The Match Girl and the Heiress

Starred review from November 17, 2014
Rutgers University historian Koven (Slumming) has fashioned a scholarly yet highly readable jewel that tackles the big issues of early-20th-century England in an intimate way. Through the lives of Muriel Lester and Nellie Dowell, he brilliantly illuminates the growth of global capitalism, a revolutionary “God is love” Christian theology, war and pacifism, feminism and sexuality, and class and gender relations. Lester grew up in comfort, the beloved daughter of a self-made man who amassed a fortune in shipbuilding and took his Christian obligations seriously. Dowell, no less a beloved daughter, was born into a working-class family that was doing well until her father, a mariner, died at sea. In Dickensian fashion, the Dowells slipped further down the economic ladder, until Nellie was taken away to an industrial school to prepare her for a life of factory work. Meanwhile, Lester played with dolls and received an education, which led her into social justice projects. Dowell took a job in a match factory, joined the Factory Girls Club, and happened to meet Muriel. They forged an intimate friendship and partnership, “engaged in social, religious, and political work.” Against the socio-economic complexities of the Victorian Era, Koven astutely shows how the pair “strove to make themselves—and modern life—moral.” Illus.

November 1, 2014
Muriel Lester (1885-1968) was one of the best-known faces of the 20th century's global peace movement. Koven (History/Rutgers Univ.; Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London, 2004) explains her strong connection to London's East End through her friend, orphan Nellie Dowell.It was Nellie who opened doors and taught Muriel the best way to help the poor of Bow and Poplar. Muriel and Nellie worked together to recast Victorian values and reimagine gender and class. Muriel based her social justice brand of Christianity on Tolstoy's interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Muriel and her sister, Doris, fully supported by their wealthy father, moved to Bromley by Bow in 1912 and established Kingsley House in 1915. There, they provided Bible classes, a Montessori school, an adult school for men, a baby clinic and an alcohol-free pub. They lived next door to Nellie and her mother, though the author has no record of when they met. Nellie spent five years of her childhood in a Poor Law school before she became a match factory girl. She was valued and sent first to Wellington, New Zealand, and then to Sweden to teach workers the company's methods. However, her years of poverty and recurring bouts of rheumatic fever shortened her career and her life. Illness plagued both women, and Muriel insisted her "Prayer of Relaxation" enabled her recovery from a breakdown in 1916. Nellie served Muriel faithfully, and her letters show how she wished for an exclusive friendship. The author dwells excessively on the question of whether these two women were lesbians or chaste romantic friends. The real story here is the idealistic work of Muriel, Doris and Nellie as they fought for universal justice and economic equality. Koven demonstrates how these women changed the world's attitude toward the poor.

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