Katherine Farebrother (1857-1928) 

The Farebrother collection came to the museum in 1976 after a trunk containing many items of dress was found in a clear out of a family home and offered to the museum.

The clothes were worn by Katherine Sophia Farebrother and date from the late-Victorian and Edwardian period. The decision to relegate her fashionable clothes to a trunk, never to be worn again, was taken on the occassion of her second husband's death, Horace John Lloyd Farebrother in 1913, when she entered a period of mourning that was to last for fifteen years until her death in 1928.

Whilst Horace was alive the family home in Salisbury was a venue for numerous events in the social calendar of the middle class circles, and Katherine was a prominent member of these gatherings. Suitable outfits would have been bought and worn over a number of years for such events and were preserved when stored away in 1913.

Included in the collection are items bought from the London stores Liberty's and Dickins and Jones, as well as clothing from more homely, such as those made by a local dressmaker. Also included are many beauty and medicinal products used by Katherine Farebrother such as liver pills, compressed lavender blossom by Yardley and a sachet of sweet violet.

Writing in 1976 her grandson, Michael Farebrother, said: 'She was a loyal and devoted wife and lived quietly in a domesticated, rather than a social context. She was a talented artrist and a good plain needlewoman, "creative but not fancy"'. This confident but unassuming personality is reflected in her choice of dress - always fashionable but never too far in the direction of the outre or avant-garde.

The collection contains over 48 outfits and related ephemera from the life of Katherine Farebrother, with the earliest dating from 1878 and the latest c1915.
 

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