Interior Decoration and Domesticity in the Women's Penny Paper/Woman's Herald

The Women's Penny Paper/Woman's Herald was founded to further the "emancipation of women in every direction and in every land" by women's rights activist Henrietta Müller (1845?–1906), who edited the paper under the pseudonym Helena B. Temple.¹ It was the first paper to dedicate a column to interviews with prominent women and, between 1889 and 1891, featured interviews with four professional interior decorators: Charlotte Robinson (1859–1901), Caroline Crommelin (1854–1910), Agnes Garrett (1845–1935), and Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928).² During the nineteenth century, class-based gender ideologies began to shift away from the traditional view of patriarchal supremacy over the home towards a more equality-based domestic philosophy. However, while some progress was made, the shift was strongly contested, and gender inequalities continued to permeate all aspects of domestic life. In this essay, I will analyze how the interviews with these four women in the Women's Penny Paper/Woman's Herald were connected to, or stood in defiance of, nineteenth-century middle-class hegemonic domestic life. I will also consider how the paper's approach to domesticity affected its mission of redefining the boundaries of contemporary femininity while promoting female emancipation.³

The Women's Penny Paper/Woman's Herald, which has been described by David Doughan as the "most vigorous feminist paper of its time," was published weekly and sold for a penny. It included reports from a variety of women's and suffrage organizations as well as general advertisements.⁴ Although it has been included in a variety of works on both periodicals and women's history, its contribution to the nineteenth-century press has not yet been fully explored. Its weekly interview column, which often took up as much as two of each edition's eight pages, was discursive in style, featured a mix of journalistic comment and direct quotation, and was usually illustrated with a head-and-shoulders portrait of the subject. The column was intended to demonstrate to a largely female readership the sorts of lives women could aspire to and served as a platform for the promotion of the paper's progressive agenda.

Robinson, Crommelin, Garrett, and Pankhurst were part of a growing network of women who forged new roles in the field of interior decoration and were of considerable interest to the readers of the Women's Penny Paper/Woman's Herald.⁵ While their male counterparts are more thoroughly represented in both archival material and secondary scholarship, there are few sources of information on women's careers in house decoration. The ephemeral nature of interior design meant that women's creative output often did not survive, making the interviews in the Women's Penny Paper/Woman's Herald invaluable resources for rediscovering their lives and work.

Robinson, who from 1888 wrote on interior decoration for the Queen magazine, opened a shop in Manchester in about 1884, selling furniture and decorative art. A London branch followed in 1888, and she continued to trade from premises in both cities until 1901, while also undertaking commissions for a variety of public companies. She gained considerable press attention for her populist floral style and was granted a warrant of appointment as "Home Art Decorator to Her Majesty the Queen."⁶ Crommelin specialized in decorating with antiques, opening her shop, "Art at Home," in London in about 1888, selling antiques, antique reproduction furniture, and decorative art. She also undertook private commissions, generally for aristocratic clients, and continued in this business until about 1900, after which she contributed a chapter advising on interior decoration to Ethel M. M. McKenna's (1869–1929) Some Arts and Crafts, with her sister May Crommelin (1849–1930).⁷ Neither Robinson nor Crommelin is featured in the scholarship on nineteenth-century British interior design.⁸

In contrast, Garrett's career has received some attention, with art historian Elizabeth Crawford providing an excellent overview of her life and career.⁹ Garrett founded her business in London with her cousin Rhoda Garrett (1841–82) in about 1874. Advocating the Queen Anne revival style, they focused on...