Arthur Munby

Biography

Arthur Munby was born in York. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1851, and was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn in 1855. He worked as a civil servant in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners' office from 1858 until his retirement in 1888. His published poetry included Benoni (1852) and Verses New and Old (1865). He taught Latin at the Working Men's College for more than a decade and helped promote the Working Men's College Volunteer Corps, a response to the national call for Volunteer Rifle Corps (1859) to combat a perceived threat from Napoleon the Third. Munby penned verses of support, the Invicta: a Song of 1860, for the 19th Middlesex Regiment, a regiment to which the W.M.C.V.C. was attached. In 1864, a sister Working Women's College was established; Munby was a leading spirit of, and teacher at, the new college.

Munby had a lifelong fascination with working-class women, particularly those who did hard physical labour. His favourite pastime was wandering the streets of London and other industrial cities where he approached working women to ask about their lives and the details of their work, while noting their clothes and dialects. The observations were recorded in his journals. He was an amateur artist, and his diaries contain sketches of working women.He collected hundreds of photographs of women who worked at collieries, kitchen maids, milkmaids, charwomen, acrobats and so on. His diaries and images provide historical information on the lives of working-class Victorian women. Much of his obsession is hinted at in his last book, Faithful Servants: being epitaphs and obituaries recording their names and services (1891). His papers are housed at Trinity College, Cambridge, there is a list of his papers on the Cambridge Janus website

In 1854, while on one of his urban wanderings, Munby met Hannah Cullwick, a Shropshire-born maid-of-all-work. They formed a relationship in which Munby was the master and Cullwick the slave, with him training her in the virtues of hard work and loyalty. His scenarios included elements of ageplay and infantilism, with Cullwick holding him in her lap or carrying him.

They married secretly in 1873 but Cullwick resisted his efforts to make her into a lady and she lived with him as a domestic servant, not a wife. She played the role of a lady wife on trips to Europe. They separated in 1877, but continued to see each other until Cullwick's death in 1909. The marriage was secret from all but a few close friends; he revealed it to his brother only a few months before his own death from pneumonia.