Abstract
In this study I return to an announcement of a new club that appeared in The Times in 1902. It remained in my mind over many years because of the description of a black cook who was expected to take a post in the Columbia Club’s kitchen. Though brief, this reference to a black Southern woman working in a London kitchen raised several questions, many of which I was unable to answer. Focusing on this announcement, I return to this nameless domestic worker within a strand of my current book project that explores how people lived together in the multi-ethnic cities and towns in the Victorian fin de siècle. Using reports and advertisements in newspapers, I explore the labour undertaken by black working-class men and women within the hierarchies of domestic labour, specifically the spaces of London’s kitchens, and how we can reconstruct or imagine the experiences of those who (may have) cooked in them.
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