Lorina Bulwer was incarcerated on the women’s lunatic ward at Great Yarmouth’s Workhouse from 1893 until 1912, when she died. There, she became a needleworker creating embroidered furies on several samplers. She had a place to record her rage and indignation at the world in her now famous pieces.
The current climate of increased hostility to women and the eroding of their rights means it is a vital time for women’s rage to have their voice, especially from women usually side-lined – disabled, disenfranchised and those labelled ‘mad’.
To honour the legacy of Lorina Bulwer, with funding from Lottery Arts Council England, I organised several projects: a complaints choir, a book of women’s rages, a tidy up of Lorina’s grave in Caister, and the re-creation of her famous samplers with the voices of modern women.
This is the time where rage belongs to women. Here is some of their embroidered anger.
