In 2021, I wrote a book on Lorina Bulwer as my pandemic project. I heard about her sitting in a psychiatric outpatient waiting room from a fellow patient after I moved to Great Yarmouth in 2016. Lorina Bulwer was incarcerated on the women’s lunatic ward of Great Yarmouth 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.

 Through mutual friends, Lotte LS, who runs Red Herring Press, contacted me and asked me to write a booklet on Lorina. The pamphlet allowed me to rage with her at how women labelled ‘mad’ are treated. I felt like a kindred spirit. Red Herring Press published the booklet in March 2022. We expected it to sell a few hundred. In fact, it has sold out several times and has reached all corners of the globe.

The accompanying book events were full of energy and people with mental health difficulties were able to be themselves and talk freely. I still get emails from people who have read the booklet and that it has helped with self-acceptance.

Lorina Bulwer’s embroidery shows that even in the most desperate of circumstances and environments, people create, people have culture, people use art to tell their stories and record their discarded histories. I want people today in similar situations to see they have a right to culture, creativity and community too, and that they can link their work to the past and also provide a legacy for the future. If Lorina belongs to anyone, she belongs to women in a similar position, those in mental health services, and those who experience mental distress, those who do not have full access to freedom or status. The current climate of increased violence against women and the eroding of their rights means that this is a vital time for women’s rage to have their voice, especially from women usually forgotten – disabled, disenfranchised, or ‘mad’ women.

I applied to the Arts Council to fund the Lorina Bulwer Legacy Project, a combined arts project to honour the legacy of Lorina Bulwer with workshops, performances, and a recreation of her famous tapestry with modern voices of women, ending with an exhibition.

The following texts came out of the project. Women were free to say what they raged about through embroidery, writing and song. This is the time where rage now belongs to women.

Dolly Sen – May 2025