The Venial Sins of Miss Bubb

Chastity Bubb is the perfect Victorian daughter: devout, dutiful, and entirely without curiosity. She pines for a curate. She wins prizes for penmanship. She dreams of cucumbers.

If Chastity's father has "important business" in Devizes it is not her place to ask why. If every servant in the household has red hair, if her brother is rusticated from Oxford, if her mother is bedridden with nervous debility, if her companion is Jamaican, if her beloved curate shows no interest, and if the local dogs have lost their sense of direction, it is not Chastity’s place to question Providence.

Then her father installs her in a hidden closet with an ear-trumpet. What follows is a masterclass in the art of tactical innocence.

Set in 1840s Cheltenham, The Venial Sins of Miss Bubb is a sly tale of secrets and forgivable sins. 

"   If Victorian Bristol was built on slavery and Victorian Manchester was built on cotton, Victorian Cheltenham was built on the Bible. From 1820 to 1845, Cheltenham's population exploded, as the middle classes flocked to its evangelical churches and schools.

Perusing a title deed, I came across a gentleman who did rather well mixing piety with business - Benjamin Bubb esq., solicitor, property developer and church administrator. I traced his descendants and servants through the Victorian census records and his dealings through property records in the Gloucestershire County archives.

I then came across the Reverend Robertson, curate at the church which Benjamin managed. His auburn whiskers were said to capture the hearts and souls of the womenfolk, but he had a crisis of faith - and never married.

Then I wondered how Benjamin's wife and daughters might have maintained Cheltenham morality. How much did they know of what was going on around them - and how much did they guess ? "