Agnes Garrett 1845 -1935

Suffragist, interior designer.

12 July 1845 – 19 March 1935

Rhoda and Agnes Garrett – Rhoda (left) and Agnes (right)

A Tribute by Elizabeth Crawford

Although born in Suffolk in 1845, Agnes Garrett lived for most of her long life in London. She was 30 years old in 1875 when, with her cousin Rhoda, she took over the lease of 2 Gower Street, Bloomsbury, and it was there, in 1935, that she died. The house was not only her home but also, between 1875 and 1905, the place from which she conducted ‘R. and A. Garrett’, the house decorating business she and Rhoda set up, and which, after her cousin’s death in 1882, she ran alone.

Agnes had no need to work because her father, Newson Garrett, a Suffolk maltster, provided her with a generous allowance, but she chose to do so. For some years, as the eldest unmarried daughter, she was ‘the daughter-at-home’, but it is clear from correspondence that this was a position from which she wished to escape. In the mid-1860s her elder sister, Elizabeth, had achieved this in a spectacular fashion by qualifying as Britain’s first woman doctor and setting up in practice in London. Elizabeth had ‘felt an increasing longing for some definite occupation, which should also bring in time a position and a moderate income’, a view with which Agnes concurred. Their cousin Rhoda, however, did not have the luxury of choice, her father being unable to support her. She had seemed doomed to a lifetime of governessing, the only respectable ‘profession’ open to young women of middle-class upbringing and little education, before the cousins decided to train for their new career.

At that time, as the campaign for women’s suffrage was gathering momentum, opponents argued that the home was woman’s area of influence, the public sphere that of man. Yet ‘house decorating’, or interior design, was, like so many other areas of work, still the preserve of men. In an 1876 lecture Rhoda Garrett challenged this orthodoxy, remarking, ‘woman’s sphere and woman’s mission is one of the most important problems of the present day, but here, at least, in the decoration and beautifying of the house, no one will dispute their right to work.’ She continued by stressing the necessity for women to receive an appropriate training, as she and Agnes had, being apprenticed for three years to an architect, John McKean Brydon, who ensured they received a practical training in all aspects of the work.

They began business in mid-1874 in a flat behind Baker Street station, before moving into 2 Gower Street. By doing so they demonstrated their independent spirit, for at the time Bloomsbury was a distinctly unfashionable neighbourhood, Gower Street’s late-18th-century brick architecture being deemed dull and monotonous compared with the stucco splendours of Kensington. While continuing to work from home, in 1879 they opened a warehouse at 4 Morwell Street, tucked behind Tottenham Court Road, then London’s furniture centre, and just across Bedford Square from their home. Here they were able to house stocks of furniture, carpets, wallpaper, and textiles, all of which they themselves designed, and to hold occasional exhibitions.

Although neither Agnes or Rhoda left a private or business archive and although the work of interior designers is so ephemeral, it has been possible to identify some homes in which they worked and some of the furniture they designed. Of the latter, the largest collection is held at Standen, a house in Kent now owned by the National Trust, but built for the family of James Beale, a solicitor who was involved with the Garretts in other projects. A cabinet made by the Garretts for the Beales is now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The most comprehensive surviving description of the Garretts at work, as they dealt with drains as well as decorations, comes from the diary of Hubert Parry, the composer, who, with his wife, employed Rhoda and Agnes to decorate their London home. In 1876 he had spent a fortnight with the Garretts, writing that ‘to live in their house is a very great deal of happiness in itself. The quiet and soothing colour of the walls and decoration and the admirable taste of all things acts upon the mind in the most comforting manner. I was quite excised of the vulgar idea that everything ought to be light & gaudy & covered with gilt in London.’

A view of the drawing-room at 2 Gower Street, Bloomsbury – as illustrated in R. & A. Garrett, *House Decorating.*

Although it has been possible to uncover a few other descriptions of the commissions executed by ‘R & A. Garrett’, the clearest evidence of what pleased Parry can be seen in the views of their rooms in 2 Gower Street which are included in a book, Suggestions for House Decoration, written by Rhoda and Agnes and published in 1876. Apart from giving us an idea of the Garretts’ decorating style, using panels of wallpaper and favouring 18^th-century furniture, we can see that their drawing room, which ran across the front of the house, also contained items of furniture they had themselves designed, such as a corner cabinet and a daybed identical to ones now at Standen.

One of Agnes Garrett’s specialities was the design of chimney pieces and panelling, probably the largest single items approximating to ‘architecture’ that a woman at that time was likely to design. By chance it has been possible to uncover one chimney piece that we know from archival records was designed by Agnes. For it survives in the building that in 1890 she was commissioned to decorate, the New Hospital for Women, founded by her sister, Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The former hospital building at 130 Euston Road has been restored by UNISON, its current occupant, and Agnes’ chimney piece, which had been boarded in, is now revealed. Millicent Vince, one of Agnes’ former pupils, wrote that, ‘her most beautiful work was, I think, in her panelled rooms. When you look at one of her rooms – its mantelpiece, its cupboards, its panelling and its mouldings – you see at once how a room should be, and become, a single work of art; and then, when you live in it you discover that each thing within that work of art has been made also to serve exactly its own purpose and use. A decorator’s work, like an architect’s is unsigned, but I should always know a Garrett room as soon as I went into it.’

Millicent Vince was just one of a number of young women that Agnes took on as a pupil, the training lasting three years. As Agnes explained in 1875: ‘I think the thing which it is most important to impress upon women is the necessity of a thorough and systematic training in any work which they intend to do. The bête noire of women has hitherto been the idea that they “can do anything”. Upon examination this generally is proved to mean that they can do nothing well, not from natural incapacity, but from want of training.’

Agnes Garrett was involved not only in house decoration, but also with supplying, for middle-class working women like herself, purpose-built accommodation, providing a like-minded community with safe and comfortable dwellings. She was a founding director of The Ladies’ Residential Chambers Ltd, formed in 1888 to erect a suitable building in Chenies Street, off Gower Street, with John Brydon as architect and James Beale as its solicitor. The Ladies’ Residential Chambers proved so popular that in 1896 it was extended, increasing the number of sets of rooms from 22 to 37 and creating a new dining room in the basement of this addition. The concept of a communal dining room was central to the ethos of the Chambers and every care was taken to make the room as attractive and artistic as possible. The Chenies Street venture proved so successful that the Ladies’ Residential Company soon built another set of Chambers in York Street, Marylebone.

The Chenies Street building had been opened in 1889 by Agnes’ sister, Millicent Fawcett, who, with her daughter, had moved to live with Agnes in 2 Gower Street after the death in 1884 of her husband, the Liberal politician, Henry Fawcett. Millicent, together with Rhoda and Agnes, had been involved since the late-1860s in the campaign to win the parliamentary vote for women and was to become the leader of the constitutional wing in the 20^th century.

Until her death Rhoda had been the movement’s star speaker, often accompanied by Agnes as she undertook suffrage tours around the country. In the late 1880s, as Millicent consolidated her position as a leader of the movement, Agnes was a member of the executive committee of the main suffrage society and, until the vote was won, continued to offer financial and practical support. With Millicent, Agnes Garrett was present in Parliament on 2 July 1928 to hear the Royal Assent granted to the Equal Franchise Act that, at last, gave women the same voting rights as men.

Further Reading

For an in-depth study of Agnes Garrett’s work see Elizabeth Crawford: Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their Circle, Francis Boutle, 2002.

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