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Urania Cottage, 1865 photograph

Urania Cottage was a Magdalene asylum, in the terminology of the time, hostel or women's shelter, founded in London in 1847 by the novelist Charles Dickens and the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts.[1] The house was a reformatory, and has been called a "discreet version" of London's Magdalen House for Reception of Penitent Prostitutes.[2] In an anonymous article published in Household Words in 1853, Dickens called it a "Home for Homeless Women".[3]

Background

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Angela Burdett-Coutts was the dedicatee of the novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–4).[4] She gave Dickens the standing of the position of almoner in 1840. He screened the begging letters she received as a wealthy heiress. He also made suggestions for her philanthropy. They worked together on the Urania Cottage project.[5] The fundamental objects of the hostel were to avoid the women housed ending up in prison or the workhouse. It also offered assistance in case they wished to emigrate to Australia,[6] Dickens was the house's almoner, to 1855, and took charge of its day-to-day operations.[7]

In the later 1840s, Dickens was under the influence of the thinking of the penal reformer Alexander Maconochie and his mark system.[8] For around ten years he saw it applied at Urania Cottage.[9] On 26 May 1846, Dickens wrote Burdett-Coutts a lengthy letter stating his desire to open an asylum for girls and women working in London's streets as prostitutes. He suggested introducing a mark system and probationary period for asylum residents. He wrote:

It is explained to her that she is degraded and fallen, but not lost, having this shelter; and that the means of Return to Happiness are now about to be put into her own hands, and trusted to her own keeping. That with this view, she is, instead of being placed in this probationary class for a month, or two months, or three months, or any specified time whatever, required to earn there, a certain number of Marks (they are mere scratches in a book) so that she may make her probation a very short one, or a very long one, according to her own conduct. For so much work, she has so many Marks; for a day's good conduct, so many more. For every instance of ill-temper, disrespect, bad language, any outbreak of any sort or kind, so many - a very large number in proportion to her receipts - are deducted. A perfect Debtor and Creditor account is kept between her and the Superintendent, for every day; and the state of that account, it is in her own power and nobody else's, to adjust to her advantage.[10]

Religious stance

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The founders differed on religious matters, Dickens at this time associating with Unitarians and Burdett-Coutts being an Anglican evangelical; Dickens backed down at need, but was concerned to avoid a severe ambience in the house.[11] He approved of reformed women from the house marrying, but she did not.[12]

Burdett-Coutts required that the Urania Cottage committee should include an Anglican cleric.[13] In 1848 John Sinclair, vicar of Kensington and archdeacon of Middlesex, was a member;[14][15] also on the committee was the Rev. William Tennant, first vicar in 1847 at St Stephen's Church, Rochester Row, a new church funded by Burdett-Coutts.[16][17] The Rev. Edward Arthur Illingworth, chaplain to the Coldbath Fields Prison (Middlesex House of Correction), was also chaplain to Urania Cottage.[18][19]

The house

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Urania Cottage was in Shepherd's Bush, a suburb of south-west London that in the 1840s was still quite rural. The house dated to the 1820s and belonged to a widow, Elizabeth Scott.[20] It was a detached house, where 13 women and two superintendants could sleep. Dickens chose it, and was responsible for details such as reading matter and colourful dresses.[21] The latter was a point on which he differed from Burdett-Coutts, and had his way.[22] Purposes included education in household work and the development of self-discipline.[21] Dickens dealt with petitions from the women, conferring at need with Burdett-Coutts.[7]

Wardens

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Over the period 1847–1858 when Dickens was involved in running the house, there were three wardens (Principal Superintendents). Mrs. Holdsworth, from 1847 to mid-1849, was succeeded by Georgiana Morson. A widow, she left in 1854 when she remarried.[23] Dickens praised Morson's oversight at Urania Cottage in a letter recommending her as matron for the Foundling Hospital in 1852. Writing to the governors of the hospital on 9 July 1852, he described her "capacity for the administration of such an office."[24] He goes on to explain that:

She is accustomed to method, order, punctuality, and to a habit of sound and judicious observation.[24]

She was replaced by Mrs Marchmont.[25]

Candidates, selection and outcomes

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Dickens had included "A Visit to Newgate", referring to Newgate Gaol, in his collection Sketches by Boz (1836). He was keen on visiting London prisons, particularly in 1838–9.[26] For Urania Cottage, he often went to the Coldbath Fields prison, to find women who might come to the house, and is thought to have based his character Mr Creakle of David Copperfield on the magistrate Benjamin Rotch he met there.[27][28] Rotch was an opponent of ideas in penology that Dickens had floated in American Notes (1842), an advocate of the separate system, and a leader in the group of Middlesex magistrates who in 1847 were trying to impose that system in the county's prisons.[29]

Places in the house were filled through Dickens's contacts George Laval Chesterton, governor at Coldbaths Fields prison, and Augustus Tracey, Chesterton's counterpart in Westminster; Dickens had introduced both men to Maconochie.[30] A personal recommendation came through the Rev. Henry Drage, vicar of St. Margaret's Church, Rochester, formerly a neighbour of the Dickens family in Chatham, Kent.[31][32][33] A refuge named for Elizabeth Fry opened in 1849 at 195 Mare Street, Hackney, as a half-way house, and referred some women to Urania Cottage.[34][35] In 1850 Elizabeth Gaskell was concerned to help a 16-year old called Pasley, and applied to Dickens to see if she could be admitted to Urania Cottage. After some discussion involving also Burdett-Coutts, Pasley was found a place with a family emigrating to South Africa.[36]

Over time, those admitted to the house became more varied: imprisoned sex workers were joined by women or girls convicted of crimes such as theft not connected to prostitution, and those who were homeless or destitute.[21] Caroline, Duchess of Richmond recommended the larcenous Rhena Pollard, who was a troublemaker, hauled up before the committee and harangued by Dickens. An emigrant to Canada, she joined the Salvation Army.[37] John Hardwick of Marlborough Street Magistrates Court in 1855 recommended to Dickens the domestic servant Susan Mayne who had a record of drunkenness and prostitution charges.[7] She was admitted to the house, but it transpired that she was pregnant, so had to leave. The baby was born in the Queen Charlotte Lying-in Hospital, where her health and past history were more thoroughly examined.[38]

A report in 1853, not associated with the founders' names, discussed the outcomes for 56 "inmates", mostly young women,[39] with average age about 20. Of those, 30 had emigrated to Australia where seven were known to have married.

After Dickens

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In 1858 Dickens and his wife Catherine separated. This breakdown in the marriage put an effective end to the working relationship between Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts. The work of Urania House continued after Dickens also in 1858 withdrew from his role there, for some years, encountering difficulties, and eventually ceasing.[40][41]

In media

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Stacey Halls wrote her 2024 novel The Household about Urania Cottage.[42]

Notes

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  1. ^ Middeke, Martin; Pietrzak-Franger, Monika (5 May 2020). Handbook of the English Novel, 1830–1900. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 314. ISBN 978-3-11-037671-5.
  2. ^ Wood, Claire; John, Juliet (31 May 2024). Edinburgh Companion to Charles Dickens and the Arts. 16 note 25: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-4166-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  3. ^ Nayder, Lillian (1 April 2012). The Other Dickens: a life of Catherine Hogarth. Cornell University Press. p. 148 note 25. ISBN 978-0-8014-6514-7.
  4. ^ Hawes, Donald (13 May 2007). Charles Dickens. A&C Black. pp. 67–68. ISBN 978-0-8264-8963-0.
  5. ^ Healey, Edna. "Coutts, Angela Georgina Burdett-, suo jure Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32175. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ Paroissien, David (15 April 2008). A Companion to Charles Dickens. John Wiley & Sons. p. 172. ISBN 978-0-470-69122-9.
  7. ^ a b c Sheetz-Nguyen, Jessica A. (10 May 2012). Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital. A&C Black. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-4411-3168-3.
  8. ^ Wiener, Martin J. (1990). Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-521-47882-3.
  9. ^ Steer, Philip (16 January 2020). Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature: Economics and Political Identity in the Networks of Empire. Cambridge University Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-108-48442-8.
  10. ^ "Urania Cottage". Spartacus Educational.
  11. ^ Gleadle, Kathryn (27 July 2016). The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women's Rights Movement, 1831-51. Springer. p. 132. ISBN 978-1-349-26582-4.
  12. ^ Bristow, Joseph; McDonagh, Josephine (8 September 2016). Nineteenth-Century Radical Traditions. Springer. p. 67. ISBN 978-1-137-59706-9.
  13. ^ Kanner, Selma Baroness (1972). Victorian Institutional Patronage. University of California, Los Angeles. p. 433.
  14. ^ "Letter from Charles Dickens, London, to William Brown?, 1848? January 11 : autograph manuscript signed". The Morgan Library & Museum. 29 November 2018.
  15. ^ Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Sinclair, John" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
  16. ^ "To Georgiana Morson, 9 October 1851". dickensletters.com. 24 June 2021.
  17. ^ "Tennant, William (TNNT832W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  18. ^ Dickens, Charles (1981). Letters: Edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey. Associate Editors: W.J. Carlton [and Others]. Vol. 5. Clarendon Press. p. xii. ISBN 978-0-19-812514-3.
  19. ^ Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "{{{title}}}" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
  20. ^ Hartley, Jenny (2008). Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women. Methuen. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-413-77643-3.
  21. ^ a b c Schlicke, Paul (3 November 2011). The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens: Anniversary Edition. OUP Oxford. p. 590. ISBN 978-0-19-964018-8.
  22. ^ Kujawska-Lis, Ewa (2004). A Tale of Two Visions: The Individual and Victorian Public Institutions in the Novels of Charles Dickens. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego. p. 237. ISBN 978-83-7299-318-2.
  23. ^ Kanner, Selma Baroness (1972). Victorian Institutional Patronage. University of California, Los Angeles. p. 456.
  24. ^ a b Ben (3 June 2018). "To the Governors of the Foundling Hospital, 9 July 1852". www.dickensletters.com. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  25. ^ Dickens, Charles (1953). Letters from Charles Dickens to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1841-1865. Cape. p. 319.
  26. ^ Grass, Sean C. (27 January 2014). The Self in the Cell: Narrating the Victorian Prisoner. Routledge. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-135-38484-5.
  27. ^ Ledger, Sally; Furneaux, Holly (2 June 2011). Charles Dickens in Context. Cambridge University Press. p. 306. ISBN 978-0-521-88700-7.
  28. ^ Rintoul, M. C. (5 March 2014). Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction. Routledge. p. 788. ISBN 978-1-136-11932-3.
  29. ^ Litvack, Leon; Vanfasse, Nathalie (6 November 2019). Reading Dickens Differently. John Wiley & Sons. p. 97. ISBN 978-1-119-60224-8.
  30. ^ Tambling, Jeremy (29 October 2022). The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Springer Nature. p. 555. ISBN 978-3-319-62419-8.
  31. ^ Hughes, William R. (1891). A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land. London: Chapman & Hall. p. 92.
  32. ^ "Drage, [William] Henry (DRG815H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  33. ^ Long, William F. (2012). "What Happened to Lucy Stroughill". Dickens Quarterly. 29 (4): 321-322 note 13. ISSN 0742-5473. JSTOR 45292605.
  34. ^ Fry, Herbert (1884). The Royal Guide to the London Charities. Chatto & Windus. p. 92.
  35. ^ Isba, Anne (13 October 2011). Dickens's Women: His Great Expectations. A&C Black. p. 151 note 19. ISBN 978-1-4411-9327-8.
  36. ^ Scholl, Lesa; Morris, Emily (9 March 2016). Place and Progress in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell. Routledge. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-317-08071-8.
  37. ^ Wilson, A. N. (4 June 2020). The Mystery of Charles Dickens. Atlantic Books. pp. 131–132. ISBN 978-1-78649-792-5.
  38. ^ Sheetz-Nguyen, Jessica A. (5 July 2012). Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital. A&C Black. pp. 162–164. ISBN 978-1-4411-4112-5.
  39. ^ The Examiner. John Hunt. 1853. p. 268.
  40. ^ Collins, Philip (19 January 2016). Dickens and Crime. Springer. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-349-23545-2.
  41. ^ Sutherland, John (13 October 2014). The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. Routledge. p. 183. ISBN 978-1-317-86333-5.
  42. ^ Brown, Lauren (20 July 2023). "Halls returns to Manilla Press with fourth novel". The Bookseller. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
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