1. Hannah Cullwick 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 empire in which she lived.
37 Facts About Hannah Cullwick
1. 2.
Hannah Cullwick was born on 26 May 1833 and raised in Shifnal, Shropshire, England.
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Hannah Cullwick's father was Charles Fox Cullwick, a Master Saddler of Shifnal and a Burgess of Bridgnorth.
4.
Hannah Cullwick's mother was Martha Owen, a Lady's Maid to the aristocratic Mrs Eyton.
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Hannah Cullwick had more than a dozen uncles and aunts, and more than fifty first cousins.
6.
When Hannah Cullwick was fourteen, both of her parents died suddenly.
7.
Hannah Cullwick's 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.
8.
Hannah Cullwick's father died two weeks later, at the age of 44, leaving the five children as orphans.
9.
When Hannah Cullwick was seventeen, she worked as under-housemaid for Lady Boughey at Aqualate Hall, Forton, Staffordshire.
10.
Hannah Cullwick then worked for Lady Louisa Cotes, wife of John Cotes, of Woodcote Hall, Sheriffhales.
11.
Hannah Cullwick worked as a lower servant at both rural manorial estates and urban dwellings of elites.
12.
Hannah Cullwick's upbringing and working-class community helped instill this pride in her.
13.
Particularly, Hannah Cullwick meticulously recorded the amount of boots she cleaned on a monthly and yearly basis.
14.
Hannah Cullwick cleaned hundreds each year, sometimes by licking them.
15.
Hannah Cullwick once told Munby that she could tell where her "Massa" had been by how his boots tasted.
16.
Hannah Cullwick's diary reveals the influence of Christianity on her life.
17.
Hannah Cullwick viewed her difficult labor as a means of accruing spiritual capital to facilitate her path to heaven.
18.
Further, Hannah Cullwick often wore her slave band even when Munby requested she take it off.
19.
In London, Hannah Cullwick met Arthur Munby during one of his regular urban expeditions to investigate working women.
20.
Hannah Cullwick saw him as an idealized gentleman, who celebrated the intense labor she did as a maid of all work.
21.
Hannah Cullwick wrote letters almost daily to him, describing her long hours of work in great detail.
22.
Hannah Cullwick would arrange to visit him "in [her] dirt," showing the results of a full day's cleaning and other domestic work.
23.
Hannah Cullwick prioritized her status as a working-class woman, but eventually married Munby with reluctance in January 1873 in Clerkenwell Parish Church by Special License granted by Archibald Campbell Tait, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury.
24.
Munby and Hannah Cullwick never had any children because Hannah Cullwick never wanted to have any children.
25.
Hannah Cullwick defied Victorian social clothes by proudly wearing a "slave band" on her arm and displaying her dirt from domestic labor.
26.
In doing so, Hannah Cullwick acknowledges her working class labor and dismantles the denial of women's domestic work.
27.
When Hannah Cullwick hurt her wrist while performing domestic work, she began wearing a leather strap around her wrist.
28.
Hannah Cullwick refused to remove the strap, rejecting her employer's insistence that she remove the dirty strap.
29.
Hannah Cullwick presented her "slave band" in photographs that Arthur Munby took for their mutual enjoyment.
30.
When Hannah Cullwick defiantly displayed her "slave band" in her employer's home, she plagued the bourgeois memory with images of imperial slavery.
31.
Whereas most women of her class were illiterate during the time period, Hannah Cullwick left behind several diaries.
32.
Hannah Cullwick stood up for herself when she thought the terms of her relationship with Munby were being violated.
33.
Hannah Cullwick never surrendered her birth name despite the marriage contract.
34.
Similarly, Hannah Cullwick remained childless by choice and thus was able to devote her time to her work rather than caring for children.
35.
Some practices involved a reversal of power dynamics, with Hannah Cullwick acting as the dominating partner.
36.
Hannah Cullwick died on July 9,1909 at the age of 76.
37.
Hannah Cullwick bequeathed his books and 2 deed-boxes filled with correspondence, diaries, and photographs, to the British Museum.