Heartbreaking testimony from a British woman of servant class, which she recorded in cross-stitch embroidery in 1830.

"Elizabeth Parker recounting the abuse she suffered, indicating the vulnerability of young working-class women employed in households far from their families, and the power of needlework as a form of historic women’s writing #Unravelling #WomensArt" https://twitter.com/womensart1/status/1477579693100605440?fbclid=IwAR3jNGnKs9hfX2KNzIDdAqcOGk7zQflZmIjgD2-cpSsRSmGvGoFPw6HJ2mA

Her stitched testimony shows that she suffered post-traumatic stress from an abusive master who tried to rape her, a live-in servant in her teens, and threw her down the stairs.

"As I cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person whose intimacy and tenderness I can fully intrust myself and I know will bear with all my weaknesses – I was born at Ashburnham in the country of Sussex in the year 1813 of poor but pious parents my fathers occupation was a labourer for the Rt Hon the Earl of A My mother kept the Rt Hon – the Countess of A Charity School and by their ample conduct and great industry were enabeled to render a comfortable living for their family which were eleven in number

"I went to Fairlight housemaid to Lieu. G but there cruel usage soon made me curse my Disobedience to my parents wishing I had taken there advice and never left the worthy family of P. but then alas to late they treated me with cruelty to [sic] horrible to mention for trying to avoid the wicked design of my master I was thrown down stairs but I very soon left them and came to my friends but being young and foolish I never told my friends what had happened to me …"

Her account shows that her next employer called in a doctor to treat her depression and suicidality. He browbeat her with religious doctrine, with much talk of sin and repentance, "wretch that I am," "pardon my iniquity," and on and on in that vein. "But oh how can I expect mercy who went on in sin until Dr. W. remind me of my wickedness... what will become of my soul."

A historian found evidence that Elizabeth survived and became a schoolteacher in Ashburnham. She was apparently unable to afford housing, since in the 1850s she went to live in an Almshouse, at the age of about 40. She lived there for the rest of her life, and died in 1889, at the age of 76.

Her number was legion. The doctor used her trauma as an in to browbeat her with religious dogma. She rose to become a teacher but didn't make enough to avoid ending up spending half her life in an almshouse.

" After narrating her attempt to commit suicide, Elizabeth Parker ‘writes’:

"Oh how can I expect mercy who went on in sin until Dr W reminded me of my wickedness For with shame I own I returned to thee O God because I had nowhere else to go How can such repentance as mine be sincere what will become of my soul ……"

"The stitching ends here."

https://dwtextilestories.blogspot.com/2013/03/elizabeth-parkers-sampler-trauma-and.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR22koEVw_bwF0oCnkksjUp9uxL_E4w6RbWFHKSwzL2-IV71S8vFyIug7Qo

"Parker shows the reader that the act of stitching can be used as a conduit to make trauma real, concrete, tactile, visible, and true. Through the materiality of red thread on white cloth Parker transforms trauma into evidence, with her cross-stitch remaining a living document of one woman’s pain. Given the disbelief of so many women’s accounts of sexual violence Parker’s stitched text stands as a remarkable historical testament to the burden of secrecy and shame that is carried deep inside the self. Stitch by stitch, using her writer’s tools of needle and thread, Parker manifests into physicality the residue of pain."

https://stitchandresist.com/2020/04/06/199/

Footnote: "See Rozsika Parker’s seminal text The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (1984) for a thorough exploration of women’s historical relationship to needlework."

"'As I cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person...I can fully ...trust...'. ... The despair of her words is heightened by the way she has formed them, using tiny red cross stitches on a plain ground. She breaks off in mid-sentence 'what will become of my soul'.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O70506/sampler-parker-elizabeth/?fbclid=IwAR254dcVBBS2FMW__M-b9Al1AFjqODaKRGHPcaUvgT_O63xSDFB3STziHT4

Here's another cri de coeur from a trapped woman, the Swedish widow Mötta Charlotta Fock, who was blamed for the death of most of her family due to disease. She cadged scraps of fabric and created this appeal to the judges, who were unmoved and executed her the following year.