What do you think?
Rate this book
Love and Dirt: The Marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick
Arthur Munby, barrister and published poet, met Hannah Cullwick, Shropshire scullery maid, on London`s Oxford Street in 1854. They had in common a sexual Munby adored watching Hannah `in her dirt` and she responded to him with a literally slavish devotion. Amply documented in their letters and diaries, this is the compelling tale of a clandestine love affair that was to last for over fifty years. `Shadowy figures at the edge of Victorian life, they might almost have stepped out of a Dickens plot.` - Claire Tomalin, Evening Standard `Arthur and Hannah have been lucky with their biographer.... Diane Atkinson has a generous appreciation of all the nuances and paradoxes of their bizarre relationship.` - Mail on Sunday `In the letters and diaries of Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby, Diane Atkinson has discovered a gem of a story.... Love & Dirt successfully presents an important historical document in a highly readable, accessible form.... a fascinating insight into aspects of Victorian sexuality.` - Sunday Independent
- GenresNonfictionHistory
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
5 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 21, 2008
Amazing story of a woman who transgresses the status quo to forge another path. Hannah Cullwick is my new shiny toy that I'm obessed with....however this book is badly written....long, blabbing sentences yet over simplified. This is strange enough to be fiction....but it's not.
June 21, 2018
A fascinating relationship which the author manages to make incredibly boring.
May 28, 2021
Diane Atkinson’s detailed investigation of the marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick makes fascinating reading. It was an unlikely union - between an upper class barrister/poet/social reformer and a lowly scullery maid. It came about through Munby’s obsession with working women.
Such women and girls - whom he greatly admired and befriended throughout his life - included pit girls, ‘dust wenches’, ‘mudlarks’, fisher lasses, prostitutes and domestic servants. He knew many of them very well and recorded his interviews and conversations in his lengthy and highly detailed diaries, which he also illustrated. Some of his friendships with the pit brow girls extended beyond 30 years.
He formed a particularly intimate relationship with Hannah Cullwick. It was a friendship which was to last a lifetime and it eventually ended in marriage - a marriage which had to be kept secret because in the rigid class structure of Victorian Britain, it would have been regarded as scandalous for a barrister - and friend of the rich and famous - to marry a common ‘maid of all work’.
It was a perfect match - Hannah was happy to work as a drudge and loved getting dirty, while Munby loved to see her ‘in her dirt’ and doing the filthiest of domestic jobs. She was also happy to be a slave to Munby, calling him ‘Massa’, licking his boots clean, carrying him around like a baby in her arms, washing his feet and performing the degrading tasks that he loved to watch – including sweeping chimneys stark naked.
Hannah also kept a diary through their long relationship and like Munby’s, they do not reveal if it was sexual, or if their subsequent marriage was consummated. However, it seems highly likely that Munby’s fascination with dirty working women must have had a strong fetish and voyeuristic component. The Kinsey Report – which studied sexual behaviour amongst American men and women – concluded that the capacity to be aroused erotically by any stimuli is ‘basic amongst the species’. Furthermore, the celebrated English sexologist, Henry Havelock Ellis, asserted that the extent of such stimuli was limitless and that there were as many patterns of sexual behaviour as there were individuals.
Munby’s pattern with Hannah had a strong emphasis on dirt and sado masochism. History shows they had some distinguished soul mates - Napoleon preferred his wife not to wash and Albert Einstein liked unkempt women, the sweatier and smellier the better! In Victorian Britain pornography and prostitution flourished, and some of Munby’s upper class friends were into flagellation. So Hannah and A J’s antics may well have been an ingredient in the secret lives of many others.
The book does not mention if Munby joined in the dirty work or remained a spectator. He assembled a huge collection of photographs of Hannah ‘in her dirt’, wearing a slave wrist and collar, and other working women - in particular the ‘pit broo wenches’ in the coal mines of the North of England. He was a regular visitor to the Pits at Wigan, which had a high complement of women and girls working at the pit heads.
By the time Munby met them, females had been banned from working underground by the Mines Act of 1842. They were not happy about their banishment and would have willingly gone back underground. They had no desire to change their employment – proving that the jobs we may regard as thoroughly disagreeable are not necessarily shared by those who undertake them. One of Munby’s interests in the area of social reform was his promotion of womens’ rights to undertake whatever work they wanted – including hauling coal tubs and sledges in mines.
Regardless of the nature of Munby’s relationship with Hannah, it was certainly long lasting. After 30 years, he eventually married her (much to his father’s fury), but still kept their status a secret. During that period Munby tried to establish Hannah as a ‘lady’ in the outside world. But like the ‘pit broo wenches’ she had no desire to do so – she was happy to remain a servant and devoted slave, scrubbing floors, lighting fires, carrying coal and blacking grates, cleaning boots and knives - always grossly overworked, but nevertheless quite happy with her lot.
After a day filled with the above hard labour she still found time to write her diary every day. Munby loved to read her account of her work, particularly the dirty variety. In addition to her writing skills, she was also well read. Arthur introduced her to the works of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and John Ruskin. She must have been happy that Arthur’s friends included literary greats like R D Blackmore, author of ‘Lorna Doone’. Arthur was also a connoisseur of great art and his circle of artistic friends included Daniel Gabriel Rosetti – who admired some of his photographs of Hannah!
‘Love and Dirt’ offers remarkably vivid impressions of life in Victorian England, from the perspectives of both a gentleman and a working woman. Although Munby kept his relationship under wraps in London, he was able to relax more when they travelled, but they still went separately to railway stations. They had a country retreat in Surrey, visited popular seaside towns in England like Brighton Southend, Hastings and Eastbourne and also went to France together.
‘Love and Dirt’ is a beautiful love story. A J Munby and Hannah never stopped loving each other – even after they separated following a bitter row and Hannah’s subsequent drinking problem. However, they continued to correspond until she died in 1909, preceding her husband by one year. One of her last letters to Munby is an interesting reflection on their many years together:
‘As you say my dearest, no one would ever understand our love – if they knew I had been up the chimney and rubbed the bars of the grate wi’ my hands and blacked my face all over wi’ blacklead and let you wipe your boots on my face and walk over me in the street when I’ve been kneeling at the missis’s front door and all that, and they would say “Pray, what has that to do with love – doesn’t it show Hannah to be a poor fool and he as an oddity?” So, darling, it must be. I only wish the end could have been better, but thank God I am happy and well’.
In more recent times, I recall somebody asking Sir Paul McCartney his thoughts on the longevity of his marriage to his wife Linda. He replied: ‘We just adore each other’. It could equally be applied to A J Munby and Hannah Cullwick. They just adored each other, dirt ‘n’ all!
Such women and girls - whom he greatly admired and befriended throughout his life - included pit girls, ‘dust wenches’, ‘mudlarks’, fisher lasses, prostitutes and domestic servants. He knew many of them very well and recorded his interviews and conversations in his lengthy and highly detailed diaries, which he also illustrated. Some of his friendships with the pit brow girls extended beyond 30 years.
He formed a particularly intimate relationship with Hannah Cullwick. It was a friendship which was to last a lifetime and it eventually ended in marriage - a marriage which had to be kept secret because in the rigid class structure of Victorian Britain, it would have been regarded as scandalous for a barrister - and friend of the rich and famous - to marry a common ‘maid of all work’.
It was a perfect match - Hannah was happy to work as a drudge and loved getting dirty, while Munby loved to see her ‘in her dirt’ and doing the filthiest of domestic jobs. She was also happy to be a slave to Munby, calling him ‘Massa’, licking his boots clean, carrying him around like a baby in her arms, washing his feet and performing the degrading tasks that he loved to watch – including sweeping chimneys stark naked.
Hannah also kept a diary through their long relationship and like Munby’s, they do not reveal if it was sexual, or if their subsequent marriage was consummated. However, it seems highly likely that Munby’s fascination with dirty working women must have had a strong fetish and voyeuristic component. The Kinsey Report – which studied sexual behaviour amongst American men and women – concluded that the capacity to be aroused erotically by any stimuli is ‘basic amongst the species’. Furthermore, the celebrated English sexologist, Henry Havelock Ellis, asserted that the extent of such stimuli was limitless and that there were as many patterns of sexual behaviour as there were individuals.
Munby’s pattern with Hannah had a strong emphasis on dirt and sado masochism. History shows they had some distinguished soul mates - Napoleon preferred his wife not to wash and Albert Einstein liked unkempt women, the sweatier and smellier the better! In Victorian Britain pornography and prostitution flourished, and some of Munby’s upper class friends were into flagellation. So Hannah and A J’s antics may well have been an ingredient in the secret lives of many others.
The book does not mention if Munby joined in the dirty work or remained a spectator. He assembled a huge collection of photographs of Hannah ‘in her dirt’, wearing a slave wrist and collar, and other working women - in particular the ‘pit broo wenches’ in the coal mines of the North of England. He was a regular visitor to the Pits at Wigan, which had a high complement of women and girls working at the pit heads.
By the time Munby met them, females had been banned from working underground by the Mines Act of 1842. They were not happy about their banishment and would have willingly gone back underground. They had no desire to change their employment – proving that the jobs we may regard as thoroughly disagreeable are not necessarily shared by those who undertake them. One of Munby’s interests in the area of social reform was his promotion of womens’ rights to undertake whatever work they wanted – including hauling coal tubs and sledges in mines.
Regardless of the nature of Munby’s relationship with Hannah, it was certainly long lasting. After 30 years, he eventually married her (much to his father’s fury), but still kept their status a secret. During that period Munby tried to establish Hannah as a ‘lady’ in the outside world. But like the ‘pit broo wenches’ she had no desire to do so – she was happy to remain a servant and devoted slave, scrubbing floors, lighting fires, carrying coal and blacking grates, cleaning boots and knives - always grossly overworked, but nevertheless quite happy with her lot.
After a day filled with the above hard labour she still found time to write her diary every day. Munby loved to read her account of her work, particularly the dirty variety. In addition to her writing skills, she was also well read. Arthur introduced her to the works of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and John Ruskin. She must have been happy that Arthur’s friends included literary greats like R D Blackmore, author of ‘Lorna Doone’. Arthur was also a connoisseur of great art and his circle of artistic friends included Daniel Gabriel Rosetti – who admired some of his photographs of Hannah!
‘Love and Dirt’ offers remarkably vivid impressions of life in Victorian England, from the perspectives of both a gentleman and a working woman. Although Munby kept his relationship under wraps in London, he was able to relax more when they travelled, but they still went separately to railway stations. They had a country retreat in Surrey, visited popular seaside towns in England like Brighton Southend, Hastings and Eastbourne and also went to France together.
‘Love and Dirt’ is a beautiful love story. A J Munby and Hannah never stopped loving each other – even after they separated following a bitter row and Hannah’s subsequent drinking problem. However, they continued to correspond until she died in 1909, preceding her husband by one year. One of her last letters to Munby is an interesting reflection on their many years together:
‘As you say my dearest, no one would ever understand our love – if they knew I had been up the chimney and rubbed the bars of the grate wi’ my hands and blacked my face all over wi’ blacklead and let you wipe your boots on my face and walk over me in the street when I’ve been kneeling at the missis’s front door and all that, and they would say “Pray, what has that to do with love – doesn’t it show Hannah to be a poor fool and he as an oddity?” So, darling, it must be. I only wish the end could have been better, but thank God I am happy and well’.
In more recent times, I recall somebody asking Sir Paul McCartney his thoughts on the longevity of his marriage to his wife Linda. He replied: ‘We just adore each other’. It could equally be applied to A J Munby and Hannah Cullwick. They just adored each other, dirt ‘n’ all!
February 3, 2013
A very close look at a rather odd relationship that may or may not be telling us something about the Victorians in general. I found this convincing, a little moving, and not nearly as circular and repetitive as I had expected. Worth a look for the history, and certainly good for the narrative if you like this sort of slightly sordid relationship stuff.
Want to read
June 25, 2016On May 26, 1854, Arthur Munby met Hannah Cullwick. He was a solicitor for the Ecclesiastical Commission, and he loathed his job. She was a servant, a maid of all work. This first encounter marked the beginning of a relationship which was to endure for more than fifty years. #biography #nonfiction
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews