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Hannah Cullwick


Hannah Cullwick (26 May 1833 – 9 July 1909) was a diarist who revealed less-known aspects of the relations between Victorian servants and their masters. Working in domestic service, she caught the attention of Arthur Munby, a prominent barrister and philanthropist, who was making a close study of the conditions of working women. To escape poverty, she married him reluctantly and secretly in 1873, but it was an unconventional partnership, with bizarre role-playing, as documented in both their diaries, which have survived, along with letters and photographs.

Cullwick was born on 26 May 1833 and raised in Shifnal, Shropshire, England. Her surname is pronounced as Cullwick, not Cullick. She came from solid Salopian yeoman stock, not the working-class origins sometimes claimed. Her father was Charles Fox Cullwick (1803–1847), a Master Saddler of Shifnal and a Burgess (Parliamentary voter) of Bridgnorth. The Cullwicks had been voters in Bridgnorth since 1630, usually voting in the Whitmore interest. 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), who had been a Lady's Maid to the aristocratic Mrs Eyton, the wife of the Rev. John Eyton, Rector of Wellington, Salop. Martha's elder brother was Richard Owen (1791–1864), a schoolmaster in Shifnal, who was also parish clerk. Martha's two sisters—Sarah Smallman (1805 – after 1881) and Eleanor Morris (1803–1863)—were both married to farmers, Charles Skelton Smallman (1799–1877) and John Morris (1796–1885), of The Firs, Flashbrook, Adbaston.

Hannah Cullwick had more than a dozen uncles and aunts and more than fifty first cousins. All of them were literate; and most of them were in business, as farmers, publicans, and saddlers.

Charles, Hannah's father, appears to have suffered business losses; the family were subsequently very poor. There were five children: James (1830–1915), Hannah, Dick (1836–1887), Ellen (1839–1919), 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 for a couple of [two?] years to the Bluecoat Charity school in Shifnal. Money was so short that Hannah had to contribute to the family purse from the age of eight—first in the home of a solicitor's wife, Mrs Andrew Phillips, a friend and neighbour of the Cullwicks, and then in the inn next door [to the Phillips house or the Cullwick house?] before embarking on her long career in service.


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