Lorina Bulwer is the inspiration for our project. Her stitched samplers, the outpouring of anger at the injustice she felt had been done to her are our starting point. Lorina would have had little privacy but managed to express herself by stitching her words onto long samplers. Sometimes incoherent, nevertheless highly expressive, they are a personal testimony of one woman’s experience of workhouse life .

Lorina was  was incarcerated in the lunatic wing of Great Yarmouth workhouse for several years at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was committed by her brother after her parents died.

We are working with two groups of women and are using printing and other techniques to create samplers on which we will stitch our feelings.