From strumpets to plucky pioneers...Karen’s book, Essex Girls, brings to life a breed of women to

10:00pm Friday 20th August 2010

By Tom King

HEY, did you hear Karen Bowman’s joke about the Essex Girl? Probably not, because she doesn’t do Essex Girl jokes.

It is, however, just about the only aspect of the subject on which Karen doesn’t have a deep fund of knowledge.

She won’t even ask, let alone answer, a question such as: “Why do Essex Girls wear green lipstick?”

When it comes to hundreds of real-life Essex females, however, she is the definitive fount of knowledge, as proved by her new book, named, naturally, Essex Girls.

Karen’s family moved to Essex when she was ten, and she has lived here ever since.

“So I’m almost one hundred per cent Essex girl and proud of it,” she says.

Karen, from Eastwood Road, Rayleigh, has been a full-time freelance writer since her children grew up. She has contributed to a range of magazines, but Essex Girls is her first book to be published.

The volume is dedicated to her daughters, Rachel and Alexes, “my own Essex girls,” as she calls them.

In its own understated and scholarly way, the book Essex Girls takes up the cudgels on behalf of the breed.

“As the mother of two Essex girls who don’t conform in any way to the stereotype, I wanted to defend Essex womanhood,” Karen, 52, says.

Her weapons are history and genealogy, the subjects in which she specialises. Prowling the archives, Karen has brought to life dozens of Essex women’s lives from the past.

Some of them are immortals, such as Queen Boudicea, whose statue stands outside the Houses of Parliament, the embodiment of the English fighting spirit.

Others, such as the radical firebrand leader Anne Carter, executed for leading a Maldon riot in protest against poverty, were quite forgotten.

Now, rediscovered by Karen, these extraordinary womenfolk finally get the credit they deserve.

Here are pioneers, successful business figures, social reformers, all distinguished and all dressed in skirts. There are power brokers, fashion leaders, and even the leader of an armed band of women.

Thomasina Tyler, of Brentwood, equipped her all-female platoon with weapons that included “hot spits, three bows, nine arrows, an axe, a great hammer, two kettles of hot water, and a great whetstone”.

Together, while their menfolk hid under the bed, the women stood up against a local land baron and prevented him from demolishing their local chapel.

There are some cheerful and often highly successful strumpets in the line-up, including that most famous of royal mistresses, Nell Gwynn, who had Essex connections. But there is not an idiot to be found, and certainly no doormats.

“Historically, Essex women have been a lively, gutsy crowd. If there’s a theme that emerges from the book, that’s it,” she says.

These Essex girls faced formidable constraints, making their achievements all the more remarkable. Historically, independent-mindedness in women was regarded as a sign of vice, or even madness.

Karen points out: “Girls were raised to obey their parents without question, marry and bear children. When they did marry, they were expected to render unquestioning obedience to their husband and “to learn in silence from him in subjection”.

She says: “Education was believed to corrupt women. A woman’s body and goods became her husband’s property when she married.

“A woman who displeased her husband in any way, real or imagined, could be turned out of the house with just a shift to cover her, and no right of redress.”

That was the system which prevailed for centuries, and only began to wither towards the end of the 19th century. Yet again and again, Essex women bucked this system.

They did so through boldness, ingenuity or just the sheer refusal to comply with their allotted role as mindless doormats.

For Karen, the four years taken to research and write the book have proved an eye-opener.

“I gradually became aware of the power of this subject as I was writing other things,” she says.

“It’s as if these women had a life of their own beyond the grave. They had to be written about.”

It adds up to an inspiring picture. Dukes and earls take a pride in their family trees. But Essex Girls makes it clear that anyone with an Essex granny can also take a powerful pride in their ancestry.

l Essex Girls by Karen Bowman is published by Amberley @ £14.99 ISBN 978 1 84868 895 7 Karen will be signing copies of her book at the Book Inn, Leigh Broadway, on August 26, starting 6.30pm.