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It's Time For A Miss Holmes Deep Dive!
On Chatelaines and Victorian Costumes
by Anna Hiser McGreevy, Costume Designer
The chatelaine happens when women introduce beauty to function. “Chatelaine” is derived from the French term châtelaine which refers to the mistress of a manor house or chateau. The lady of the house would wear a belt for her keys which eventually became the fashion accessory craze of the 19th century. These were the original keychains, essentially, highly personalized, immensely practical, and often lavishly decorated; not too dissimilar from today’s lanyards festooned in baubles and charms and Labubus, et al. One always has little conveniences that one must have on one’s person, and thus, Victorian ladies’ chatelaines carried compacts, sewing kits, lockets, smelling salts, notebooks, flasks, and other small tools, in addition to the ubiquitous keys. Chatelaines also served as a status symbol. The lady of the house carried the keys to everything in her home with a lock, not just the front door; desks, chests of drawers, pantries, silver cabinets, food hampers, etc. The more keys on your chatelaine, the wealthier you were and the nicer your house probably was.
My job as the costume designer is to tell the stories of the play’s characters that you as the audience never get to see, adding context to choices and actions that the text can’t articulate. Clothes tell you a lot about a person; they tell you who the wearer aspires to be, and they might also tell you what the wearer is trying to hide. It is incredibly rare to find plays with sequels in theater, so I had an added challenge to not only dress new characters, but to show how our old friends have grown since we saw them last. Fashion changed frequently and often dramatically throughout the Victorian era; in our case, between Miss Holmes and Miss Holmes Returns, the bustle came back into fashion after only a brief six year holiday. As such, I wanted to make a few “upgrades” for the returning characters and make sure that the clothing, if not perfectly accurate to the era, was at least updated to fit the time. My first impulse was to incorporate chatelaines, a choice I was able to skim the surface of in Miss Holmes with Mrs. Hudson’s small but mighty one. When I was designing the costumes and, eventually, the chatelaines for the ladies in Miss Holmes Returns, I was taking into account not only the characters’ socioeconomic statuses but also their occupations, personalities, and how they move through the world. What would a nurse need to have on her chatelaine? How about a landlady? An activist? A consulting detective? It was my delight to talk with the cast to tease out what each person might need and the discussions inevitably turned into an exercise in character dissection. What did each of these women deem essential enough to carry with them everywhere?
In our theater, intimate as it is, the audience gets to see the detail that goes into these costumes and, in turn, read the subtext on the clothes more clearly than in a proscenium. The devil, as they say, is in the details. For my eagle-eyed audience members and secret sleuths, I’ll leave you with a few clues of my own to uncover. First: look at the number of keys on each lady’s chatelaine, there are only two ladies of the house in our show; can you tell who they are? Second: look at what each character has on their chatelaine and draw your own conclusions for what they might mean for that person. Third: discover, if you can, any secrets that our indomitable ladies might be hiding in plain sight. I hope you enjoyed this peek into the history of the 19th century’s favorite utility belt and a glimpse at my process as a costumer. We are so pleased that you have come back to Baker Street.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 and British Rule
The British East India Company functioned as a sovereign power in control of India on behalf of the British Crown since 1757 after the Battle of Plassey. For 100 years the East India Company and The British Empire extracted immense economic wealth, secured vital raw materials for industrialization, and controlled a massive market for their manufactured goods by exerting control over India. By the Spring of 1857 resentments born of diverse perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, summary treatment of certain rich landowners and princes, and skepticism about British claims that their rule offered material improvement to the Indian economy boiled over into rebellion. On May 10, 1857 a mutiny of sepoys of the East India Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 64 km northeast of Delhi kicked off hostilities. Other mutinies and civilian rebellions began in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, as well as farther north and east. The rebellion posed a military threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior over a year later on June 20, 1858. Many Indians rose against the British; however, many also fought for the British, and the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule. Violence, which was sometimes exceptionally cruel, was inflicted on both sides: on British officers and civilians, including women and children, by the rebels, and on the rebels and their supporters, including sometimes entire villages, by British reprisals; the cities of Delhi (held under siege from July to September 1857) and Lucknow were laid waste in the fighting and the British retaliation. Hundreds of thousands of Indians, mostly civilians, were killed during the war, with many massacred by British forces when the cities of Delhi, Allahabad, Kanpur and Lucknow were captured.
The rebellion saw the end of the East India Company's rule in India. In August, by the Government of India Act 1858, the company's ruling powers over India were transferred to the British Crown. A new British government department, the India Office, was created to handle the governance of India, and its head, the Secretary of State for India, was entrusted with formulating Indian policy. India would remain under British rule until The Partition on August 15, 1947 split the country into India and Pakistan, triggering massive violent riots and one of the largest migrations in history, with roughly one million deaths.
The Women of The Victorian Era
Josephine Butler 1828 - 1906
Josephine Butler was a prominent feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution. She was passionate about the plight of prostitutes and successfully campaigned to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act in 1886. Highly educated herself, Josephine Butler promoted access to higher education for women.
Queen Victoria 1819 - 1901
Given that the era is named after her, Queen Victoria rightly takes her place in this group of influential women of the era. Victoria became queen aged only 18 and ruled for over 63 years. During that time, Britain became a world power and the British empire expanded. Queen Victoria wasn’t only Queen of England and the United Kingdom, she was Empress of India too.
Elizabeth Garret Anderson 1836 - 1917
The Westminster Review of 1868: “Men have never made an outcry against women’s entering upon any occupation however hard or “degrading,” unless that occupation were one in which they would compete with men!”
In 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became the first woman in Britain to qualify as a physician and surgeon after exposing a loophole in the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries’ admissions process, passing her exams for the first time. No hospitals would admit her as a Doctor, including Westminster – the then Chair of Medicine Dr Basham had denied her entry to study at the Hospital school in 1862– and so, she set up her own practice on Euston Road, London, run by women, for women. She became an inspiration for women everywhere, proving their worth in the medical profession. Her life was one of many pioneering firsts, including becoming the first female Mayor, the first female Dean of a medical school, and the first woman to ever sit on a school board of governors in Britain. Her example went a long way to liberalizing admission policy at medical schools across the country: in 1876, partly due to Elizabeth’s open campaigning, an act was passed forcing the British Medical Register to accept women. By 1914, there were over 1000 female doctors in England. However, not everyone was happy about this, and the struggle for equal standing in the profession continued.
Elizabeth Gaskell 1810 - 1865
English novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell is often known simply as Mrs Gaskell. Her novels clearly depict the experiences of not just the wealthy, but middle class and working class people too. She pointed out various uncomfortable truths about society. Consequently, she’s seen as an important social historian rather than simply a writer. Her books include North and South, Wives and Daughters and Cranford.
Edith Cavell 1865 - 1915
Edith Cavell grew up in Norfolk and trained, first as a governess, and then became a nurse. She took up a position as a matron in Brussels in Belgium’s first training hospital. Her pioneering work with nurses led her to be known as the founder of modern nursing in Belgium. Later, in the early 20th century, she worked actively in occupied Belgium during World War I and helped hundreds of British, French and Belgian soldiers escape German troops. Sadly, she was arrested, tried and executed in 1915.
Ada Lovelace 1815 - 1852
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke. Her mother was an extremely intelligent woman who encouraged her daughter’s interest in maths and logic. Aged 17, Ada met Charles Babbage who was an inventor and mathematician. She was enthralled by his work on an analytical engine. Her writings on the invention are seen now as the first computer program or algorithm. Her vision for the machine’s future potential is extraordinary given the limited opportunities for women at that time.
Emmeline Pankhurst 1858 - 1928
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British suffragette who fought hard for women’s right to vote. A strong activist, she founded the Women’s Franchise League in 1889 with the aim of allowing married women to vote. Then came the more radical Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) which spawned the activist suffragette movement. She was arrested and jailed numerous times and even went on hunger strike for her cause. Her daughters, Sylvia and Christabel, joined her in the fight for women’s rights and continued campaigning in the subsequent Edwardian era.
Millicent Fawcett 1847 - 1929
Millicent Fawcett was born in Suffolk and was the younger sister of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. With a pioneering sister role model, Millicent campaigned for women’s suffrage. Her husband, Henry Fawcett, was a Cambridge University professor in political economy. Millicent helped to found Newnham College, Cambridge in order to increase women’s access to education. She also led the largest law-abiding women’s suffrage society, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 - 1861
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a celebrated Victorian poet. She came from an affluent background and gained a good education. But an excruciating spinal disease blighted her life and she took comfort in literature, including feminist and social writings. Her own poetry addressed social issues of the time and she went on to campaign for the abolition of slavery and to reform child labour laws. Her writings caught the eye of a certain Robert Browning, and her love sonnets to him are as famous as her insightful social commentaries.
The Man of Mystery
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 - 1930
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician who created the character Sherlock Holmes 1886. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.
His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on November 20, 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £2,900 in 2019) in exchange for all rights to the story. Doyle's attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent. In November 1891, he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes, ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!" In an attempt to deflect publishers' demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked. As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time. Sherlock Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories and four novels written by Doyle between 1886 and 1927.
Cast Bios