Author Michelle Spring wrote a fascinating article describing the inspiration behind one of her books, which has just jumped to the top of my must-read list:

I wrote Nights in White Satin because of a seventeen-year-old mischief named Daisy Hopkins. She strutted the streets of Cambridge in 1891, wearing a navy blue costume trimmed with gold edging, head held high, catching the eye of the young men. By all reports the exclusively male band of Cambridge students – or scholars, as they were then called—liked a good time every bit as much as students do today. Daisy didn’t want for admirers.

Daisy was arrested on December 2, 1891 and not for the first time. She was sentenced to fourteen days in gaol.

She was detained in the Spinning House, “a dour building constructed centrally on Regent Street”. And what a grim place it was: “tiny cells” where “in the winter, snow drifted between the bars. There was no heating. There was no artificial light; when night fell, they were plunged in darkness.”

One might have imagined that a week spent in these chilling conditions would be punishment enough, but not so; the Town Crier was engaged from time to time to provide more specific forms of discipline. As the Corporation Accounts record: Paid Horner Johnson, by order of Mr Vice Chancellor, for whipping 10 girls… 10s.

For what was particularly interesting was that “for much of its existence, the Spinning House was under the control not of the Borough of Cambridge and the Cambridge magistrates, but of Cambridge University.”

Founded as a workhouse, by the late 18th century it had evolved a “specific and singular purpose: the confinement and punishment of women of ill repute.” The University authorities regularly scoured the streets for offenders, in one notorious incident seizing and flinging into jail “seven young milliners on their way to a party”. Eventually, “the University had finally to surrender some of its ancient rights and to accord the police and magistrates of the Borough the responsibility for maintaining moral order within the boundaries of Cambridge.”

Now, where to find a Cambridge graduate wishing to re-enact episodes from the darker side of their alma mater’s?

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