“It is impossible for the truly generous mind to understand the small envyings that surround the daily path of an author, particularly a female one.” Mary Hutton, preface to Cottage Tales and Poems. (1836)
Looking through the old newspapers for articles on what happened after the National women’s rights association presented their petition in February 1851, I came upon an event they held , and mentioned there was Mary Hutton who read a poem there. Further investigation on Mary Hutton revealed that in her day she had national recognition for her poetry and has since been described as the first working class female poet.
Mary Hutton was born Mary Taylor in Wakefield on the 10th June and Baptised on the 7th July 1794. father William Taylor and mother Mary. Those are the only facts I have been able to confirm re her early life. Mary said she was a twin and her sister was much healthier, but there is no baptismal record to be found for her sister, nor was there any obvious rush to baptise a sickly baby that Mary claimed she was. Her biography may be true but there are a lot of gaps in that history. Of course, records of the working class in that period were meagre unless someone was apprenticed or ended up in court. There are of course baptismal, marriage and burial records but many church records were stored in damp places and subject to damage. Any real detail didn’t appear to the National census records in 1841 and registration of birth marriage and deaths early in Victoria’s reign.
The biography is that her parents had met while in service to the aristocracy in London and on their marriage had moved to Wakefield. Her father had been a servant to Lord Cathcart, her mother a servant to Lord Howe, an Admiral. Her mother Mary nee Parry was described as a nurse/governess), and catholic. Father’s history is very sketchy as neither his place of birth or what type of servant he was, nor exactly what his occupation was in Wakefield, only that it was something to do with the canal boats. Four of Mary’s brothers joined the navy, not uncommon for boys brought up working the barges, so perhaps her father was a boatman. Which would explain why she may have left details out, as Boatmen had a poor reputation, even if it was based more on prejudice than reality. Mary’s family suddenly moved back to London leaving Mary a sickly child in Wakefield. It is unknown what age she was then, or who they left her with, or why they left, but she couldn’t have been a small child as she talks of reading the few books in the home and walking the moors.
“Books were my greatest treasures, and all that came my way I read with avidity, but in my father’s house I had but very few, but these I made the most of, the bible I read over and over again, and its rich beautiful and delightful pages.
“I loved to wander alone about the green hills, over looking the romantic heath of my native Wakefield; there ever was to me a holy and sweet tranquillity in the rich glorious verdure of the woods, fields, and meadows, that filled my young heart with the most delightful emotions of peace and pleasure; a sort of heavenly blessedness, which the enthusiast can alone feel.” Cottage tales and poems by Mary Hutton 1842.
Mary moved to Sheffield. What occupation she followed is not mentioned. Sometime between 1823 and 1830 she met Michael Hutton, a penknife cutler, a widower, and after a short courtship married. She was 35 years old, and he was 60 years old, living with an adult daughter also called Mary. He had an adult son Thomas, also a penknife cutler, living away from home. Michael had been paying into a benevolent fund all his working life so obviously the hope was a quite secure living with them both supported financially for the rest of their lives. It was not to be.
Michael became ill and when he put in his claim for assistance the benevolent fund denied his claim.
“Before we applied to the parish for my husband, we had parted with every article we possessed in the world, in the delusive hope that something or other would turn up in our favour; for whilst people possess anything to make a shilling of they cannot absolutely die for want in a land of plenty. To young men, I would say in a warning voice, never trust your money to the precariousness and capriciousness of sick clubs; whilst you are in health and strength your contributions will be always welcome….but when old age and sickness, and infirmities overtake you, no matter how good a member you have been….you will then, under some pretext or another, be thrown out, for impudence, ignorance, and injustice generally prevail: my husband’s case, I am sorry to say, is not a solitary one, I would it were.”
Mary was not well either and frequently had to take to her bed for weeks on end. Must have been especially hard for her stepdaughter trying to earn a living and look after her elderly father and his new wife.
Mary came up with a plan that perhaps she could sell her poetry and approached James Montgomery to see if she could get a book of her poems published by him. He said he would, if she could raise enough subscribers (early form of crowd funding) but Mary didn’t know many people with money to spare. She decided to approach the poet, John Holland, who was of similar age and wrote on some of the same topics and sent him her manuscripts. Holland on reading them went to visit her and soon after opened a subscription list.
Mary’s first volume of poems entitled “Sheffield Manor and other poems” dedicated to the Countess of Surrey, was published in 1831.
Mary Hutton was not the only woman to be published, but a working-class woman to earn a living as a poet was unique. Mary’s sheer volume of work was outstanding especially given her personal circumstances. Mary has been described as a Chartist Poet, but her collections of poems would seem a strange mix for a revolutionary as her Cottage Tales and poems included an effusive poem on the birth of a Royal baby and mourning the death of the King.
“I have been honoured with the thanks of his Royal Highness Prince Albert, and her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, twice, for those relative to the Royal Family; and for the lines on the death of the late King, of blessed memory, which appeared in the Sheffield Mercury at the time”.
Yet she also wrote this criticising “our rulers”.
“No more thy humanising influence shed,
Cover no more the poor unshelter’d head,
Though famine rages with infernal stride,
Though cries for bread are heard, both far and wide,
Though young and old, and babes with dying moan,
Implore thy aid—even should all nature groan,
Hear not, sweet maid, the universal cry,
Our rulers say, that half the poor must die.
The population is by far too dense,
So preach our high and mighty men of SENSE;
It must be thinn’d, and how can this be done,
But starving half the poor beneath the sun? “
Possibly inspired by Mary Hutton’s success. Mary Roberts, daughter of manufacturer and Chartist Samuel Roberts, published a set of poems for charity on the theme of Mary Queen of Scots in 1832 and in 1834, Mary Ann Rawson, an abolitionist, produced an anti-slave anthology of poems by women contributors called The Bow in the Cloud.
In 1832 a year after her book was published Cholera hit the town and 402 inhabitants died including the Master Cutler. Times were hard indeed for the whole town.
“On the Cholera Pestilence”:-
How vacant now each sorrowing home
How dark is the distress!
For a darkening cloud of sable gloom
Has veiled our happiness.
In 1836 Mary brought out her second collected works The Happy Isle and other poems. The volumes cost three shillings which was a lot for any worker to pay as the average wage was about five shillings a week for a cutler. It is not known how much per book Mary was paid.
The author most sanguinely flatters herself that this, her Second Publication, will meet with patronage from the admirers of rhymes, and a generous public. The volume will comprise original Pieces together with a selection of those which have appeared from time to time in the periodicals of the day.
“No baneful workhouses were there;
The rich were not alone protected;
Nor yet the poor sold and dissected;
No prisons for pale infancy.” The Happy Isle
Mary’s poems were now reaching national prominence with a review in a London Journal.
Mary Hutton is an uneducated female in humble life, but she possesses some estimable qualities, which neither rank nor education can impart. She possesses a vigorous understanding, a warm heart, and a vivid perception of those latent and abstract qualities of nature which furnish the mental aliment of the poet. There is a tone of enlarged humanity and of gentle piety about her poetics, that invests them with great beauty, and gives promise of better things than she has yet done.
The “Happy Isle” is a satire upon England, written more in sorrow than in sport, and containing many bitter truths, which at once the cause and the consequence of our immorality and impiety. The other poems in the volume present much variety, both of subject and of style. Of the higher qualities of imagination Mary Hutton possesses no very large amount; nor is her versification always happy. But in taste and feeling she is never at fault. She is as free from petty affectations as she is from vulgarities. Poland is a favourite theme with her muse, and the “The Children of Kosciusko.” Awaken her keenest sympathies.
Poland was a theme she was to return to often, as it was an obsession with Chartists especially in Sheffield, where meetings were held to state their support of an independent Poland and their alarm at Russia’s treatment of Poland.
In 1839 Mary Hutton Published the poem “The Poor Man’s Wrongs” It is possibly one of her most powerful poems. Here is a small abstract.
Oh, wondrous age! When those we style humane
Delight to view a fellow-creature’s pain:
Oh, wilful wondrous age, when laws neglect
The helpless beings whom they should protect.
Why am I thus neglected-why thus left
Of every stay-of every hope bereft?
Why must I perish-helpless in the cold?-
Tell. tell! Ye iron men of godless gold.
Why must I perish? Why! because our laws
Do not maintain an honest Christian’s cause:
Why must I die neglected in the cold?
Cause England’s poor have long been bought and sold!
In 1842 she published her third and last book Cottage tales and poems. The cost per volume had risen to five shillings.
“I beg to say, which of course is no excuse at all for bad writing, that these compositions, whatever may be their defects, or relative merits, have emanated from the mind when deeply bowed down with sickness and sorrow; amid privations and afflictions to which there seems to be no period. How I have so far weathered the storm, Heaven and myself alone can tell; it has at times been most terribly hard to endure; the pressure upon the heart, and brain, and mind, and soul, have almost been beyond human endurance.”
In her book she wrote about the practice of child slave labour:
…Behold yon child of pains;
Yon shivering, wretched, helpless child,
On whom contentment never smil’d;
Compelled to brave the winter wild,
And wander through the snow.
Possibly the arrest and imprisonment of the Chartist rebels was preying on her mind amongst other matters . Soon after she published her Cottage Tales Samuel Holberry the Chartist leader of a failed uprising in Sheffield, died in Prison. The Women Chartists became more vocal.
“Sisters we live in an age distinguished from all preceding times by the intellectual progress of the working classes; the industrious millions have began to think for themselves and have discovered that the great cause of all the evils that effect them is class legislation; a most important sign of the times is the wide-spread contempt with which the working classes now regard the trade of butchery and blood-spilling heretofore dignified with the title of the profession of arms. This augurs well for the future, and affords us a bright and buoyant hope that the time is not far distant when men will refuse to become the hired murderers of their fellow men and when the reign of violence and tyranny will give place to the empire of peace and justice. Sisters, we appeal to you to help your brethren in their warfare against the despotism of class legislation, that we have equal rights and equal laws by the establishment of the People’s Charter as the law of the land. In conclusion, we beg of you never to forget our petition, signed by three millions and a half of the starving people, spurned rejected by the proud aristocrats of England.”
Signed on behalf of the female Chartists of Sheffield. Ann Harrison Chairwoman 1842
In 1843 her husband was then compelled to apply for help for her due to a bout of deep depression, while he himself was admitted as an in-patient of the Infirmary in the Workhouse. Mary was described as suffering from extreme anxiety which was not surprising as very few people who entered the workhouse infirmary as patients left alive. The workhouse didn’t have provision for Mary and she was sent to the Attercliffe Mad House.
“The Attercliffe Mad house was an unlicensed place, more like a prison than an asylum, and better calculated to produce insanity than to cure or relieve it. “
“The Attercliffe “Mad House” is a damp place, with low rooms, and two confined courts, and, saving the sky above their heads, and the walls around them, which some have painted with figures in order to while away their tedious hours, the poor lunatics see nothing – the soothing and diverting prospect of nature being shut from their eyes. “
There was between 20 and 30 lunatics crowded together sometimes sleeping two to a bed, the presiding doctor visited about 3 times a week and lived about 2 miles away.
A letter to the paper says “There she remained during two weeks of such dreadful sufferings, that had they been longer continued, they must, she says, have precluded all hope of recovery”. Mary was then sent to the Wakefield Asylum, “a change as she states, almost resembling a removal from hell to heaven.
Provision for pauper patients in Sheffield was poor. The York Asylum opened in 1777 with accommodation for 54 pauper patients. Unfortunately, due to mismanagement it became overcrowded and led to extreme ill-treatment of some patients. It was the unexplained death of a Quaker patient there that prompted William Tuke to open the Retreat of the Society of Friends which had a gentler humane approach resulting in many patients returning home.
In 1814 the visiting magistrates of the West Riding of Yorkshire resolved to establish an asylum for the County near Wakefield and Samuel Tuke, grandson of the founder of The Retreat at York, was invited to provide recommendations for the design of the building.
Even though by the time Mary was a patient the Asylum had had to be extended several times the contrast alone must have been therapeutic.
The records in the Wakefield Asylum reads
Fifty-year-old Mary Hutton, a housekeeper from Sheffield, was admitted on 18th October 1843, suffering from melancholia caused by mental anxiety. Married with one child, she was said to have been insane for three weeks, her first attack. She was considered to be suicidal and was prone to tear her clothes.
Mary was given medication to help with sleeplessness and constipation and by late December was much better and able to be given some work.
23rd December 1843. Is employed in the Workroom, sewing or knitting. She is recovering rapidly. From what be learned of her past life, and present appearance, she seems to possess a peculiarly sensitive mind. She is highly intelligent for her sphere in life and is an Authoress, but her sensitive nature subjects her to poignant suffering from the privations and hardship of life.
Mary was in the Wakefield Asylum for four months and recovered under the care of a Dr Corsellis and his wife.
“You will perceive by this that memory and reason have returned, consequently, the recollection of the bitter past. I should very much like to be at home with you, and my dear Mary; and I think that I am quite well enough to be so. It was only on the fifth of the present month, that I was conscious of the march of time; I fancy that I have been here four or five weeks; at least so I am given to understand. My time must have been very short at Attercliffe; for I know I was at my own home the latter part of last September. I was treated with great cruelty at Attercliffe: too gross and shameful to think of. I have no complaints to make against the authorities here, for I have met with kindness from them. I was dragged from Attercliffe in the pauper’s dress of degradation: all my own clothes were taken from me: I had scarcely anything on to keep me from the cold: I will make no more complaints. I am much obliged to the kind governor of this place, for permission to address you.”
Later in gratitude for her care in Wakefield, Mary wrote a poem in their honour.
TO DR AND MRS CORSELLIS
To You, ye worthy, noble-minded pair,
Devoted Love and Gratitude I owe,
For your exalted skill and timely care,
Uprais’d me from the lowest depths of woe.
When in a storm of wild convulsions toss’d
My health and strength and blessed reason lost:
And when I scarce could know my depth of pain,
Through the wild whirlings of a fever’d brain;
Angelic tones fell softly on my ear.
And sweetly soothed and bade me banish fear,
And cheer’s my poor desponding soul with love,
And bade me hope and trust in heaven above.
Samuel Roberts and James Montgomery put a plea in the paper :–
“as of 19 January 1844, Mary has “been returned to Sheffield, about three weeks….(and husband and wife) are now living, in a very feeble state, with an only daughter, who has nothing but what she herself can earn to live upon…. Any persons wishing to afford relief, may forward their contribution to either of those whose names appear below, who will take care that all which is in any way contributed, shall be properly applied “
Mary’s remarks were seized upon by concerned doctors who had felt serious disquiet over the use by the Sheffield Board of Guardians of what was an unregistered asylum, which was both poorly staffed and crowded with many patients being there long-term and used as domestic staff. There was also talk of many patients escaping and being found walking along the high street. Also, a patient who was not eating or drinking spent weeks in the Mad House when relatives believed he was going to be sent to Wakefield Asylum.
There followed many critical letters in the papers leading to an inquiry. There was concern that patients that should have been sent to Wakefield were not. Perhaps the real reason for that was the cost which was six shillings a week per patient and using a strictly illegal unregistered Madhouse was thought as a lot cheaper?
In 1845 a new act of parliament was brought in which required lunatic hospitals to be inspected by government officials on a regular basis and lunatics had to be sent to specialised hospitals for treatment. However, no purpose-built asylum was built till 1872 in Sheffield.
In 1846 Michael Hutton died in Green Lane and was buried in St Paul’s churchyard. The church has long since been demolished and all the burials removed to another graveyard as a mass burial. Sheffield’s Peace Gardens now occupy part of the space where St Paul’s once stood.
By 1851 Mary is shown in the census as poetess. She and her stepdaughter Mary are living together. Her stepdaughter stuffed upholstery for a living. Not easy to know whether she was getting many poems published but she wrote a poem for the women’s political association that year so was obviously still actively writing then. Her name is down as a member of the political association too. As Chartist protest faded due to electoral reform and the abolition of the enforced high cost of corn, Chartist women in Sheffield regrouped and created a women’s political association. Anne Knight, a well-known Quaker activist encouraged the women to rename it the Women’s Rights Association and used her influence and her experience of public relations to help them successfully to petition parliament.
The Petition
“To the Honorable the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, the humble petition of the Female inhabitants of the Borough of Sheffield, in the Country of York, in public meeting assembled.
“SHEWETH,-That we the females of Sheffield do approach your Honourable House will all due respect, to make known our desires and opinions upon a subject which we consider is a right withheld,-but which legitimately belongs to our sex –the enfranchisement of Women. Therefore, we beseech your Honourable House to take into your serious consideration the propriety of enacting an “Electoral Law,” which will include ADULT FEMALES Within its provisions, and your petitions as in duty bound will ever pray.”
Signed on behalf of the meeting.
Mrs Abiah Higginbottom, chairwoman.
“hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” and we have waited too long, cherished that hope too much, until we have found that we must organise independent of our brothers, and fight our own battle; and proud are we to say that our humble appearance on the field, and the few steps we have taken, have proved satisfactory, for the congratulations we continue to receive from various quarters embolden us to go forward in faith until the accomplishment of Universal Suffrage in its full extent is achieved . Abiah Higginbotham February 1851
Also in 1851 some of Mary Hutton’s beloved Polish rebels were rescued from Liverpool before being forcibly repatriated to the US. A chartist committee brought 28 refugees to live in Sheffield.
Some time after Mary was admitted to the Shrewsbury Alms-houses where she died at the age of 64 and was buried on May 8th 1959 at nearby St john Cemetery, Park. Coincidentally Abiah Higginbotham died the same year.
Bibliography
Scrimgeour David, 2015, The Proper People, Early Asylum Life in the words of those who were there. Published by Scrimgeour, Prepared and printed by York Publishing Services Ltd 64 Hallfield Road, Layerthorpe, York YO31 7ZQ
Hutton Mary, (1842) Cottage Tales and Poems SHEFFIELD : J. BLURTON, PRINTER, BOTTOM OF KING STREET. MDCCCXLII. (Available online re Google Library)
Hutton Mary (1839) Written on Seeing a Poor Miserable Sweep, The Dublin Weekly Herald.
Timney Meagan B (2009) OF FACTORY GIRLS AND SERVING MAIDS: THE LITERARY LABOURS OF WORKING‐CLASS WOMEN IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia, © Copyright by Meagan B. Timney, 2009
Hutton Mary, (1844, March 23rd) To Dr. and Mrs. Corsellis, The Leeds Intelligencer.
Kettle Roseanna (2023) Poetry and Industrialism in Liverpool, Sheffield, and Manchester, 1770-1842, PhD University of York English and Related Literature
The Reviewer (1836) The Happy Isle; and other poems. By Mary Hutton, The General Advertiser and London Journal
Hawksworth JS (1843 Nov 25th) The Attercliffe Madhouse. Letter to Sheffield Iris.
Nicholson John MD (1843 Nov 21st) The “Attercliffe Madhouse” To the Editor of the Independent.
Hawksworth JS (1843 Dec 9th) To Mr. Robert Waterhouse. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent.
Montgomery James, Roberts Samuel (1844 March 9th) The Case of Mrs Mary Hutton. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent.
Nicholson John MD (1843 Nov 25th) Correspondence. The Attercliffe “Madhouse” To the Editor of the Sheffield Iris, Sheffield Iris.
Pauper Lunatics, Official Inquiry (1844 Jan 20th) Sheffield and Rotherham Independents.
The Establishment of the Sheffield Female Political rights Association (1851) The Atlas
Holland John (1831 Jan 22nd) Editors Preface, Sheffield Manor and Other Poems, The Sheffield Independent.
Newsham William Cartwright (1845) The Poets of Yorkshire, Comprising Sketches of the Lives. London Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster-Row; Sheffield, Ridge and Jackson
Arrival of Polish refugees (1851, 4th March) Liverpool standard and General Commercial Advertiser
Petition by Women of Sheffield (1851 15th February) Saint James Chronicle.
Died (May 12th 1859) death of Mary Hutton, Sheffield Telegraph
Time Walk project 