Stacey Halls

1847 and the novelist Charles Dickens has partnered with a philanthropic rich young women to set up a house in Shepherds Bush to rehabilitate female prisoners on release, to educate and train them to begin new lives in Australia but not as convicts. The Matron of the house is experienced and mostly the young women make excellent progress. Their benefactress, Angela, suffers herself from a stalker who haunts her and when one of the women, Martha, loses her sister it sets into place a chain of events that will change the lives of all involved.
It would have been so easy to make Charles Dickens the subject of this novel, as his founding of Urania Cottage is well-known. However, Halls has instead chosen to make this story about the difficult lives of young women in early Victorian England, the perils of being in service, the temptations of theft or prostitution for those without family support etc. It's a really good plot, meticulously researched and engaging to read.… (mer)

I read Stacey Hall’s first book, The Familiars, and loved it. I made a mental note to keep an eye open for her future work. I'm ashamed to say that I still haven't read The Foundling or Mrs. England but I will. And if I needed any extra motivation reading The Household was the best thing I could have done!
The book is what I like to call 'faction' - it's an historical novel based on true facts. The titular household refers to Urania Cottage, the property that Charles Dickens founded with the aim of helping 'fallen' women. He did this with the help and financial assistance of Angela Burnett-Coutts.

The residents of that cottage, selected from inmates of prisons and workhouses, provide the substance of the novel and their stories unfold alongside that of Angela Burdett-Coutts which offers a neat balance between two different social groups.

Although Dickens is referenced many times in the story centre stage is given to the female characters. What I enjoyeded very much was that the supposed 'fallen' women were portrayed, not as victims to be pitied, but as resourceful, and determined people trying to make the best of the lives they were leading. Their stories nestle alongside that of Ms. Burdett-Coutts as equals.

In some ways I had the feeling that it was what I like to call a 'big house' story but that may have been because of the moneyed Ms.Burnett-Coutts!

All the women have their stories and they interlink very cleverly with some tight plotting. But you can’t have an historical novel without some serious research; not just the facts of the period but the essence of the period. Dialogue, locations, attention to the smallest detail bring the narrative to life and transport the reader back to Victorian England.

There are mysteries to ponder, obstacles to overcome and the notion of freedom explored between the rich and the not so rich. There’s compassion and drama, in fact there’s a little of everything! A most absorbing and captivating story. I’m off to procure copies of Mrs.England and The Foundling.

My thanks to Readers First for my prize copy.… (mer)

The History: in 1846 the famous novelist, Charles Dickens, and his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts, determined to found an asylum for rehabilitating fallen women. An application leaflet was distributed to jails, workhouses and hospitals. Urania Cottage in Shepherd’s Bush was purchased and furnished. Food, clothes and shelter would be provided. A strict daily timetable would be planned to include lessons with slate and chalk, all household tasks, gardening, needlework and music. Burdett-Coutts, the heiress of Coutts bank, footed the bill and in November 1847 Urania Cottage opened its doors to the first inmates.

The Household: Mrs Holdsworth is responsible for the well-being, education and retention of her charges at Urania Cottage. If the young women - former prostitutes and petty thieves, the broken, the homeless and the vulnerable - obey the rules they will be given a second chance - but how badly do they want it? A few miles away in a Piccadilly mansion, millionairess Angela Burdett-Coutts receives shocking news. Her stalker of ten years has been released from prison early and she knows it’s only a matter of time before he shows his hand again. As the women’s worlds collide in ways they could never have dreamt of, they quickly discover that freedom always comes at a price.

I loved the way the lives, thoughts and actions of Mrs Holdsworth and Angela Burdett-Coutts were reimagined and interwoven with the sadness, anxiety and traumas suffered by the fictional characters, sisters Martha and Emily and soul sisters Josephine and Annie.

I read The Household in two sittings. The detailed descriptions of open sewers and hooves clattering over cobblestones, guttering candles and porcelain bedpans, squalid living conditions and sumptuous, glazed swan feasts transported me back in time to Victorian London, vividly picturing the fashions and furnishings, people and places. The growing tension and suspense as the multiple plots thickened kept the pages turning.

Beautifully written, extensively researched and brilliantly tied together, day-to-day life in Urania Cottage and the stories of these very different yet equally determined women fighting to survive in the face of adversity had me gripped from beginning to end.… (mer)

I found this an immediately engaging, easy to read and page-turning story. Having read ‘Charles Dickens: A Life’ by Claire Tomalin, I was already aware of the ‘Urania Cottage’ project and so was keen to find out how the author would fictionalise this social experiment. It soon became clear that the author had done a considerable amount of research into this period of Victorian history, as well as into the joint philanthropic project of Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts (millionairess and co-owner of Coutts Bank), which offered an alternative future to young women who had, for one reason or another, spent time in prison, and whose prospects looked bleak. However, at no point in my reading did I feel she had allowed her research to overwhelm the story (a mistake too many authors make!), instead she used it sparingly, yet very effectively, to portray an evocative sense of time and place and to highlight the social mores of that era. The idea of providing a structured environment in which young women could be taught not only how to cook and keep house, (in preparation for a life in service in Australia or one of the other colonies), but would teach them how to read and write and also offer lessons in other subjects, eg religion, history, geography and music, may seem rather patronising to our modern sensibilities, but for many of these young women, most of whom had had almost no education, it offered hope for a better future … although, as an experiment in social-engineering it was always likely to have at least as many ‘failures’ as ‘successes’! For me part of the reason why such ‘charitable’ patronage so often fails is summed-up in the following response from Mrs Holdsworth (the Matron of Urania Cottage) to an accusation from Angela Burdett-Coutts that she had failed in her responsibilities:

“This was not my idea; this was not my project. You think it’s enough to pipe money in, buy them books and
stock the pantry and teach them to play the guitar? What they need more than any of that is our faith in them,
love and patience and a foundation on which they may build their lives. Calling once a week and drinking tea with them only serves to keep the distance between yourself and them. What they need is friendship. A real home, a real family, a sense of belonging they’ve never had before. Not a benefactress paying a royal visit when she has nothing better to do.”

It strikes me that Mrs H’s response remains as relevant today as it did in the mid-nineteenth century!
I found that the various interconnecting storylines added a satisfying multi-layered dimension to the development of the story and also provided opportunities to gradually reveal insights into the backgrounds of the well-drawn individual characters. Although there were a few occasions when I thought that the pacing of the story felt rather slowed down by the number of plotlines, on balance the story held my attention and interest and I admired the author’s skill in weaving historical facts into her storytelling.… (mer)