Tag: #EminentVictorians

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Eminent Victorians: Kate and Maggie Fox

Julia Bennet
Kate and Maggie Fox, via Pinterest.

The heroine of my next book (The Ruin of Evangeline Jones, coming soon from Entangled Publishing) is a charlatan medium. To tell her story, I researched the Victorian spiritualist movement, which is how I found out about Kate and Maggie Fox. These two sisters are in large part responsible for starting the entire 19th century spiritualist craze.

It all began in the 1840s when they were still children. According to the PSI Encyclopedia, “Maggie and Kate Fox were at the centre of a poltergeist-type disturbance in 1848 that led to the emergence of Spiritualism, a religion based on communication with spirits of the dead.”

The sisters claimed to hear strange knocking and rapping sounds through which they could communicate with the spirit of a murdered peddler haunting their home. Spookily enough, searches under the house revealed bone fragments. Tables moved, doors shut spontaneously and the spirit (whom the girls nicknamed Mr. Splitfoot after the devil) urged the sisters to hold public meetings to spread the word about life after death. Visitors descended on their house and eventually, since the spirit seemed to follow the girls wherever they went, they took their show on the road, joined by their older sister Leah (the entrepreneur of the family).

  • The three Fox sisters
  • A table levitation at a seance (not conducted by the Fox sisters). Can you see the cheat?

They became a sensation, attracting many famous admirers and, because of their many imitators, spawned a new religion. Not bad for three ordinary Victorian women from a tiny hamlet in New York state.

The Fox sisters in later life: Leah (1814–1890), Margaretta (also called Maggie) (1833–1893) and Catherine (also called Kate ) (1837–1892).

To this day, many believe the sisters to be genuine mediums despite the fact that Kate and Maggie both took to the stage in 1888 to reveal how they accomplished the fraud. The rapping was nothing more than the cracking of toe and ankle joints. At the same time, both denounced the spiritualist movement as a whole and their now estranged sister Leah in particular. Perhaps those who continued to believe in Mr. Splitfoot put this down to a family quarrel that got out of hand and, to be fair, Maggie and Kate, both in dire need of cash, later resumed giving seances. Maggie also renounced her confession.

Even though I think the sisters were charlatans, I can’t help but admire what they accomplished at a time when women had few career options. They attained a level of success few achieved and sparked a movement that took the western world by storm. What may have started as an innocent prank when they were children still colors people’s beliefs to this day.

history

Eminent Victorians: Spring-heeled Jack

Julia Bennet

Urban legend, prank, or supervillain?

This here is Satan, we might say the devil, but that ain’t right, and gennelfolks don’t like such words. He is now commonly called ‘Spring-heeled Jack;’ or the ‘Rossian Bear,’ – that’s since the war.— Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

The first sighting of the being known as Spring-heeled Jack occurred in London in 1837. A man jumped out and grabbed Mary Stevens, tore at her clothes, and touched her with claws that were “cold and clammy as those of a corpse.” A clear-cut case of sexual assault. The next day, the same man leaped out in front of a coach, causing it to crash, and, according to several witnesses, escaped over a 9ft wall, babbling and laughing. More sightings followed and the mysterious attacker was even featured in a Times article.

What did he look like? Some accounts describe him in tight-fitting oilskin, others in the attire of a gentleman. Most agree about the claws, voluminous cloak, and general devilishness of his appearance. Accounts of subsequent attacks grew increasingly outlandish. Jack is said to have spewed blue and white flames from his mouth (a professional or amateur fire-breather, perhaps?), possess eyes of fire, and metallic claws that he used to tear women’s clothes. He also once appeared in a bearskin (which I feel gives my fire-breather/performance artist theory even more credence). However, the likeliest suspect in the early attacks is the Marquess of Waterford (commonly known as The Mad Marquess).

In 1838, an arrest was made (not the marquess) but, despite a confession and evidence that he committed at least one of the crimes, the man had to be released because he didn’t know how to fire breathe. Gradually attacks became less frequent until a new wave occurred in the 1840s and again in the 1870s. The last sighting of Jack was in Liverpool in 1904. A copycat? Or–an idea that gained increasing momentum among those who claimed to see him–a ghost?

Illustration of Spring-heeled Jack, from the 1867 serial Spring-heel’d Jack: The Terror of London , via Wikipedia.

One of the problems with parsing the Spring-heeled Jack sightings is that he quickly became a literary sensation, the star of numerous plays and penny dreadfuls. The stories of him running about on the rooftops of London, masked, cloaked and performing supernatural leaps, quickly mixed with and obfuscated genuine sightings of what seems to have been a budding sex offender who enjoyed dangerous pranks or, even more likely, a series of similar criminals. (I’m not one for the ghost theory, but your mileage may vary).

Whatever you believe, the stories themselves, the fiction that grew up around Spring-heeled Jack, have ensured that he’s passed into legend.

history

Eminent Victorians: Sarah Forbes Bonetta

Julia Bennet
Full-length photograph of Sarah Forbes Bonetta taken in 1862.
Sarah Forbes Bonetta by Camille Silvy, 1862, via Wikipedia.

People call her Queen Victoria’s black daughter, but Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s story is more complex than that. Was she, as Wikipedia would have it, a West African princess, Omoba Aina? And did Queen Victoria really adopt her?

Unfortunately, we may never know the truth about Forbes Bonetta’s origins. She was silent on that subject in her letters and never referred to any royal lineage. And, in the circles in which she sometimes moved, it would probably have rated a mention. Captain Frederick E. Forbes, the man who brought her to England when she was seven, and after whom she’s named (Bonetta was for his ship,) suspected she was from a good family. But she herself had only confused recollections of her past.

Sally (Sarah) Forbes Bonetta, aged about 13.

The Captain was visiting King Ghezo of Dahomey as part of an anti-slavery mission on behalf of the British Empire. Personally, I have my doubts as to how successful the meeting was, with regard to its stated aim, since Sarah was given to Forbes as a gift to Queen Victoria or, as Walter Dean Myers put it, “a present from the King of the blacks to the Queen of the whites.” Charming!

To be fair to the Captain (not to mention Queen Victoria,) Forbes Bonetta would have been put to death if the “gift” had been refused. Still, it’s perhaps a bit of a stretch to call this process an adoption. On a happier note, Victoria paid for Sarah’s education (the Captain called his young charge “a perfect genius”) and took a warm interest in her well-being. After an unsuccessful stint in a school in Sierra Leone, Sarah was sent to Kent where she lived with the middle-class Schoen family. It was Mrs. Schoen, not Victoria, whom Sarah addressed as “Mama” in her letters.

Having been brought up as a proper English lady, Sarah was expected to marry like one. Though initially unenthusiastic about the match, she obeyed Victoria’s wish that she marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a British naval officer originally from Sierra Leone.

A portrait of James Pinson Labulo Davies and Sara Forbes Bonetta, 1862, by Camille Silvy .

Despite this inauspicious beginning, the marriage seems to have been happy. Together they had three children, one of whom, Victoria, was named for the queen and became her goddaughter. Sadly, Sarah died of tuberculosis when she was only 37. The queen settled an annuity on her small namesake.

As for Davies, he erected a monument “IN MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA.”

history

Eminent Victorians: Edmonia Lewis

Julia Bennet
Edmonia Lewis, c. 1870

It’s always been tough to make it as an artist. Now imagine trying to make it as a black woman in the Civil War era USA. That’s what Edmonia Lewis did, despite being accused (and later acquitted) of poisoning two friends, and later accused (and again acquitted) of stealing art supplies from her college. Not only did she succeed at her chosen career despite the persecution she faced; she became the first African American woman to achieve international fame as a sculptor.

Born free in 1844, she was of mixed Afro-Haitian, Afro-American, and Mississauga Ojibwe descent and grew up using her native American name, Wildfire. When she moved to Boston after college, several sculptors refused to teach her. She moved in abolitionist circles and achieved early fame with a bust of Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. On the proceeds of the copies she made and sold, she was able to move to Rome, where she adopted the neoclassical style, while continuing to choose subjects and themes from Afro-American and Native-American culture. It was in Rome that she became a sensation.

Here are some of my favorite examples of her work:

Going clockwise from the largest image: Hiawatha, 1868; Minnehaha, 1868; Detail from The Death of Cleopatra, 1876.
history

Eminent Victorians: How I fell a little in love with La Goulue.

Julia Bennet
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Lautrec’s posters and paintings were my first introduction to can-can dancer Louise Weber, otherwise known as La Goulue (The Glutton). A quick google will tell you she got her nickname because she would down the drinks of Moulin Rouge patrons as she danced past. Lautrec was a genius but I’ve never heard anyone say he flattered his subjects. The first thing that struck me about this poster is how worn and ragged she looks, dancing her heart out for a faceless and, to me, somewhat sinister-seeming crowd of spectators.

Weber doesn’t fit in with today’s beauty standards where we assign women (and sometimes men) attractiveness points based on increasingly narrow parameters. But, as her popularity attests, she definitely had something. Photographs do her more justice:

Louise Weber, 1892. Via Pinterest.

This lady was flexible.

Louise Weber, 1895. Unknown photographer. Perhaps Achille Delmaet?

And not shy.

She was, for a few short years, the highest paid entertainer in Paris. The undisputed Queen of Montmatre. But in 1895, she decided to leave the Moulin Rouge and strike out on her own, literally taking her show on the road. Unfortunately, the crowds didn’t follow, and Louise Weber’s star faded along with her fortune.

But none of this is why I love her.

In the 1920s, Louise Weber was travelling in a caravan. She stepped out, saw a man holding a camera, and this was her response:

Louise Weber “La Goulue” in the 1920s. Source: Youtube (Untefinu balaninu)

Her glory days may be behind her but she’s still dancing, still graceful, and still fierce.