Early life
Cullwick was born on 26 May 1833 and raised in Shifnal, Shropshire, England. Her father was Charles Fox Cullwick (1803–1847), a Master Saddler of Shifnal and a Burgess of Bridgnorth. The family had been Master Saddlers in Shropshire since one of Charles's great-great-grandfathers, Richard Cullwick (1648–c1720), of Newport, set up his saddlery business, about 1670. Hannah's mother was Martha Owen (1800–1847), a Lady's Maid to the aristocratic Mrs Eyton.
Cullwick had more than a dozen uncles and aunts, and more than fifty first cousins. All were literate, and most were in business as farmers, publicans, and saddlers.
Hannah's father, Charles, appears to have suffered business losses; the family was subsequently very poor. There were five children: Hannah, James (1830–1915), Dick (1836–1887), Ellen (1839–1915), and Polly (1844–1924). James was a master wheelwright and later owned houses. Dick was a master saddler and became a harness maker in London. Ellen married William Cook, the Registrar for Poplar in London. Polly owned a large haberdashery store in the Ipswich Buttermarket.
The five children received a rudimentary schooling; Hannah was sent to the Bluecoat Charity school in Shifnal, and had to contribute financially to the family from the age of eight—first in the home of a solicitor's wife, Mrs Andrew Phillips, a friend and neighbour of the Cullwicks, and then in the Red Lion Inn before beginning a career in service.
Nursemaid
At fourteen Hannah became sole nursemaid to the large family of the Rev Robert Eyton at Ryton Rectory. Her mother died suddenly of an infection that year, at the age of 47, and Hannah's employer in the Eyton household refused to let her travel to visit her family, fearing that the fever would spread to Ryton. Hannah's father died two weeks later, at the age of 44, leaving the five children (ages 3-16) as orphans. The three youngest children needed to be housed: Dick was placed in a saddlery apprenticeship in Horsely Fields, Wolverhampton, with his uncle, William Cullwick (1781–1853); Ellen lived with Aunt Small (née Sarah Owen) on her large farm, in Albrighton near Shrewsbury; and Polly went to live with her spinster aunt Elizabeth Cullwick (1789–1866), in Haughton, Shifnal.
When Hannah was seventeen, she worked as under-housemaid for Lady Boughey at Aqualate Hall, Forton, Staffordshire. She was dismissed after eight months because her mistress saw her (as she later recorded) "playing as we was cleaning our kettles".
Cullwick then worked for Lady Louisa Cotes (1814–1887), wife of John Cotes (1799–1874), of Woodcote Hall, Sheriffhales. During the London seasons of 1852, 1853 and 1854, Lady Cotes took Cullwick as her kitchen maid to London.
Meeting with Arthur Munby
In London, Cullwick met Arthur Munby during one of his regular urban expeditions to investigate working women. Munby was struck by her size (5 feet 7+1⁄2 inches (171.5 cm), 161 pounds (73 kg)) and strength, combined with the nobility of character he claimed to see in working women. Cullwick saw him as an idealised gentleman, who celebrated the intense labour she did as a maid of all work. To be near Munby, she began to work in various middle-class households in London, including an upholsterer's, a beer merchant's, in lodging houses (which gave her more freedom from supervision), and that of a widow with several daughters. She and Munby formed a lasting relationship which led to a secret marriage in 1873.
Before she met Munby, Cullwick had seen a lavish musical, The Death of Sardanapalus ; it was the first time she attended the theatre in her life. The musical, based on the play by Lord Byron, told of an ancient, pacifist king who loved one of his slave girls. The slave, Myrrha, loved the king, but also had her own democratic and republican desires. Cullwick empathised strongly with the play's heroine.
The relationship between Cullwick and Munby
Cullwick proudly called herself Munby's "drudge and slave", and called him "Massa", in a Master/slave relationship. For much of her life, she wore a leather strap around her right wrist and a locking chain around her neck, to which Munby had a key. She wrote letters almost daily to him, describing her long hours of work in great detail. She would arrange to visit him "in [her] dirt", showing the results of full day's cleaning and other domestic work. She had a particular interest in boots, cleaning hundreds each year, sometimes by licking them. She once told Munby that she could tell where her "Massa" had been by how his boots tasted.
Despite her display of subservience and loyalty, Hannah remained independent. She stood up for herself when she thought the terms of her relationship with Munby were being violated. It was reluctantly that she entered into marriage with Munby, seeing it as dependency and boredom. Once they were married, she moved to his lodgings in Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple, central London, where she lived as his servant, though she sometimes played the role of his wife. Munby paid her a housekeeper's allowance for the remainder of her life, even during the decade apart after a major altercation in late October, 1877 when a leading Harley Street doctor diagnosed 'delirium tremens'. During the following 9 years, she seldom met her husband and lived with several friends and relatives in Shifnal, Wombridge, Brewood, Wolverhampton and Bearley near Stratford-upon-Avon, where she cared for her niece's husband's grandmother Mrs Hannah Gibbs. From 1887 onwards, she and Munby rented a cottage in the Shropshire village of Hadley, and they regularly spent time together. In 1903, they moved to Wyke Place in Shifnal, just a few metres from the house where she was born.
She remained active until shortly before her death. On 9 July 1909, she died at the age of 76; the cause of death was recorded as "failure of heart action and senile decay". Her remains were buried in St Andrew's churchyard in Shifnal; her gravestone bears the words: "she was for 36 years of pure and unbroken love the wedded wife of Arthur Munby of Clifton Holme in the Wapentake of Bulmer".
Munby died in January 1910, aged 81. He left an estate of £26,000. He bequeathed his books and 2 deed-boxes filled with correspondence, diaries, and photographs, to the British Museum. They were unable to accept the donation, and provision was made for the items to be kept at Trinity College, Cambridge, and not opened until 1950. Emily Gibbs' daughter, Ada Perks (1882–1971), asked the Master of Trinity College if she should represent the Cullwick family at the opening of the boxes, and was informed there was no need.
Diaries
Whilst Hannah Cullwick's diaries concentrate on the recording of her menial work during her very long working weeks, they also record the couple's occasional enjoyed erotic games infantilism and ageplay, with Cullwick carrying Munby in her arms and holding him on her lap.
Her ability to embody different roles delighted Munby; she appeared in his photographs as a farm girl, a kitchen drudge, a chimney sweep with blackface, a well dressed lady (with her hands, unmistakably those of a working woman, prominently displayed), a Magdalen, and a man.
Cullwick's diaries (small selections of which are published as The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant in the controversial edition by the Marxist historian Lizbeth Stanley, not approved by Cullwick's family) provide detailed information on the lives of working-class Victorian servant women. They are a record of sixteen-hour days and profound respect for the middle-class morality of the era despite her deviancy from sexual norms.
In 2003, a short independent film based on Cullwick's diaries, On My Knees , was made by Kim Wood. It stars Melora Creager of Rasputina.
A full biography published in 2022 by a distant relative of Hannah Munby, John Cullwick, contained many new facts about her early life, the reasons she and Munby were apart between 1877-1887 and much about their last 20 years together in Shropshire.
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