Isabella Warnham

Bessie Bonehill (b.1855 - d.1902) was arguably the most influential male impersonator of her time, earning the highest salaries to perform across the globe every night, and yet we see very little of her in historical research.

Examining her career within the frame of design history my research utilises contemporary material culture in the form of carte-de-visites and music sheets to produce an analysis on gender and audience. To explore how typical a representation of the male impersonation profession Bonehill is, I considered how she navigated these facets within three different contexts; the music hall as a portrayal of ‘reality’, pantomime as a portrayal of ‘fantasy’, and offstage as a portrayal of ‘self’. The ways in which this compares with other performers and societal ideologies of the nineteenth century produces questions on the signifiers of gender within clothing, the ways in which performance may or may not alleviate societal responsibility on the performer, and the changes of expectations and execution within different environments. 

Two of Bonehill’s surviving costume ensembles that have never been researched before provided me with a unique insight into the material identity of her as a cross-dressed performer and how she established a gradient of gender through visual identity design.

Shortly before the creation of this snuffbox, the culture surrounding consumption was beginning to change. When considering the increased accessibility to materials and tobacco itself, eighteenth century England was importing more tobacco than ever. Accessible to upper, middle, and lower classes, snuff became ubiquitous in the possessions of man, woman, and even child. Snuff, a pulverised form of tobacco meant to be chewed or inhaled through the nose, originally established itself in England during the reign of Charles II becoming the favoured form by the nobility. Some users carried snuff loose in their pockets, while others preferred to take their snuff from a bottle or a jar. This quickly adapted with the introduction of ornate boxes designed to keep the snuff dry. This essay explores an eighteenth century snuffbox created by Paul Barbot with reference to the sociability, materiality, and consumption that surrounds its production.

Considered an important fashionable accessory to own, occasionally taking on the forms of animals or human figures, the oval shape was most common for snuffboxes made in the eighteenth century. Gold was considered the principal material of which was always indicative as ‘an essential part of the personal equipment of the distinguished’. This alone reveals information about this box’s owner, of which there is no evidence. The type of consumer that would have owned this box is explored in this essay, in conjunction with the ritualistic nature of snuff-taking and the ‘proper’ etiquette rules required.