About Anne Lister's diary 27-30 March 1836

Introduction

In the two elections of spring 1835, both Anne Lister and Ann Walker had actively canvassed their enfranchised tenants; and subsequently their lesbian ‘marriage’ was subtly and symbolically deployed to try to dissuade them from their high Tory political activity. Since then, and with no more electoral tumult, it seemed their critics had grown quiet.

But the seriousness of their ‘marriage’ had not lessened. Indeed in September 1835 Ann Walker had even laid the foundation stone of the Northgate ‘casino’ in Halifax ‘in the name and at the request of her particular friend, Anne Lister’. Nor did Anne Lister, despite her cash flow problems, halt her ambitious estate development: Ann Walker’s income helped fund sinking the tiny hill-top Walker pit (which lay just above the Rawsons’ own colliery). A loan from Ann Walker helped her take on male experts – like Joseph Mann, her ‘master miner’. Anne Lister’s economic activity was now visible for all to see – including the Rawsons, not only her coal mining rivals but also of course Ann Walker’s relatives.

Anne immersed herself in managing not only her estate business but that of Ann Walker as well; but Ann grew resentful of Anne Lister’s freedoms, while Anne became increasingly exasperated with Ann’s complaints and indecision about her affairs. These domestic tensions all took place against a background of urgent doctor’s visits to Anne’s elderly father Jeremy, who was dying.

Selected passage

March 1836 is a particularly densely rich month (for instance, Anne devoted no less than one hour 45 minutes to writing her lengthy diary entry for Monday 28 March). And, once again, the private world of the unorthodox ‘marriage’ and the more public world of Anne Lister and Ann Walker’s business affairs collided dramatically. The focus is on coal and we enter the very detailed and often archaic world of small-scale mining technology. Anne Lister remained expert at gathering information (eg from Joseph Mann) and then using this intelligence to try to blacken her critics’ names – notably powerful Christopher Rawson. Indeed, the public conflict that now erupted was apparently led by Rawson, who seemingly used all means to deter the two women from continuing their economic activity. This apparently included not only industrial espionage (with Rawson’s men ‘burning devil’s dung’ to smoke Joseph Mann out of Walker pit), but also included a tale that the two women had been burnt in effigy down in Halifax, near the Rawsons’ colliery.

However, the story which unfolds in March 1836 is so byzantine in its interwoven complexities, that NOF users may find, for this particular passage, that they prefer to read it alongside the edited extracts available in Female Fortune.

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