The Great Equestrienne Louisa Woolford

Print depicting Mr Ducrow and Miss Woolford in their circus duet as the ‘Tyrolean Sheppard [sic] and Swiss Milkmaid’ as performed at Astley's Theatre (print published 26 July 1831). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

“In ‘The Tyrolean Shepherd and Swiss Milkmaid,’ for example, [Ducrow] was joined by his wife, Louisa Woolford; while standing on the backs of their circling horses, the two performed the pursuit and wooing of a ‘fair peasant,’ complete with a lovers’ quarrel and reconciliation scene, followed by an exquisite pas de deux.” —Britannica

An article about equestriennes that I shared some months ago on Facebook reminded me of one of my favorite early 19th century London locales, Astley’s Amphitheatre, and its equestrienne star, Louisa Woolford. Since she wasn’t a Belle Epoque figure—she was born about 1815, in the Regency era—she didn’t get much attention in the Paris Review piece on equestriennes. Or elsewhere.

Miss Woolford makes a brief appearance in Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, in the piece, “Astley’s.” Not enough about her, but a fine and funny verbal picture of the place, worth reading, I think.

She was the most famous circus performer of the time—but information about her is scarce. Here’s what I’ve pieced together, with the aid of a descendant.

Louisa was the seventh of nine children, one of two born in Ireland (the others were born in England). Her father was a horse breeder and trainer who worked with the famous equestrian circus performer Andrew Ducrow, of Astley’s fame, and she began performing at Astley’s at an early age.

According to a quote from an Andrew Ducrow obituary in a London Dead Blog post: “ ... Miss Woolford ... before she became Mrs Ducrow was for a long time the chief attraction of his theatre, and drew crowds by the accustomed gracefulness of her action, and the skilful management of her steed. The deceased has two children* by her. Miss Woolford was very early a debutante at Astley’s, and many theatrical people of about thirty years standing will remember her at the Amphitheatre under Astley’s management as a little girl with a long crop, and of intelligent and pretty manners. She had two brothers also at the same time with her on the stage, who have since died in America; she bears an amiable and good character; her age is about twenty seven, and she had been married to Mr Ducrow about four years.”

The trouble is, she tends to take second place to her famous husband. She put him in first place as well, with an extravagant epitaph on his magnificently over-the-top mausoleum in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery. I took a detailed look when I visited London a few years ago. On one side of the tomb is the epitaph Louisa wrote, which you can read in full in my blog post at Two Nerdy History Girls.

His funeral, as described in The Gentleman’s Magazine, was in keeping with the grand tomb.

We learn from the Gentleman’s Magazine obituary that Louisa is pregnant (with their third child): “The situation of Mrs. Ducrow renders it probable that her accouchement will take place in June. It is understood to be her intention not to resume her professional exertions.” This pregnancy produced the son who earned his own blog post on the London Dead blog.

Had she resumed her professional exertions, it’s possible that her fame would have equaled her first husband’s. But she married again, about two years after Ducrow’s demise, a gentleman named John Hay. He died in 1873, and she lived on comfortably it seems, having two live-in servants as of the census of 1891. She died at Paddington, London, on 25 January 1900, leaving her daughter something over £ 700.

For the information about her life after Ducrow and for most of the images here I am indebted to Eden Pelletier, a descendant, who got in touch with me after reading my 2NHG blog post about Andrew Ducrow’s mausoleum.

We have not yet found Louisa’s burial place, and we continue to search for further information. For now, she seems to be one of those women who, after the early years of fame, “lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs,” as George Eliot said of Dorothea in Middlemarch.

*Peter Andrew and Louisa.

Hackney Cabs & Hackney Coaches

In A Duke in Shining Armor, a character’s close encounter (offstage) with a hackney cab triggers events. At other times, the characters travel, for reasons of anonymity, in hackney coaches. Though some authors use the terms interchangeably, these are two different vehicles.

HACKNEY CABRIOLET
The photograph of a model at the London Transport Museum offers a 3D view of the two-wheeled, one horse single-passenger cab. It was also known as a coffin cab, for two reasons: (1) the vehicle looked like a coffin and (2) it was dangerous.

The model makes it easier to see the apron that protected passengers from kicked-up dust and stormy weather. Henry Charles Moore's Omnibuses and Cabs tells us, “The fore part of the hood could be lowered as required, and there was a curtain which could be drawn across to shield the rider from wind and rain.” The curtain is hard to see—and I didn’t see it until recently, when I lightened the photo, but one can just about make it out, tucked away inside. The Cruikshank illustration below emphasizes the coffin aspect.

A new and improved version, introduced in 1823, carried two passengers. In my 1830s-set books, I use the later version.

Images, left to right: Cruikshank's illustration for Sketches by Boz; illustration from Omnibuses and Cabs; detail from James Pollard, Hatchetts, the White Horse Cellars, Piccadilly, via Wikipedia.

HACKNEY COACH
First, let’s distinguish hackney coaches, which took individuals to specific destinations, mainly in London, from the stage coaches traveling the King’s highways according to preset routes and schedules. Hackneys were like taxis. Stagecoaches were like long-distance buses. In England they’re still called coaches. Here’s Charles Dickens’s description of a hackney coach, from Sketches by Boz.*

"There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded - a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms,** in shape something like a dissected bat, the axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman,*** with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the 'double shuffle,' in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm."

This chapter of Omnibuses and Cabs: Their Origin and History tells the whole story, with excerpts from Sketches by Boz.

 *First published November 1835, in Bell’s Life in London.
**many of the coaches were vehicles previously owned by aristocrats.
***HACKNEY COACH WATERMAN
London had many, many hackney coach stands during the early 19th century.  This is where you’d find the hackney coach waterman.

Hackney coaches appear upon the stand for hire, at seven o’clock in the morning in summer, and at eight in winter: twelve hundred are allowed to be kept in London and its vicinity, and each is numbered. The prices of fare are regulated; and no coachman can refuse to carry passengers for any distance short of ten miles, however stormy the weather, or however the horses may be fatigued. A certain number are reserved to relieve those that have been employed during the day, which are called night coaches, and they attend at their stands till sun-rise. Public houses are kept open during the night for the accommodation of the coachmen. The figure represented upon this plate is employed as waterman to the stand, who is licensed, and wears a badge with his number engraved thereon: his business is to feed and water the horses, and to open the door for the passengers, that the driver may remain upon his box: he also has charge of the coaches during the time that the coachmen take their meals.

The office for licensing hackney coaches was erected in the year 1696, under the direction of commissioners; they have a code of regulations, which subjects the drivers to penalties for extortion, carelessness, rude behaviour, &c. by which the public is much benefitted; as the mode of redress is rendered simple and expeditious.

—Pyne’s British Costume (originally published 1805 as The Costume of Great Britain).

If you haven't yet had enough of the topic, this section of Leigh’s New Picture of London for 1834 gives a concise overview of London transport in the time of my stories.