Lost Clubs: The first Ladies' Carlton Club (1910)

An Edwardian experiment

The clubhouse of the short-lived first Ladies’ Carlton Club, at 51-52 New Bond Street, photographed in 2024. (Photo credit: Google Maps street view.)

There is much confusion about the Ladies’ Carlton Club - even the well-established club of the late 1940s would come to claim that it had been in operation “since 1910”. But closer research shows that these were two separate, unrelated organisations. This is the story of the first incarnation of the Ladies’ Carlton Club, which turned out to be extremely short-lived. In this respect, it mirrored many other clubs of the era.

Nonetheless, the Club remains of interest because of its wider significance. It was the culmination of two trends in late Victorian and Edwardian London Clubland: the explosion in women’s clubs, and the explosion in political clubs. The magazine Truth described some of the related issues in 1911:

“There is no more significant sign of the present-day breaking-away from the Victorian traditions of the home than the multiplication of women's clubs. The drawing-room has had its day, and the club smoking-room offers an irresistible alternative. To be in the fashion every woman must have her club. Nor is she always content with one. Consequently new ones spring up on every side - bridge clubs and working women's clubs; clubs, social and political, literary, artistic, and sporting. Some of them pay, but a good many do not, and it happens not infrequently that the woman finds that the club which she has joined has mysteriously faded away into nothingness, and that to be in the fashion she must lighten her purse of a few more guineas, and hope for better luck next time.”

Fictional forebear

The first reference to a Ladies’ Carlton Club was in fiction. The little-remembered 1908 novel The Man Who Lived by Beryl Tucker (which was first serialised in the Daily Record in 1907) features a character ordering a cab to a fictitious Ladies’ Carlton Club in Albemarle Street. It was not to remain fictional for much longer.

Origins

On 24th November 1909, the Bradford Daily Telegraph noted that a Ladies’ Carlton Club was “among the latest registrations in London.” Company records at Somerset House showed that it had £1,000 in capital. It took up an office at 28 Brook Street in Mayfair, and invited applications through a series of newspaper advertisements and a prospectus.

Objectives

The Club announced its launch in January 1910 by taking out a front-page advertisement in the conservative Morning Chronicle. It announced its aims were

“The suppression of Socialism, and the support of Tariff Reform.”

This was significant. The UK was then amidst the major constitutional crisis of 1909-11 (which included two general elections), and the Tariff Reform issue was identified not merely with conservatism, but with a brand of populist campaigning conservatism opposed to free trade, as championed in the early 1900s by Joseph Chamberlain.

The Club’s opening prospectus made it abundantly clear that it was a deeply political project, and which side it took. It is worth quoting the objectives in full:

“1. - To bring together Ladies of Social Position who are sincere in their desire to support the Unionist and Conservative Government in their efforts to suppress Socialism and advance Tariff Reform.

“2. - Women's Influence in Political Circles has from the earliest times carried great weight when directed from the Social World, and has invariably been for the Good of the Country.

“3. - The present wave of Socialism which is passing over the Country threatens to destroy our oldest and most valued Traditions, even to the Throne itself, and is sowing the seed of a Revolution. The interests of Capital and Property are seriously at Stake.

“4. - At such a moment it is the duty of all who have the interest of the nation at heart to do everything in their power to suppres this wave, and to bring all their influence to bear to avert what may become a National calamity, for if the Socialists once attain their ends the damage done to the Constitution of our Kingdom can never be repaired.

“5. - Tariff Reform will be one of the leading important questions which will be discussed at the Meetings and Debates, and the Members will be asked to support, as far as possible, British Industries by purchasing goods and fabrics of British or Colonial manufacture, and also to encourage British labour, especially among the better class of domestic servants.

“6. - The first object of the Club will thus be seen to be Political; to assist this, the Social side will be carefully considered. Receptions and Salons may be held, to which prominent politicians and upholders of the Unionist and Conservative cause will be invited as guests. It is believed that by this means a more general knowledge of the current affairs of the Country may be learned by women of leisure and property who will gain a Real Insight into the various laws, and proposed laws, bearing directly or indirectly on their vested interests.

“7. - A constant source of interest will be maintained by the Political Committee.”

The Club’s launch did not come without criticism. Several papers affiliated to organised labour, such as the Labour Leader, mocked its objects and pretensions. Most scathing of all was the Marxist newspaper Justice, which belittlingly wrote with more than a hint of chauvinism on 26 February 1910, of “this penny-toy movement”:

“These dear good ladies, in their little luxurious corner of the West End of London, are going to drink tea together, and at the same time “suppress” a great international movement which has for its one and only object the freeing of the last set of slaves! The ladies’ Piccadilly [sic] organisation will be to the workers’ organisation what the explosion of an ignited drop of petrol is in the cylinder of a motor-car to the rumblings, crashings, and upheavals of an earthquake or a volcano.”

Building

Early in 1910, the Club opened provisional clubrooms at an address on Mayfair’s Cork Street. This was only a temporary step, however, until a larger clubhouse was leased.

The clubhouse opened on 8 June 1910 at 51-52 New Bond Street. Based in the heart of “Ladies’ Clubland”, it was a few doors from where two other women’s clubs had been located until 1909 - the University Club for Ladies (as it was then called) at number 31 (which had moved to new premises), and the Austral Club at number 37 (which had closed down). The building included a ground-floor gallery and exhibition space - which can still be seen in the surviving building today - which were to be used for political campaigns.

Membership

The Club’s lofty claims in its political objectives may have attracted some ridicule. Nevertheless, the Club’s prospectus was obviously appealing: in a matter of months, it rapidly signed up and elected some 2,000 women, with a full subscription of £3, 3s, which compared favourably to many subscriptions of the day.

An epic list of vice-presidents on the prospectus included a duchess, a marchioness, 15 countesses, 5 viscountesses, and 27 baronesses. Truth thought the Club “a very high-class affair indeed”, and noted that titled ladies dominated the Club’s general council and committee, with the latter being “equally Carlton-y, for only two of its members were commoners.” Truth took a somewhat cynical view, that the predominance of titled patrons made it particularly appealing to social climbers.

Turmoil and closure

Many of the “big name” patronesses on the Club’s prospectus proved to be short-lived associations. The Dublin Daily Express reported on 17 May 1910 that the Countess of Stradbroke had resigned from the Club, as had “the other members of the committee.” Reynold’s Newspaper went even further:

“Nearly all the leading ladies of the Ladies' Carlton Club...have resigned. There are strange rumours afloat as to the cause for their action.”

There was never any public confirmation of the reason for the mass-resignations, though given what happened next, it may well have related to financial concerns.

The turmoil around the Committee did not prevent the opening of the new clubhouse the following month.

However, June 1910 also saw the distribution of a circular from the Club Secretary, which caused considerable disquiet. In it, he described the Club’s launch as “a phenomenal success”, but invited members to purchase shares in a new company that was being floated, “to acquire the Ladies’ Carlton Club, with all the privileges of absolute control.”

Since members had already been told that the Limited Liability Company established the previous November was the owner of the Club, they began to wonder what was going on with the ownership of the Club. They also asked themselves what had become of their subscriptions - a topic on which the management refused to comment in the autumn of 1910.

Finally, matters came to a head later in the year when the landlord of the New Bond Street premises sued the Club for outstanding rent, and obtained a court order to access the premises.

Upon entry, the landlord found that not only had the club closed down, but the rooms had been stripped bare, with the furniture seized by the company which had supplied it. Truth tells us, “In this way the brief career of the Ladies' Carlton ended.”

Clubs could often be a highly speculative affair, and it was not unusual for them to close down after only a few years or months. In its brief months of existence at the height of the 1909-11 constitutional crisis, the Ladies’ Carlton Club attracted considerable column inches around its political objectives and involvement of ladies in politics. But it then promptly vanished, almost without a trace.

(A later Clubland Substack piece will look at the second, longer-lived Ladies’ Carlton Club of 1922-58.)

---

You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.