Miscellany 2023 Additional Info
Miscellany 2023: Remarkable Women
Extra Information, Further Reading & References
Picture credits for cover images Clockwise from top left:
Frances Bedingfield (1616 - 1704) Bar Convent Heritage Centre; Jenny Lind (1820 - 1887) Edvard Magnus, oil on canvas, 1862; Elizabeth Fry (1780 - 1845) The Medici Society Ltd, after George Richmond, chromolithograph, c. 1913 (1843) NPG D38442; Julian of Norwich (c.1342 - c.1416) Enclosing of an anchorite, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 079, f.96r (detail) Pontifical. The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, CC BY-NC 4.0; Harriet Martineau (1802 - 1876) with needlework by Moses Bowness, albumen carte-de-visite, 1855 - 1856 NPG x21222; Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 - 1587) c.1578 - 1579, Nicholas Hilliard (1547 - 1619), watercolour on vellum, V&A Museum (p.24-1975); Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury c.1560 - 1569, followers of Hans Eworth, oil on panel, Hardwick Hall. The inscription ‘Maria Regina’ incorrectly identified the portrait as Mary I; Marie Antionette (1755 - 1793) Archduchess Maria Antonia, aged 13, portrait sent to the Palace of Versailles in May 1769 by Joseph Ducreux; Children of Maharaja Duleep Singh: from left to right Princess Catherine Hilda (1871-1942); Princess Bamba Sofia Jindan (1869-1957); Prince Edward Albert Alexander (1879-1893); Princess Sophia Alexandrovna (1876-1948), Ancient House Museum, Thetford, Norfolk Museums Service; Amelia Opie (1769-1853) John Opie, oil on canvas, 1798, NPG 765, CC creative commons; Queen Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, An illuminated folio from the Book of the Skinners Company 1422 (Margaret Paston had an audience with Queen Margaret in the Norwich Guildhall in 1453, Blades, East & Blades, Publishers, London 1902; Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh (1871-1942), Lafayette, 1897, Ancient House Museum, Thetford, Norfolk Museums Service;
(Centre pics): Julian of Norwich (c.1342 - c.1416) Sculpture by David Holgate on front face of Norwich Cathedral; Hilda Zigomala (1869-1946); Norfolk Record Office.
Philippa of Hainault - Page 4
Footnote
1 Philippa was between 13 and 18 years old when she married. W M Ormrod, Edward III and his Family, 2005, suggests: ‘royal practice often delayed the beginning of sexual activity until the female was at least fourteen, and it seems likely that Philippa was kept from her new husband’s bed for at least a year after their ceremonial union.’
Further Reading:
William C King, Woman: Her Position, Influence, and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World, (King-Richardson Co, 1903)
W Mark Omerod, Edward III (Yale University Press, 2013)
Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson, Medieval Norwich (Hambledon Continuum, 2004)
Caroline Shenton, ‘Philippa of Hainault’s Churchings: the Politics of Motherhood at the Court of Edward III’, in Family and Dynasty in Late Medieval England: proceedings of the 1997 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Richard G. Eales (Donnington, 2003), 105-21.
Kay Staniland, ‘The Great Wardrobe Accounts as a Source for Historians of Fourteenth-Century Clothing and Textiles’ Textile History, 20 (1989), 275-81.
Agnes Stickland, Lives of the Queens of England, 12 vols, 1840–1848
Colin Trodd, Ford Madox Brown: The Manchester murals and the matter of history (Manchester University Press, 2022)
Websites:
www.medievalwomen.org/philippa-of-hainault.html
https://medievalroyalwardrobelexis.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/fit-for-a-queen-the-wardrobe-of-philippa-of-hainault-c-12323/
www.oxforddnb.com
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-top-10-black-britons-but-one-may-not-be-68171.html
Image: Detail of Philippa’s coronation in 1330, Jean Froissart (1337-1410), 15th century.
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe - Page 5
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. Anthony Bale, (OUP, 2015). Manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiography written in English.
Further reading:
Margery Kempe, How to be a Medieval Woman, trans. Barry Windeatt, (Penguin Classics, 2004).
Victoria Mackenzie, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023) Fictional conversation at the meeting of Julian and Margery in 1413.
Sheila Upjohn, In Search of Julian of Norwich(New Edition Darton, Longman and Todd, 2023).
Margaret Paston - Page 6
Caister Castle, Norfolk, was built by Sir John Fastolf and bequeathed to Sir John Paston II in 1459.
Amelia Opie - Page 10
Amelia died in Norwich on 2 December 1853 after catching a chill in Cromer. She is buried at the Quaker cemetery at Gildencroft, Norwich.
Her presence can still be felt in Norwich; a full-length sculpture of the novelist in Quaker dress stands above 6 Opie Street. Designed by architect J P Chaplin and sculpted by Z Leon in 1956, Amelia faces in the direction of her former home.
Further Reading
Ann Farrant, Amelia Opie: The Quaker Celebrity (Jjg, 2014)
Amelia Alderson Opie and Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, Memoir of Amelia Opie (Leopold Classic Library, 2015)
Amelia Opie, The Father and Daughter (Broadview Press, 1801)
Amelia Opie, Adeline Mowbray (Broadview Press, 1804)
Footnotes
1. https://www.oxforddnb.com Amelia Opie née Alderson, Gary Kelly, accessed 9/9/23
2. ibid
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Opie, accessed 9/9/23
4. https://www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 9/9/23
5. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/category/amelia-opie/, accessed 9/9/23
6. Michael Chandler, Historical Women of Norfolk (Amberley, 2016), 132 - 137
7. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/348464, accessed 9/9/23
8. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw04750/Amelia-Opie
9. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/348464 accessed 9/9/23
10. https://ameliaopiearchive.com/sculpture/ accessed 9/9/23
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Anti-Slavery_Convention accessed 9/9/23
Harriet Martineau - Page 13
Harriet Martineau, by George Richmond, chalk, 1849. National Portrait Gallery NPG 1796
Further Reading:
Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, ed. Maria W Chapman (James R Osgood & Co, 1877) 2 vols.
Harriet Martineau, Health, Husbandry and Handicraft (Bradbury & Evans, 1861)
martineausociety.co.uk
www.oxforddnb.com
Jenny Lind - Page 16
Image Jenny Lind, John Carl Frederick Polycarpus Von Schneidau, retouched daguerrotype,
Footnotes
1. Joan Bulman, Jenny Lind: a Biography, 179
2. Joan Bulman, Jenny Lind: a Biography, 178
3. Henry Scott Holland, W S Rockstro, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind Goldschmidt: Her Early Art-Life and Dramatic Career, 1820-1851, 79
4. issuu.com/norfolkorganistsassociation/docs/061_20 autumn_202007, accessed 30/8/23
5. Memoir, 259
5. Memoir, 259 www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Memoir_of_Madame_Jenny_Lind_Goldschmidt, accessed 30/8/23
6. The playground was originally in Pottergate, next to the original Jenny Lind Hospital.
7. NWHCM : 1948.39 The accession register notes that Lind performed in Lübeck in 1845 and 1850.
8. https://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/our-services/our-hospitals/jennylind/info-for-parents-and-children/history-of-the-jenny-lind/, accessed 30/8/23
Further Reading
Joan Bulman, Jenny Lind: a Biography (J Barrie, 1956)
Sarah Jenny Dunsmure, Jenny Lind: The Story of the Swedish Nightingale, (Red Door Publishing, 2015). Written by Jenny Lind's great-great-grand-daughter.
Henry Scott Holland, William Smyth Rockstro, Otto Goldschmidt, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt: Her Early Art-Life and Dramatic Career, 1820 - 1851, (John Murray, 1891)
Ernest Albert Spångberg, The Life Of Jenny Lind, Oct. 6, 1820-Nov. 2 1887: A Compilation From Various Sources, In Commemoration Of The Centenary Of Her Birth (Andesite Press, 2015)
Labour and the Poor - The Rural Districts (From the Morning Chronicle.) Letter XVII. Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. The Farmer’s Magazine, 1851, p.358-366
Image: The Jenny Lind Carpet: (Rear detail) The bright colours on the reverse of the carpet can be seen below the canvas backing. Gifted to the Jenny Lind Hospital in Norwich, which she founded in 1854.
The Princesses Duleep Singh - Page 17
Footnotes
1. Anita Anand 117 - 118; Miscellany 2019, 14-15 Each sister wore a different pearl necklace.
2. Anita Anand 122
3. Christy Campbell, The Maharajah’s Box, 2000, 17 - 18
4. Anita Anand, Sophia, 2015, 347-348
Elizabeth Forster - Page 19
Light blue polo neck jumper with raglan sleeves featuring the intarsia head of a crane and the initials I.C.F. (International Crane Foundation). This hand-knitted jumper, designed by Norfolk knitwear designer, Elizabeth Forster in 1982, illustrates her passion for bird-watching.
Further Reading
Elizabeth Forster, The Wandering Tattler, Hutchinson, 1976
Knitting Now and Then Blog
The Elizabeth Forster Archive, 2014
http://barbaraknitsagain.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-elizabeth-forster-archive.html
A Designer's Archive, 2012 (with images of Adam Faith and Joanna Lumley)
http://barbaraknitsagain.blogspot.com/2012/04/designers-archive.html
Elizabeth Forster, designer, 2011
http://barbaraknitsagain.blogspot.com/2011/04/elizabeth-forster-designer.html
Monica Riches (1912 - 1997) Prue Smith discovers the story of a talented Norfolk-born dress designer and dressmaker in the 1930s
Monica Riches was the daughter of Frank and Hilda Mary Elmore Riches (née Pooley), born in Attleborough in 1912, where her father kept a butcher’s shop, opposite St Mary’s church. The family moved several times, first to run a farm in Gissing, but when that proved unsuccessful, they moved to Ipswich where Frank worked as a bus inspector; they later lived in Felixstowe, Suffolk.
Monica attended Norwich Art School, then worked as a dressmaker and ran a shop in Felixstowe, selling dress fabrics and patterns. She also acted as a local agent for Singer sewing machines.
Fashion design in the 1920s and 1930s made a shift away from centuries of body sculpting, using corsetry, hoops and pads, to a more natural bodily outline, with the first recognisably ‘modern’ clothes for women. The 1930s dress styles saw the boxy, boyish-look of the 1920s evolve into more modest, figure-hugging feminine styles with a natural ‘high waist’, longer hemlines, high necklines and wide shoulders. The ideal 1930s woman was tall and slender with a very small waist and narrow hips.
As the average woman did not necissarily have this ‘ideal’ body shape, dress designers employed various creative devices to achieve the effect of wider shoulders and narrower waists and hips. The two day dresses illustrated here by Monica reflect the creativity of designs of the period (MC2995/1). The striking orange and cream dress, which dates to 1935, shows an imaginative use of a striped fabric to lengthen the body and slim the hips. The shoulders were emphasised by short cape sleeves with a dropped
raglan hemline and a high ‘V’ neck.
The 1936 blue dress has a high waist, short, shoulder-widening, generously gathered puffed sleeves and a modest neckline, with an integral ‘vestee’, giving the illusion of two layers, all designed to emphasise the upper part of the body.
Monica Riches never married; she died in February 1997 and is buried at Felixstowe. A selection of her beautiful 1930s drawings are now held in the archive collection at the Norfolk Record Office.
Further reading
https://norfolkrecordofficeblog.org/2016/03/11/nineteenth-century-fashion-norfolk-designers-illustrators-and-manufacturers/
Flo Wadlow (story to follow)
Flo wrote a memoir about her experience of life below stairs in the 1930s: Over a Hot Stove: A Kitchen Maid’s Story (Allison & Busby)
‘Flo Wadlow's life in full-time domestic service provides a fascinating story of a world that has disappeared. Flo started, aged 16, as a young kitchen maid in South Kensington and at the almost unheard-of age of 23 was appointed cook at Blickling Hall [Norfolk]. Her story is told with no resentment that the lowly position of servants, such as herself, supported the privileged life-style of her employers ‘upstairs'. Flo made the most of every opportunity, and after her marriage continued to enjoy her cooking in every capacity possible, based around the village of Heydon. Aged 95 she still has a great enthusiasm for life, and in her cottage a tottering pile of encyclopaedias, dictionaries and thesauri are ready at hand. Flo is an amazing lady by any standards and her book will surely give great pleasure to all who read it.’
Those with keen eyes will have spotted the inclusion of Queen Marie Antionette of France on the cover of Miscellany 2023.
We had planned to include the blue and white striped silk bodice, said to have been worn by Marie Antionette, the last Queen of France (NWHCM : 1909.7.1).
The bodice has been ‘much-multilated’, thought to have been by those wishing to secure a relic of the tragic queen’s dress.
Also in the collection is a lady’s dress; while this is of the same material as the bodice, its style suggests a period of 20 years or so later (1793).
Extra Information, Further Reading & References
Picture credits for cover images Clockwise from top left:
Frances Bedingfield (1616 - 1704) Bar Convent Heritage Centre; Jenny Lind (1820 - 1887) Edvard Magnus, oil on canvas, 1862; Elizabeth Fry (1780 - 1845) The Medici Society Ltd, after George Richmond, chromolithograph, c. 1913 (1843) NPG D38442; Julian of Norwich (c.1342 - c.1416) Enclosing of an anchorite, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 079, f.96r (detail) Pontifical. The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, CC BY-NC 4.0; Harriet Martineau (1802 - 1876) with needlework by Moses Bowness, albumen carte-de-visite, 1855 - 1856 NPG x21222; Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 - 1587) c.1578 - 1579, Nicholas Hilliard (1547 - 1619), watercolour on vellum, V&A Museum (p.24-1975); Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury c.1560 - 1569, followers of Hans Eworth, oil on panel, Hardwick Hall. The inscription ‘Maria Regina’ incorrectly identified the portrait as Mary I; Marie Antionette (1755 - 1793) Archduchess Maria Antonia, aged 13, portrait sent to the Palace of Versailles in May 1769 by Joseph Ducreux; Children of Maharaja Duleep Singh: from left to right Princess Catherine Hilda (1871-1942); Princess Bamba Sofia Jindan (1869-1957); Prince Edward Albert Alexander (1879-1893); Princess Sophia Alexandrovna (1876-1948), Ancient House Museum, Thetford, Norfolk Museums Service; Amelia Opie (1769-1853) John Opie, oil on canvas, 1798, NPG 765, CC creative commons; Queen Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, An illuminated folio from the Book of the Skinners Company 1422 (Margaret Paston had an audience with Queen Margaret in the Norwich Guildhall in 1453, Blades, East & Blades, Publishers, London 1902; Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh (1871-1942), Lafayette, 1897, Ancient House Museum, Thetford, Norfolk Museums Service;
(Centre pics): Julian of Norwich (c.1342 - c.1416) Sculpture by David Holgate on front face of Norwich Cathedral; Hilda Zigomala (1869-1946); Norfolk Record Office.
Philippa of Hainault - Page 4
Footnote
1 Philippa was between 13 and 18 years old when she married. W M Ormrod, Edward III and his Family, 2005, suggests: ‘royal practice often delayed the beginning of sexual activity until the female was at least fourteen, and it seems likely that Philippa was kept from her new husband’s bed for at least a year after their ceremonial union.’
Further Reading:
William C King, Woman: Her Position, Influence, and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World, (King-Richardson Co, 1903)
W Mark Omerod, Edward III (Yale University Press, 2013)
Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson, Medieval Norwich (Hambledon Continuum, 2004)
Caroline Shenton, ‘Philippa of Hainault’s Churchings: the Politics of Motherhood at the Court of Edward III’, in Family and Dynasty in Late Medieval England: proceedings of the 1997 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Richard G. Eales (Donnington, 2003), 105-21.
Kay Staniland, ‘The Great Wardrobe Accounts as a Source for Historians of Fourteenth-Century Clothing and Textiles’ Textile History, 20 (1989), 275-81.
Agnes Stickland, Lives of the Queens of England, 12 vols, 1840–1848
Colin Trodd, Ford Madox Brown: The Manchester murals and the matter of history (Manchester University Press, 2022)
Websites:
www.medievalwomen.org/philippa-of-hainault.html
https://medievalroyalwardrobelexis.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/fit-for-a-queen-the-wardrobe-of-philippa-of-hainault-c-12323/
www.oxforddnb.com
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-top-10-black-britons-but-one-may-not-be-68171.html
Image: Detail of Philippa’s coronation in 1330, Jean Froissart (1337-1410), 15th century.
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe - Page 5
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. Anthony Bale, (OUP, 2015). Manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiography written in English.
Further reading:
Margery Kempe, How to be a Medieval Woman, trans. Barry Windeatt, (Penguin Classics, 2004).
Victoria Mackenzie, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023) Fictional conversation at the meeting of Julian and Margery in 1413.
Sheila Upjohn, In Search of Julian of Norwich(New Edition Darton, Longman and Todd, 2023).
Margaret Paston - Page 6
Caister Castle, Norfolk, was built by Sir John Fastolf and bequeathed to Sir John Paston II in 1459.
Amelia Opie - Page 10
Amelia died in Norwich on 2 December 1853 after catching a chill in Cromer. She is buried at the Quaker cemetery at Gildencroft, Norwich.
Her presence can still be felt in Norwich; a full-length sculpture of the novelist in Quaker dress stands above 6 Opie Street. Designed by architect J P Chaplin and sculpted by Z Leon in 1956, Amelia faces in the direction of her former home.
Further Reading
Ann Farrant, Amelia Opie: The Quaker Celebrity (Jjg, 2014)
Amelia Alderson Opie and Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, Memoir of Amelia Opie (Leopold Classic Library, 2015)
Amelia Opie, The Father and Daughter (Broadview Press, 1801)
Amelia Opie, Adeline Mowbray (Broadview Press, 1804)
Footnotes
1. https://www.oxforddnb.com Amelia Opie née Alderson, Gary Kelly, accessed 9/9/23
2. ibid
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Opie, accessed 9/9/23
4. https://www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 9/9/23
5. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/category/amelia-opie/, accessed 9/9/23
6. Michael Chandler, Historical Women of Norfolk (Amberley, 2016), 132 - 137
7. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/348464, accessed 9/9/23
8. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw04750/Amelia-Opie
9. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/348464 accessed 9/9/23
10. https://ameliaopiearchive.com/sculpture/ accessed 9/9/23
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Anti-Slavery_Convention accessed 9/9/23
Harriet Martineau - Page 13
Harriet Martineau, by George Richmond, chalk, 1849. National Portrait Gallery NPG 1796
Further Reading:
Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, ed. Maria W Chapman (James R Osgood & Co, 1877) 2 vols.
Harriet Martineau, Health, Husbandry and Handicraft (Bradbury & Evans, 1861)
martineausociety.co.uk
www.oxforddnb.com
Jenny Lind - Page 16
Image Jenny Lind, John Carl Frederick Polycarpus Von Schneidau, retouched daguerrotype,
Footnotes
1. Joan Bulman, Jenny Lind: a Biography, 179
2. Joan Bulman, Jenny Lind: a Biography, 178
3. Henry Scott Holland, W S Rockstro, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind Goldschmidt: Her Early Art-Life and Dramatic Career, 1820-1851, 79
4. issuu.com/norfolkorganistsassociation/docs/061_20 autumn_202007, accessed 30/8/23
5. Memoir, 259
5. Memoir, 259 www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Memoir_of_Madame_Jenny_Lind_Goldschmidt, accessed 30/8/23
6. The playground was originally in Pottergate, next to the original Jenny Lind Hospital.
7. NWHCM : 1948.39 The accession register notes that Lind performed in Lübeck in 1845 and 1850.
8. https://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/our-services/our-hospitals/jennylind/info-for-parents-and-children/history-of-the-jenny-lind/, accessed 30/8/23
Further Reading
Joan Bulman, Jenny Lind: a Biography (J Barrie, 1956)
Sarah Jenny Dunsmure, Jenny Lind: The Story of the Swedish Nightingale, (Red Door Publishing, 2015). Written by Jenny Lind's great-great-grand-daughter.
Henry Scott Holland, William Smyth Rockstro, Otto Goldschmidt, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt: Her Early Art-Life and Dramatic Career, 1820 - 1851, (John Murray, 1891)
Ernest Albert Spångberg, The Life Of Jenny Lind, Oct. 6, 1820-Nov. 2 1887: A Compilation From Various Sources, In Commemoration Of The Centenary Of Her Birth (Andesite Press, 2015)
Labour and the Poor - The Rural Districts (From the Morning Chronicle.) Letter XVII. Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. The Farmer’s Magazine, 1851, p.358-366
Image: The Jenny Lind Carpet: (Rear detail) The bright colours on the reverse of the carpet can be seen below the canvas backing. Gifted to the Jenny Lind Hospital in Norwich, which she founded in 1854.
The Princesses Duleep Singh - Page 17
Footnotes
1. Anita Anand 117 - 118; Miscellany 2019, 14-15 Each sister wore a different pearl necklace.
2. Anita Anand 122
3. Christy Campbell, The Maharajah’s Box, 2000, 17 - 18
4. Anita Anand, Sophia, 2015, 347-348
Elizabeth Forster - Page 19
Light blue polo neck jumper with raglan sleeves featuring the intarsia head of a crane and the initials I.C.F. (International Crane Foundation). This hand-knitted jumper, designed by Norfolk knitwear designer, Elizabeth Forster in 1982, illustrates her passion for bird-watching.
Further Reading
Elizabeth Forster, The Wandering Tattler, Hutchinson, 1976
Knitting Now and Then Blog
The Elizabeth Forster Archive, 2014
http://barbaraknitsagain.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-elizabeth-forster-archive.html
A Designer's Archive, 2012 (with images of Adam Faith and Joanna Lumley)
http://barbaraknitsagain.blogspot.com/2012/04/designers-archive.html
Elizabeth Forster, designer, 2011
http://barbaraknitsagain.blogspot.com/2011/04/elizabeth-forster-designer.html
Monica Riches (1912 - 1997) Prue Smith discovers the story of a talented Norfolk-born dress designer and dressmaker in the 1930s
Monica Riches was the daughter of Frank and Hilda Mary Elmore Riches (née Pooley), born in Attleborough in 1912, where her father kept a butcher’s shop, opposite St Mary’s church. The family moved several times, first to run a farm in Gissing, but when that proved unsuccessful, they moved to Ipswich where Frank worked as a bus inspector; they later lived in Felixstowe, Suffolk.
Monica attended Norwich Art School, then worked as a dressmaker and ran a shop in Felixstowe, selling dress fabrics and patterns. She also acted as a local agent for Singer sewing machines.
Fashion design in the 1920s and 1930s made a shift away from centuries of body sculpting, using corsetry, hoops and pads, to a more natural bodily outline, with the first recognisably ‘modern’ clothes for women. The 1930s dress styles saw the boxy, boyish-look of the 1920s evolve into more modest, figure-hugging feminine styles with a natural ‘high waist’, longer hemlines, high necklines and wide shoulders. The ideal 1930s woman was tall and slender with a very small waist and narrow hips.
As the average woman did not necissarily have this ‘ideal’ body shape, dress designers employed various creative devices to achieve the effect of wider shoulders and narrower waists and hips. The two day dresses illustrated here by Monica reflect the creativity of designs of the period (MC2995/1). The striking orange and cream dress, which dates to 1935, shows an imaginative use of a striped fabric to lengthen the body and slim the hips. The shoulders were emphasised by short cape sleeves with a dropped
raglan hemline and a high ‘V’ neck.
The 1936 blue dress has a high waist, short, shoulder-widening, generously gathered puffed sleeves and a modest neckline, with an integral ‘vestee’, giving the illusion of two layers, all designed to emphasise the upper part of the body.
Monica Riches never married; she died in February 1997 and is buried at Felixstowe. A selection of her beautiful 1930s drawings are now held in the archive collection at the Norfolk Record Office.
Further reading
https://norfolkrecordofficeblog.org/2016/03/11/nineteenth-century-fashion-norfolk-designers-illustrators-and-manufacturers/
Flo Wadlow (story to follow)
Flo wrote a memoir about her experience of life below stairs in the 1930s: Over a Hot Stove: A Kitchen Maid’s Story (Allison & Busby)
‘Flo Wadlow's life in full-time domestic service provides a fascinating story of a world that has disappeared. Flo started, aged 16, as a young kitchen maid in South Kensington and at the almost unheard-of age of 23 was appointed cook at Blickling Hall [Norfolk]. Her story is told with no resentment that the lowly position of servants, such as herself, supported the privileged life-style of her employers ‘upstairs'. Flo made the most of every opportunity, and after her marriage continued to enjoy her cooking in every capacity possible, based around the village of Heydon. Aged 95 she still has a great enthusiasm for life, and in her cottage a tottering pile of encyclopaedias, dictionaries and thesauri are ready at hand. Flo is an amazing lady by any standards and her book will surely give great pleasure to all who read it.’
Those with keen eyes will have spotted the inclusion of Queen Marie Antionette of France on the cover of Miscellany 2023.
We had planned to include the blue and white striped silk bodice, said to have been worn by Marie Antionette, the last Queen of France (NWHCM : 1909.7.1).
The bodice has been ‘much-multilated’, thought to have been by those wishing to secure a relic of the tragic queen’s dress.
Also in the collection is a lady’s dress; while this is of the same material as the bodice, its style suggests a period of 20 years or so later (1793).
