Discovering the world of a Victorian lady (From Harrow Times)

Discovering the world of a Victorian lady

4:05pm Thursday 9th February 2012 in Exhibitions By Melanie Dakin

Historians dream of such discoveries; 20 years ago Amy Coburn, a founder member of Harpenden and District Local History Society, investigated a box of notebooks that had been donated anonymously. What she found was a fascinating first-hand account of life and events in Harpenden and beyond. Begun by Theodora Wilson in 1885, the volumes recounted events spanning from the Victorian times through to events leading up to World War Two.

Amy spent some years sifting through the 11 handwritten accounts and transcribing selected parts of the journals. She has given many local history talks, based on Theodora’s material. For the past three years she has worked with Ruth Nason, an editor and Harpenden enthusiast, to turn these extracts into a book.

The result of their labour is Theodora’s Journals, a 256-page book, containing a wide variety of archive photographs from the society’s collection as well as Theodora’s own illustrations and photographs.

“She was interested in anything and everything,“ says Amy. “She was a Victorian lady who saw great changes during her lifetime and she was deeply interested in politics. She was not narrow-minded in any shape or form but showed a great depth of knowledge.“

Daughter of Thomas Wilson, a philanthropist who ran lectures at The Institute (now the Friends Meeting House), Theodora was well educated and had a variety of interests. Two of her sisters became teachers at St Hilda’s. Her youngest brother, Denis, an architect, designed the Harpenden War Memorial and was a founder member of the Society for the Preservation of Rural Harpenden (now The Harpenden Society).

At the time she started writing, the 17-year-old Theodora would have known nothing of cars and aeroplanes but these were among the new inventions she would later come to talk about in her pages, including an account of a motor car journey in 1909 in which she was staggered to learn the vehicle could cover seven miles in half an hour.

The 50 years in which she was writing included key events such as Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, the Boer War, the sinking of the Titanic, World War One, and on to the rise of the Nazis.

“During World War One she describes the soldiers being billeted in Harpenden and what they had to eat because she says ’someone might be interested one day’,“ explains Amy. “By the final chapter, Harpenden had changed, some of her old friends had died and she is despondent. You get the feeling she can sense World War Two coming and she decided not to write any more because she was not a happy person at that stage. You have to remember, when she started writing Harpenden was just a village, not the commuter town it is now.“

There will be an opportunity to meet the editors at a book launch on Saturday, February 11, from 10am to 12.30pm at Harpenden’s High Street Methodist Church. Details: 01582 460621, www.harpenden-history.org.uk