140 Years of The Lady
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Contrary to the inference of her name, The Lady was not born out of landed gentry. Her founder, Thomas Gibson Bowles was born on 15 January 1841, the illegitimate son of Thomas Milner Gibson and Susannah Bowles, a servant girl. The first three years of his life were spent in relative poverty as his mother lived in lodgings in Whitechapel. When Thomas was three, Milner Gibson became aware of Thomas’ existence and, thereafter, ensured that he was provided for. Thomas was moved to Suffolk, welcomed into the home of Thomas and his wife, Arethusa, and by all accounts had a happy childhood, attending a private prep school prior to being educated in France. Despite gaining a place at a London University, he dropped out after a year and found employment as a Clerk at Somerset House. It was during that time that he began writing, contributing to The Glow Worm, a theatrical paper founded by his half-sister, Alice and her husband. In 1865 Thomas’ stepmother, Arethusa, a formidable society hostess, introduced him to Algernon Borthwick, editor of The Morning Post (later The Daily Telegraph). Borthwick commissioned Thomas to write for The Owl, a new society magazine he had recently set up. In 1866 Thomas resigned from the civil service and became a regular columnist for The Morning Post. The following year, Thomas set up his own publication, Tomahawk, a satirical journal. It was for The Morning Post that he reported on the Siege of Paris in 1870. Whilst still at The Morning Post in 1868, Thomas’ friend, Colonel Frederick Burnaby, lent him £100 (half the sum needed) to founder Vanity Fair, a magazine tailored to Thomas’ political interests and literary talents. Thomas wrote most of it himself using a variety of aliases such as Jehu Junior, Blanc Bec, Auditor, Choker and Pantagruel. Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde’s brother, William, were among its later contributors along with Frederick Burnaby who wrote under the pseudonym, Convalescent. On December 23rd, 1875, Thomas married Jessica, daughter of Major General Charles Evans-Gordon. It is possible that she encouraged Thomas to start The Lady. Prior to the magazine’s foundation, there had only been two other weekly newspapers for women, ‘The Queen’ and ‘The Gentlewoman’. Thomas’ vision was to create a woman’s paper of ‘greater practical usefulness and having a rather lighter literary touch than that of its predecessor, Vanity Fair, in fact, suitably modified for women readers’. The first issue of The Lady appeared on 19 February 1885. Within it was the following announcement: “The Lady is presented to the public with the confidence that a journal of its kind will commend itself to those for whom it is intended. Our object is, and constantly will be, to cover the whole field of womanly action, to ascertain what kind of information it is that women of education most need, and to provide them with that precise information. Whether in the more serious business of woman’s life, or in those matters apparently more trivial, yet scarcely less important, which relate to its adornment and beautification, we shall seek to furnish them with all such useful and worthy aid as can possibly be given in the pages of a weekly journal. Our purpose is to make The Lady at once a valuable friend and a delightful companion; and in this purpose we shall not restrict ourselves to the old paths, but shall seek the aid of novelty in matter, methods, and in treatment whenever it appears best calculated to fulfil our purpose.” The magazine opened with ‘Social News’ followed by a collection of articles documenting housekeeping, fashion and cookery. The famous classified columns began as a free service for readers, although charges were introduced in 1887. The cover price was sixpence, a considerably large amount, and the first issue only sold 2,361 copies. Thomas’ friend, the Rev. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), wrote to him after the first issue of The Lady had been published, criticising its confused content. Apparently, he demonstrated dislike for the phrase ‘to look beautiful is one of the first duties of a lady’. Despite a price reduction in later weeks and the axing of the magazine’s weekly coloured drawing, The Lady did not flourish in early editions. It was only when Rita Shell (Tello), Thomas’ children’s governess and his mistress after the death of his wife, became Editor in 1894 that The Lady’s fortunes changed. It was Tello who introduced the small advertisements, and soon after the magazine began to thrive. Tello edited The Lady until 1925 when she was succeeded by her former chief assistant, Mr Kay. In 1930, Nora Heald took over as Editor until 1954 and it was under her that authors Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons were regular contributors. It is testament to The Lady’s popularity that she survived The Great Depression of 1930-31, both World Wars and three recessions. In the early 1930s, George Bowles, Thomas’s son, and his family moved into a flat above the offices of The Lady on Bedford Street to help solve financial troubles. My late mother-in-Law, Julia Budworth, daughter of George often used to tell me how, as a child, she was kept awake at night by the sound of the printing press in the basement of 38 Bedford Street. George ran the magazine throughout the Second World War when it enjoyed remarkable profits. This has been largely credited to its ‘deposit’ system set up to sell second hand clothes, linen and household goods, which regained popularity during rationing. Throughout her history, The Lady has been linked to many social and literary figures including George Bowles’ friend, the writer and historian Hilaire Belloc, who regularly visited The Lady’s offices, and, also George’s brother the eccentric socialite Geoffrey, who was an early advocate of the health food movement. Geoffrey and George were uncles to the Mitford sisters and their father, David Mitford, (the model for his daughter Nancy’s ranting ‘Uncle Matthew’), worked as General Manager of The Lady office before the First World War. It was he who returned from Burma with a pet mongoose which lived in the basement of The Lady’s building in Covent Garden, keeping The Lady rat free. Stella Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm in 1932 whilst working at The Lady. As detailed by Julia Budworth in her book, Never Forget, Stella came up with the title after numerous others had been bandied around the office by Editorial staff members. More recently authors such as Anthony Horowitz, Alexander McCall Smith, Jilly Cooper and Barbara Taylor Bradford have featured in The Lady. Historical novelist Juliet Nicholson gleaned inspiration for her writing by immersing herself in the archive of The Lady. The Lady has always been run by a member of the same family, for over 50 years by a disproportionate partnership between Ben’s uncle and mother. Having liked things just as they were and not embracing change nor the digital age, The Lady’s revenues fell off a cliff around 2007. As senior partner, Ben’s uncle, Tom declared that he wanted to close The Lady. However, Ben persuaded Tom to sell The Lady to him. At the time The Lady was haemorrhaging around £1m per year and the entire publishing industry had fallen to its knees as fewer and fewer people were buying printed media. We had bred a generation who demanded information with immediacy and without cost, a generation prepared to spend more on a cup of coffee than a magazine. Ben appointed Sarah Kennedy as Editor who absolutely adopted the right tone for The Lady. It is likely she would still be Editor had her husband’s job not taken her to America. Rachel Johnson then became Editor, and I joined on the commercial side; between us, we started to turn The Lady around. Without the funds for a marketing campaign, this was an uphill struggle. Channel 4 broadcast a skilfully edited documentary, ‘The Lady and the revamp’ and shortly after, we created ‘Lady Ambassadors’, volunteers who would actively promote The Lady to their friends and local businesses, between them covering the country. Two advertisements in The Lady delivered over 1,100 applicants. Of these, we selected around 85 whose ages spanned 11 to 81, clearly demonstrating that the common denominator of fans of The Lady is attitude, not age. Printed media has continued to decline but The Lady has, to a degree, held her own in that declining industry. She now is available on every platform, making it as easy as possible for readers to enjoy The Lady in their preferred way, be it digitally or in print. But the key to her survival stems from the work of Tello. Over the past 140 years, The Lady has forged the reputation of being THE place to recruit staff. She is the gatekeeper of the domestic recruitment industry. One former member of the Royal Household once told me that ‘a job is not a proper job unless it is advertised through The Lady’. We have a digital jobs board enabling us to recruit globally and a dedicated recruitment division who will find precisely the right person for the job. As is often said, ‘what goes around, comes around’. This was born out when I answered the telephone one day and spoke to a gentleman who said, ‘I’m 87 years old and 85 years ago a nanny was found for me through the pages of The Lady; I would now like you to find me a Carer’. Having survived, two world wars, countless recessions and a global pandemic without ever missing an issue, The Lady ceased publication in April 2025. However, continues with that for which The Lady has become renowned, the recruitment of domestic staff. The Lady has been catapulted into the 21st century and now boasts the world’s biggest domestic jobsboard. It has never been more appropriate to say that a job simply isn’t a job unless it is in The Lady. Editors of The Lady 1885 - 2025 1885 Mr Tiller 1893 Mr Hemyng 1895 Rita Shell (Tello) 1925 James Kay 1930 Nora Heald 1953 Margaret Whitford 1971 Joan Grahame 1981 Arline Usden 2009 Sarah Kennedy 2009 Rachel Johnson 2012 Matt Warren (Awarded magazine Editor of the Year 2013) 2015 Sam Taylor 2019 Maxine Frith 2022 Helen Budworth |
