“Three Phases in the Life of a Young Lady of Clapham”

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Three Phases in the Life of a Young Lady of Clapham

Signed “W Houghton”

“Morning the Grub. Afternoon the Chrysalis. Evening the Butterfly.”

Fun 42 (14 October 1885): 163

Courtesy of the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.

Strange fantasy. How many women who baked bread in their kitchens dressed for evening? Why does the cartoonist place the woman in Clapham, which earlier in the century had been a center of comparatively wealthy Evangelicals — to suggest this is not a women of fashion? [See response below]

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Citing an 1859 book, Domestic Servants as they are & as they ought to be ... With some revelations of kitchen life and tricks of trade. By a practical mistress of a household, Jaqueline Banerjee suggests that the young woman may in fact be a servant (wealthy families in Clapham had plenty of servants) who without her employer’s knowledge snuck out of the house after everyone was asleep to attend so-called servants’ balls. The author mentions a young female servant who attended such balls two or three times a week, but, given the hard working life of servants, one wonders if this is a matter of urban myth, since it seems impossible that a servant could work twelve or more hours a day without any sleep! — George P. Landow

Last modified 9 May 2018