfectly the abuse of power that underpins our definition of madness.

Inconvenient People is an important book and one that contributes an enormous amount to our understanding of the nineteenth century.

Anyone who has developed their own photographs will recall that miraculous moment as the image slowly materialises before your very eyes. The story behind the discovery of this alchemical technique is no less exciting.

As with most good stories, there is a rivalry at its heart, albeit an unintentional one. During the 1830s two men on opposite sides of the Channel threw their considerable talents into one quest: to permanently capture a camera image on paper. Their characters couldn’t have been more different. Louis Daguerre was a flamboyant artist of humble parentage and limited education; Henry Fox Talbot had been born into the English landed gentry and went on to graduate from Cambridge. Talbot was the archetypal gentleman scientist, funding his hobby with a generous trust fund; Daguerre, meanwhile, was obliged to earn while he learned, becoming an extraordinarily accomplished painter of stage effects. Notwithstanding their differences, both men managed to simultaneously develop their own process for ‘capturing the light’.

In Capturing the Light, Helen Rappaport and Roger Watson unravel the drama surrounding these pioneering men in alternate chapters, conveying the complexity of scientific ideas through clear and engaging prose. Those on Talbot reflect the orderliness of a man who blessed future biographers with 10,000 letters and 300 notebooks. While his life is meticulously documented, Daguerre’s is obfuscated by a web of apocryphal stories and the cultivation of a personal mythology.

Contrasted with the mercurial Daguerre, Talbot comes across as rather ponderous, and it comes as no surprise when the enterprising Frenchman grabs all the glory with his daguerreotype. Although Talbot had by then perfected his own calotype process, it was Daguerre’s invention that was announced to the world in January 1839. His notebooks show that the original idea had popped into Talbot’s head while on honeymoon at Lake Como in 1833, yet he didn’t stir himself to publish any papers. Thanks to this dithering, Talbot earned the ridicule of his peers and even to this day has never received the credit he deserves. Possibly far worse was the disappointment of his mother, Lady Elisabeth, who devoted her remaining years to chivying him into action, outraged that her clever son has proved so inept at self-promotion.

While Talbot kicked himself, the scientific community seized on these new discoveries, quickly refining them into the processes we recognise today. The press were divided, with one newspaper dismissing photography as “drawing by sunshine”, and another exhorting its readers to tie photogenic paper to the tail of a kite so “when it comes down you will have a view of the earth upon it” (an early form of Google Streetview, perhaps?) Others were quick to spot more covert applications. In 1839 the Morning Post reported on a jealous French husband obtaining photographic evidence of his wife’s infidelity and successfully presenting it in court. By the end of the century, the same newspaper was marveling that the camera had “become as indispensable as the bicycle”. These days photography has become an almost everyday activity, and even an inadvertent one. When clearing personal data from a mobile phone recently, I was astonished to discover over 200 photos of the inside of my handbag.

Capturing the Light reads like a  historical thriller, the well-paced narrative evoking both the exhilaration and frustration experienced by those in the vanguard of scientific discovery.

Victorian Secrets publishes No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War by Helen Rappaport

“Never was a spectacle so much enjoyed,” wrote Letitia Landon of the fire that destroyed the old Palace of Westminster on 16^th October 1834.  Hundreds of thousands of people gathered to watch open-mouthed, as eight centuries of tradition went up in smoke. There was no need to inform King William IV of this terrible event – the flames were clearly visible from Windsor Castle, some twenty miles away. Queen Adelaide allegedly deemed the fire “divine retribution” for the great Reform Act of 1832, which had egregiously extended the franchise, bringing the country perilously close to democracy. Others saw it differently: an elderly man was arrested for cheering in delight, “This is what we wanted – this ought to have happened years ago.” But there was no agency involved; incompetence had succeeded where Guy Fawkes had failed.

Lord Melbourne referred to the fire as “One of the greatest instances of stupidity on record,” and it’s difficult to disagree with him. The problem started when staff set about burning tallies, wooden sticks that had been used as receipts in an old sinecure-ridden department. The immense heat generated melted the copper flues under the Lords’ Chamber and then the blaze took hold. Although floors were burning hot and almost unbearable to stand upon, staff merely commented “hmm, it’s a bit toasty in here,” while hopping from foot to foot. In the grip of inertia, they declined to take action until it was too late. When a visitor commented on the heat and smoke, deputy housekeeper Mrs Wright informed him there was nothing to worry about. By 6.30pm, flames exploded from the roof and astonished bystanders were treated to an unprecedented display.

Fortunately, other people conducted themselves with more professionalism, such as James Braidwood, superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment, who bravely fought to control the fire, and Thomas Phillipps, a distraught antiquary who desperately tried to rescue irreplaceable parliamentary records from the flames. Heroism was not restricted to bipeds – Chance, the fire brigade dog, leapt straight into the centre of the action, although his precise contribution is unknown.

In The Day Parliament Burned Down, Caroline Shenton provides a gripping hour-by-hour account of the conflagration and its immediate aftermath. The clever way in which the day unfolds gives the reader a sense of being themselves an eyewitness, albeit from a safe distance. Shenton embraces a rich array of material, from the official enquiry report, through to private letters and diaries. Although the focus is on one day, it is set neatly within its historical context, recreating a vivid sense of a tumultuous age characterised by poverty and protest. This book is history at its best, told by an historian with a firm grasp of her subject and talent for telling a story.

The Day Parliament Burned Down is available in hardback and Kindle editions