VICTORIAN PIONEERS
In the second part of her series on early knitting writers, Penelope Hemingway explores the life of two Bath sisters
Meet 1840s knitting stars Cornelia Mee & Mary Austin
CORNELIA MEE (1815-1875) wrote a number of practical and successful knitting manuals from the 1840s onwards, and often reprised her knitting ‘recipes’, collaborating with her sister, Mary Austin. Their books were second only in popularity to those of Jane Gaugain, thanks to their practical patterns for useful items. “THE WORK-TABLE MAGAZINE by MRS MEE and MISS AUSTIN… This is, of course, a lady’s periodical. The mysteries of the needle are illustrated by plates, some of them coloured, which will no doubt be clear enough to the bright eyes that may examine them; but which to ours are as impenetrable as Egyptian hieroglyphics.” ! THE LEEDS TIMES, FEBRUARY 20TH, 1847 "
Cornelia was born on April 23rd, 1815, to Sarah and Thomas Austin, in Bath, Somerset. Cornelia’s mother was Sarah Shoobert, (sic), and her grandfather was a cooper and ship-chandler, born on Leather Lane, Holborn, London; who lived on Cleveland Road, Stepney, and Cornelia herself was to return to London’s Tower Hamlets district, from time to time. In 1826, her sister Mary was born. The two women were to live and work together throughout their lives.
On December 16th, 1837, Cornelia married Charles Mee in St Michael’s Church, Bath. Charles’ occupation was listed as “Gentleman”, and he was a widower, living at 2 Milsom Street, in Bath. According to Cornelia’s marriage certificate, she had lived at number 38 on the same street, and was the daughter of Thomas Austin, Haberdasher.
It seems Cornelia took over her father’s haberdashery at some point between 1837 and 1841, and for a while was in partnership with a Mr Faudel. That a cooper’s grand-daughter married a “gentleman” suggested some social mobility.
In the 1841 Census, Charles Mee was listed as a ‘Berlin Wool Warehouseman’. Her teenage sister, Mary, lived with them, working as their “shopwoman”, on Milsom Street, in fashionable Bath. Like other 1840s’ knitting manual writers, Jane Gaugain and Elizabeth Jackson, Cornelia was a Berlin wool shop owner, publishing her own books to promote the yarn she sold.
The knitter’s friend
Cornelia and Mary’s books, and later, their magazine, were available by mail order - a new marketing strategy, as the first national Penny Post was introduced in 1840. Maybe it was no coincidence that knitting manuals and mail-order yarn sales developed around the same time that postage became cheaper and standardised.
Mary Austin was no doubt Cornelia’s co-author; the shadowy “Miss Austin” (following the convention that the oldest of unmarried sisters would be known as “Miss”).
Cornelia’s and Mary’s books included A Manual of Knitting, Netting and Crochet; Crochet Explained and Illustrated; The Knitter’s Companion - which went into at least nine editions; Mee’s Companion to the Work-Table - which had knitting, netting and crochet ‘recipes’; and Mrs Mee’s Exercise
in Knitting. Most, but not all, books were co-authored with Mary. We can only speculate which sister did which craft - or whether both sisters worked on the patterns for all three.
Occasionally, “German” patterns appear in the Mee/Austin manuals, and it is possible that some of these may have come from their Schubert family members. Early manual writers seem to have often written quite pan-European patterns; Elizabeth Jackson’s manuals, for example, were to contain Russian stitches and patterns, and we now know she had family members living in Russia.
British textile expertise was in demand across Europe, which explains some of the cross-fertilisation of patterns and ideas as many middle-class manual writers had friends and family abroad.
In 1847, Cornelia and Mary branched out from books to publishing The
Work-Table Magazine. Cornelia and Mary’s patterns were wordy; they made little attempt at abbreviations, and knitting design was so early in the game that a universal, standardised language of knitting abbreviations did not yet exist.
Early knitting manuals were universally genteel; written by vicars’ daughters, or women married to “gentlemen”; women with lists of aristocratic subscribers who helped them into print. In this context, we shouldn’t underestimate the achievements of Mary and Cornelia, who, despite their upmarket Bath addresses, were the grand-daughters of a Cockney cooper in an age with little social mobility.
In the Census of 1851, Cornelia was mistranscribed on the census as “Amelia” Mee. The family were now living at 18 Daniel Street, Bath, with their three daughters, Mary, and three servants. Charles was still a “Berlin Wool Dealer”. The Mees had briefly been in partnership with a Liverpudlian businessman, and when the partnership dissolved, seemed to keep their connections with friends and family in Liverpool and London - both ports, of course, through which Berlin wool may well have been imported. One of Cornelia’s daughters died in Liverpool in 1870.
In the summer of 1854, “Charles Mee, Berlin wool dealer” of Bath, was made bankrupt. By 1861, whilst Cornelia visited friends in Liverpool, Charles, Mary and the rest of the family were now settled in London, on Brook Street; still dealers in Berlin wool, and still apparently prosperous, given the Mayfair address, despite the bankruptcy.
In the 1871 Census, Cornelia was visiting friends in Liverpool and Charles, Mary and the Mee children could be found at Brook Street, in the parish of St George Hanover Square, London. Mary Austin still lived with them, and was listed as “Berlin Wool worker”.
Four years later, Cornelia’s death was registered in Hackney, London. An obituary in The Bath Chronicle read:
“Our obituary contains a notice of the death of Mrs Mee, a sister of Mr E. Austin of Clifton. She may be said to be the founder of the literature of the work-table now so popular. Forty years ago, when residing at Bath, she issued a ‘Manual of Needlework’, which rapidly passed through several editions, and is still a standard work. Subsequently, in conjunction with her sister, (Miss Austin who died in December last), she produced ‘The Work Table Magazine’ a profusely-illustrated serial, which had a successful career… So well was she known as a mistress of art that Thackeray refers to her by name in ‘Vanity Fair’.”
One throwaway line in Cornelia’s obituary tells us Mary pre-deceased Cornelia. This seems to be the fate of the ‘second’ sister named on title pages of knitting manuals; all the fame and glory went to the sibling whose name was emblazoned higher. Yet, many of the knitting manuals we think of as written by Cornelia Mee were also the work of Mary Austin. Hopefully, she will now share the limelight and get the recognition she deserved, as one of the earliest, most pragmatic and useful of the early Victorian knitting manual writers.