The village school and the 1881 sampler

In centuries past, children were meant to be seen and not heard and so parents, governesses and teachers devised various methods of good works to keep them occupied. For the girls, sewing was high on the list of activities that could be pursued in silence and at the same time, taught a craft that would be useful in later life.

The sampler came to be regarded as an essential part of a young woman’s education because it provided a record of all the stitches and patterns that a housewife would require and as pictures of houses, churches, trees and flowers were added, they became works of art when finished in silk thread on linen. Among the more common inscriptions are prayers, moral maximums and biblical texts, often showing a preoccupation with death and misery, although less depressing subjects can also be found such as those depicting maps and major events although these are particularly rare because of their value as social or historical documents.

The most beautiful specimens of original sampler work that have survived belong to the 17th century and in consequence are rarely found outside museums although the 18th century did see some fine examples which are highly collectable. In later years, they were framed for their artistic value and many were indeed triumphs of decorative needlework which are highly prized by connoisseurs and collectors. The fashion for using Indian cotton resulted in many designs with bright floral patterns although the variety of stitches had decreased by the end of the 18th century when cross-stitch alone appears to have held the field and this became known as the sampler stitch.

Sampler making was a common subject on the curriculum of the early state schools of the 19th century and, with typical Victorian sense, alphabets and numerals were usually the prescribed patterns in order that children would learn two subjects at once. Because of the large number of participants, materials were necessarily cheaper and brightly coloured wools were employed on meshed canvas and more ambitious designs such as landscapes and animals, often cleverly shaded, were made possible by the use of coloured embroidery charts, although these niceties are usually absent in classroom designs which tend to be more mundane.

The inscriptions on samplers are a literature in themselves and an intriguing record of the precepts of child education during that period. One such example from the Bourne area has been acquired by Jacqueline Holdsworth of Guildford in Surrey, who bought it from an antiques shop near Hanover in Germany where the owner said that he had picked it up about 15 years before at a street market in England. “I suppose I bought it because it was in the wrong country and demanded to be brought home”, said Jacqueline.

The sampler was the work of Fanny Letitia Michelson, a pupil attending the village school at Dowsby in 1881. Education, as elsewhere in England at that time, was entirely at the behest of local philanthropists and it was the Burrell family of Dowsby Hall who founded and maintained a parish school in the village during the 17th century when classes were held in the vestry of St Andrew’s Church, a room that was later enlarged for this purpose. This was replaced by an endowed or elementary school, built of red brick and blue slate on land near the church in 1864 with room for 65 children although attendance was usually far less. The average number at lessons in 1885 was only 42 but this had risen to 53 by the end of the century. John Robert Holmes was headmaster and he was also the parish clerk and the local collector of taxes and he was still in charge in 1904 although by that time the rector, the Rev Thomasin Albert Stoodley, had taken over as parish clerk.

The school was financed with money raised by a local rate, a government grant and an annual endowment of £10 from the estates of local landowners and continued in use until it closed under the government re-organisation of education in 1976 when the building was sold and it has since been rebuilt as a private home. The village was also sufficiently prosperous at that time to support a mill that survived into the 20th century, as well as a boot and shoe maker, a grocer and beer retailer, but today all have closed and there are no shops or services apart from a telephone kiosk.

Fanny's sampler contains the letters of the alphabet in capitals and lower case, the numbers from 1 to 11, her name with the date 1881, and a few lines in cross-stitch. This is a simple example of the art, a relic of elementary education during Victorian times, worked in red wool and canvas rather than silk and linen, and it has not weathered the years particularly well. But once its antecedents are known, it becomes an interesting example of school work in the late 19th century, one that Jacqueline describes as “a simple sampler, not over-embellished, just plain and honest”, and although she does not say how much she paid for it, in the right sale on a good day it would be quite likely to fetch £20-£30. Whatever would Fanny have thought had she known that her work would one day be that valuable?

Research has revealed that Fanny was the nine-year-old daughter of a farmer, William Michelson, aged 49, and his wife Sarah, aged 52, who lived at nearby Milthorpe [also spelled Millthorpe] and they had three other children, an 18-year-old daughter Maria and sons Robert, aged 16, and Richard, aged 12. Milthorpe is not marked on many maps because it is little more than a hamlet with a population of 70 in 1881. It is almost a mile to the north of Dowsby and in the absence of motor cars and public transport, we must assume that Fanny had to walk to and from school every day along a country road or perhaps taking a short cut by following farm tracks across the fields.

William Michelson was an established farmer with land in Aslackby fen and is listed in Kelly’s Directory for 1876 and again in 1886 although by 1904, his son Robert had taken over but we have no idea what happened to Fanny after her schooldays, the most likely eventuality being marriage or domestic service. Michelson is a name that occurs frequently in the social history of the Bourne area and descendants of Fanny’s family may still be alive. One of her ancestors is almost certainly Robert Michelson who managed the Dowsby Decoy from 1763 to 1783. He and his wife Isabella lie beneath a pair of fine slate headstones in the churchyard outside the south porch.

WRITTEN MARCH 2004