Miriam Daniell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
October 29, 1861
Miriam Daniell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Miriam Wheeler October 29, 1861 Bristol |
| Died | April 19, 1894 (aged 32) San Francisco, USA |
Elizabath Miriam Wheeler Daniell (29 October 1861 – 19 April 1894) was an English strike organiser and radical thinker from Bristol. She gained prominence during the great Bristol floods of 1889 and the Bristol Strike Wave of 1889–90.[1] Miriam emigrated to the USA with her lovers Helena Born[2] and Robert Nicol in 1890 to avoid a scandal in conservative, Victorian Bristol. Miriam died in San Francisco in 1894, aged 32.[1]
Miriam's legacy has variously been interpreted as one of the first free love 'hippies'[3], an early feminist radical or socialist, or as a prominent thinker in the new unionism agenda[4]. In the New Statesman in 2017 of the "menage-a-trois" they reported "these rebels prefigured everything from free love to modern feminism to eco-politics; and, in those Bristol living arrangements, possibly a dash of Habitat-style consumerism as well."[5]
The factual story of Miriam's life was written by Professor Sheila Rowbotham as Rebel Crossings in 2016. The book also chronicled the lives of her partners after Miriam's death: Helena Born and her later partners Helen Tufts and William Bailie, as well as Robert Nicol and his later partner Gertrude Dix.
A fictionalised account of a short period of Miriam's life in Bristol was the subject of a short story in 2022 by historical novelist Cynthia Sally Haggard, told from the perspective of her later divorced husband: solicitor Edward Daniell.[6] Cynthia is a member of the Haggard family and married to Robert Nicols grandson.
Miriam's nephew was Major Sir Mortimer Wheeler, husband of noted archaeologist Tessa Verney Wheeler, and her great-nephew was QC Michael Mortimer Wheeler. Her ancestor was sixteenth century martyr John Rogers.[1]
LGBT historian Elisa Rolle asserts that Miriam's great-niece was American film-maker Elizabeth Wheeler[7], in turns cousin of Hollywood photographer George Daniell[8] and daughter of newspaper magnate John N Wheeler.
Born Elizabeth Miriam Wheeler into a wealthy Clifton family of tea importers and grocers, Miriam and her siblings were educated by a governess from Zurich. Her father was a leading member of the Pembroke Road Congregational Chapel where, at age 19, she married local solicitor Edward Daniell. Miriam's older brother was radicalised at University in Scotland and one of her sisters went on to join the Bristol Socialist Society at the same meeting as Enid Stacy.[1]
With husband Edward Miriam lived in Westbury-on-Trym and then at 28 Hampton Park, Redland. Following a holiday to Scotland in summer 1889, where she had previously had surgery for an unknown illness, Miriam returned to Bristol with young socialist Robert Nicol protégé and 'close companion' of Patrick Geddes.[4] Nicol moved into the family home before moving to 9 Louisa Street near Old Market, a two-up two-down in the working-class district of St Philip's, and was shortly joined there by both Miriam and Helena Born. Miriam considered the house at Louisa Street to be basic and unsanitary.[1]
The move was seen as a scandal at the time, but Rowbotham reports that perception of the arrangement was softened by Helena's presence in the household.[1]
When Miriam discovered she was pregnant in 1890 she felt this scandal would be too acute, even in more liberal circles, so all three emigrated to the USA later that year. Socialist women's private lives were open to particular scrutiny at that time.[4]
Robert Nicol was cited in the later divorce proceedings, brought by Edward Daniell, which concluded in 1894. There is no indication that Miriam's pregnancy became public knowledge and was not noted in the divorce proceedings.[4]