Episode 91. Louisa Twining
SYNOPSIS
Having established herself as a published expert on Christian art in Symbols and Emblems of Early and Medieval Christian Art (1852), the philanthropist Louisa Twining (1820-1912) turned her attention to the plight of workhouse inmates. She was inspired to do so when a family retainer was obliged to enter the forbidding Strand union workhouse, the model for the depiction in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
An expert on the religious networks of Victorian London, Bill Jacob explores how Louisa Twining, a member of the prosperous tea merchant family, leveraged her connections amongst prominent upper middle class women to open up the 1834 Poor Law workhouses to visits, inspection and slow reform.
Twining also campaigned ceaselessly for the improved nursing of the sick in workhouses. A supporter of women’s suffrage, she was in the vanguard of the increased representation of women in public affairs. In 1904 she was president of the Women’s Local Government Society.
GUESTS
Bill Jacob is a retired Anglican priest. He has written on lay people, the clerical profession and religious life in the long eighteenth century. His landmark study Religious Vitality in Victorian London was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.
Simon’s interview with Bill Jacob was recorded in London on 11 September 2026.