Have You Heard Of... Anne Lister?
Anne Lister was a landowner and diary writer.
Anne Lister was a law unto herself. Born in 1791, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Anne’s home was Shibden Hall. It’s where we used to go on days out, when we were children, brought up, as we were, just down the road. Anne was an unusual person, for her time. She dressed from head to foot in black, her outfits decidedly masculine compared to the fashions for women of her day. Striding about Halifax, Anne’s nickname, locally, and somewhat cruelly, was ‘Gentleman Jack’.
Anne was a forceful character and not shy of money or doing business, and looking after the Shibden estate she had inherited. Business dealings were not women’s work, and yet Anne proved herself to be astute, unyielding, and meticulous in her attitude to, well, probably everything. You might not have wanted to be on the wrong side of a business transaction with Anne Lister. I can imagine they were not for the faint hearted.
Anne certainly seems to have ruffled feathers down in Halifax, in her day.
Anne loved women. Although historians assume that being a lesbian was not an unusual thing at the time, although probably more unusual than the expected route for a woman of marriage and motherhood, Anne’s lifestyle was in itself perhaps unequivocally different. She was not backward in coming forward, to use a phrase still heard often around Yorkshire. An avid and thorough diarist, Anne recorded detailed accounts of all aspects of her life, including her love life.
The fact that passages in her diaries detailing her loves, and sex life, are in code might lead us to assume that she herself was well aware that her sexual identity was something to keep hidden. Anne notes down orgasms and intimate details. The diaries are nothing short of an historical window into the world of a woman striving to be independent – to be herself – in a man’s world with its strict and stifling parameters.
Anne was a thoroughly modern woman. Perhaps we wouldn’t exactly like her; she knew what she wanted and she seemed to know how to arrange how to get it, including romances and liasons with women, both on her travels, and close to home. Locally, Anne wooed and courted a wealthy woman called Ann Walker. Sealing their love with a wedding ring, they went to church to have their union blessed. Anne Walker moved into Shibden Hall and the two women enjoyed life together.
Anne’s diaries were found at the start of the twentieth century by her relative, John Lister. Intrigued, John tried to crack the code, with the help of a friend, and after some work, they puzzled it out. The contents, laid open, were so incendiary that the diaries were almost destroyed. Luckily for us, John kept them instead, hiding them in a panel of the wall at Shibden. Years later, a local historian, Helena Whitbread, painstakingly decoded the diaries once more and published them in 1988.
Anne Lister died in 1841, on a trip to Russia. Ann Walker brought her remains home to Yorkshire, a journey which took some months.