Imagine you are a young woman living in Victorian Cambridge. You are sent on an errand for groceries, to collect laundry or fetch the doctor. It’s late in the day. Suddenly you are apprehended by two ‘police officers’ who believe you have immoral intentions and fling you into a prison cell without trial.
This was the reality for many young women in Cambridge from Elizabethan times to the Victorian era. Local author and historian Caroline Biggs discovered the shocking story and was intrigued enough to investigate extensively. Her research evolved into a book, The Spinning House, published in 2024.
Town and gown
Biggs is deeply interested in the Cambridge of local people rather than the students. The University receives so much publicity that it’s easy to believe that’s all there is to the town. However, she tells me the ‘town’ has its own rich history. Before the University even existed, it was one of England’s biggest trading ports when the river connected with The Wash.
Over the ensuing centuries, there has been an uneasy, unequal interplay between ‘town and gown’ in Cambridge. Even in 1820 it was recognised as an ‘ancient and inveterate antipathy’ which erupted into a ‘battle’ between men on both sides. This mutual suspicion also brought grave consequences for many townswomen because the needs of university undergraduates took priority over their rights and freedom.
Back in the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I granted the University of Cambridge a charter permitting the arrest and incarceration of any woman suspected of soliciting. In other towns, and even the University of Oxford, proof was required before such an arrest. In Oxford, there were fair trials with a magistrate, and evidence was necessary. But not in Cambridge. There, the University Proctors had the power to arrest any woman on the streets after dark merely on ‘suspicion of evil’. There was a fear that the women might ‘corrupt’ the male students’ character.
Committal books
Part of Caroline Bigg’s research involved studying the three ‘Committal Books’, which were found in the University Library. They are the original documents which list the names and sentences of the 6,000 women arrested in the Victorian era for walking on the streets after dark. The records start in 1823; little is known about the women detained there in previous centuries.
Women were tried in a private court without legal defence or witnesses. Apart from saying their names, they could not speak to defend themselves. They were then usually locked up in the ‘Spinning House’, sometimes for weeks. This had originally been ‘Hobson’s workhouse’, where the resident paupers were taught a trade like spinning, hence the name.
The dilapidated building on St Andrew’s Street was finally demolished in 1901, to be replaced by a police station. It is now a hotel.
The women’s stories
Biggs delved deeper into the women’s stories, using court records, newspaper reports and censuses. They were arrested by the University’s own police force, known as ‘bulldogs’, and imprisoned in the terrible conditions of the Spinning House. Those who resisted, protesting their innocence, were recorded as ‘aggravated arrests’ and received even longer sentences.
One young woman she focuses on was Elizabeth Howe. “It was upsetting to read about what happened to Elizabeth,” says Biggs. “She was probably completely innocent and didn’t deserve it”. The cell had broken windows; it was damp and freezing cold. Elizabeth fell ill, no doctor was summoned to treat her, and sadly she died.
In 1891, Daisy Hopkins, aged 17, was apprehended for the crime of ‘walking with a member of the university’. There was public furore at the injustice of the arrest, followed by a court case. The practice was eventually ended by an Act of Parliament in 1893. More details here.
Thousands of completely innocent women were detained in the Spinning House over the centuries, many whose names and fates we will never know. Caroline Biggs felt strongly that their story needs to be heard.
The Spinning House by Caroline Biggs is published by The History Press.
Follow Caroline on Instagram @carolinebwriter or on Bluesky at carolinebiggs.bsky.social
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