26th June, 2023 in Society & Culture, Women in History

Parliament’s working women: ‘Jane’ and the last days of Bellamy’s Refreshment Rooms

By Dr Mari Takayanagi

By Dr Elizabeth Hallam Smith

Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women by Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith is the first book to tell the stories of women who worked in Parliament, from housekeepers and kitchen staff in the nineteenth century through to the first women Clerks and Hansard Reporters in the twentieth.

2023 also marks 250 years of catering provision in the House of Commons, from when John Bellamy was asked to set up a dining room in 1773. In this guest blog, the authors reveal the true identity of ‘Jane’, doyenne of Bellamy’s refreshment rooms, and outline the struggle that took place under her leadership for the soul of this famed emporium between 1848 and 1851.

Immortalised by the alleged dying words of Pitt the Younger in 1806 – ‘I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s pork pies’ – Bellamy’s refreshment rooms was the place to eat at the Houses of Parliament from about 1773 until 1851 when it was swept away by inexorable tides of progress. Founded by John Bellamy and passed down through his family, its fabled pies were among the culinary delights provided by its doughty team of female cooks.

Two of the staff, ‘Old Nicholas’ and ‘Jane’, who together would preside here for more than three decades, were immortalised by Charles Dickens in a ‘Boz’ sketch in 1835. This was soon after the old Palace of Westminster had burned down and when Parliament was operating out of temporary buildings. Nicholas was, Dickens tells us, the imperturbable butler who had since time immemorial dispensed fast and simple meals of steak, salad and cheese to hungry MPs, washed down with copious supplies of wine and beer. His deputy, nicknamed ‘Jane’, was a gleefully flirtatious and insubordinate chief cook and waitress, famed for her entertaining repartee, and – like the Greek goddess Hebe – eternally youthful. Old Nicholas is readily identifiable from records as Nicholas Keynes, but ‘Jane’ has been known only by her pseudonym – until now.

Elizabeth Burton, née Favill

In 1848, Edmund Bellamy, the last manager of the family’s eponymous catering outlet, submitted some unsolicited but practical advice on kitchen design to Thomas Greene MP, Chief Commissioner for completing the new Palace of Westminster. Edmund recommended there should be a single kitchen so all the work could be done under the eye of ‘one responsible person’, along with a room for a laundry and for roasting and chopping vegetables. ‘In the fitting up of the kitchen it would be desirable there should be two stoves for the Clerks that Members may not be kept waiting ‘till others are served. A fireplace for a gridiron to dress chops or steaks for Members who may require them’ (Parliamentary Archives GRE/1/5).

Busy MPs needed freshly cooked meals, quickly served. These recommendations came, Edmund told Greene, from his chief cook, Elizabeth Burton. Born Elizabeth Favill in 1795, she was – as demonstrated by a wide range of evidence including the Bellamys’ account books, evidence to Committees and press reports – none other than the famous ‘Jane’ herself. Chief cook since 1817, she was in 1848 presiding over Bellamy’s kitchen in the Stone Building near the Law Courts and she had clearly lost none of her insubordinate vigour. By the end of her career in 1851 Elizabeth had been promoted to Resident Housekeeper of the Refreshment Rooms, House of Commons, following Nicholas Keynes’s retirement.

The battle of the gridiron

But back in 1848, Greene ignored Elizabeth’s sensible advice. Instead, architect Charles Barry pressed on with fitting out the new catering facilities to the highest specifications possible, based on the designs that he had evolved for his Reform Club with the advice of celebrity chef Alexis Soyer.

This was done at the behest of the House of Commons Kitchen Committee, political gastronomers with a vision that their dining outlets would match the very best that London Clubs had to offer. On Edmund Bellamy’s death in 1849, the Committee replaced him with George Woodhouse, lately steward to the Duke of Beaufort. Woodhouse had strict instructions to widen the menus and to improve service levels – but without increasing the annual £300 budget for the waiting staff and supplies. The Committee also hauled the cooks over the coals, setting the scene for a standoff between Elizabeth Burton and her new manager.

Elizabeth would win this initial battle, for Woodhouse, striving to deliver a fine dining experience with inadequate facilities, found himself unable to give satisfaction, while next door in Bellamy’s kitchen, Elizabeth triumphantly ensured that matters continued as they always had. The press gleefully reported that in this small, plain and broiling hot apartment with ‘an immense fire, meat screens, gridirons and a small tub for washing glasses’, ‘Jane’ still presided, assisted by ‘two very unpretending old women’ and serving up little other than beer, chops and steaks. Many members who shunned the formal delights of the dining room or tearoom much preferred this ‘freer and easier kitchen… where they enjoyed the sight of the cooking of the meat, afterwards put before them’.

The last days of Bellamy’s

But Bellamy’s days were numbered. It might have been long regarded as a corner of the Constitution, but it was now a relic of a bygone age, consigned to oblivion ‘along with rotten boroughs and other congenial props of the British institutions’ (Illustrated London News, 13 Aug 1853, p. 2). Its rooms were also urgently needed by the Law Courts next door. And so it was, that when Parliament rose in August 1851, Bellamy’s was unceremoniously closed down. On 12 September its fixtures and fittings were auctioned off, Elizabeth’s kitchen range fetching £7.15s amidst noisy jests from crowds of spectators about Bellamy’s famous chops.

Elizabeth’s battle of the gridiron was lost – and a new era of catering began in February 1852 when Barry’s Commons chamber finally opened, along with dining rooms, tea rooms and bars for both Houses. In this universe of deferential staff, over-specified and costly equipment, and wider menus, there was no place for the outmoded people or customs of Bellamy’s. They passed into history, although for the next few years rumours circulated that ‘Jane’ was ‘still, we hear, to be seen about the new Houses; no longer a Hebe, but fat and forty; yet still sure of kindly nods from the old members when she happens to meet them’ (Illustrated Times, 17 July 1858, p. 14)

Elizabeth Burton lived out her days in the Westminster area and died in 1862. Meanwhile, successive catering managers never achieved the nirvana of delivering fine dining for the Members. Eventually, in 1884, exasperated by endless complaints about slow service, the Kitchen Committee would bring back not just one grill but two to serve the main Commons dining room – more than thirty long years after the demise of Bellamy’s.

This feature was originally published on the History of Parliament blog.