Thomas Day was an 18th century author and lawyer who wished to find himself the perfect wife, with a stoic nature and Spartan constitution. When he realised that, as Anna Seward put it, ‘there was no finding such a creature ready made’, he decided that if he wanted an ideal woman he was going to have to make one. We aren’t quite talking about an unnatural Frankenstein-esque creation here but Day’s experiment was almost as horrific.

With help from his friend John Bicknell he ‘acquired’ two orphan girls from the foundling hospital in Shrewsbury, renamed them Sabrina and Lucretia, and then took them to France, where they lived a life of drudgery and servitude.

On their return to England, Day decided to focus his efforts on Sabrina. Lucretia was sent off to be a milliner’s apprentice but Sabrina was brought to Lichfield, where they became part of the social circle that included Anna Seward, Erasmus Darwin and members of the Lunar Society. Sabrina and Day lived at Stowe House, and it was here that some of his worst treatment of the girl took place. As well as making Sabrina carry out all of the household tasks in the four storey house looking over Stowe Pool, Day subjected her to sadistic ‘training’ designed to develop stamina, strength and courage.

The catalogue of cruelty the young girl was subjected to included having a pistol shot at the folds of her petticoats and having hot candle wax melted onto her arms. Day even forced the poor child into the depths of Stowe Pool itself on one occasion, despite knowing that Sabrina couldn’t swim. Once soaked through, Day made her lie on its banks until she dried out.

Despite all of this, Day eventually decided Sabrina wasn’t suitable and so she too was sent away to a boarding school in Sutton Coldfield. He then set his sights on Honora Sneyd who said no way Mr Day, and then her sister Elizabeth, who was briefly engaged to him before surely coming to her senses. (We shall return to the lives and loves of the Sneyd sisters another,ahem, day).

And what of Sabrina? Unbelievably, after controlling her life at the boarding school from afar (she was not to have dance or music lessons), Day decided that actually she might just be his perfect wife after all. But, after seeing her in an outfit he didn’t approve of, he flew into a rage and Sabrina, seeing this for the massive red flag it was, fled and their engagement was called off.

Equally unbelievably, she later married John Bicknell, the other man who took her from the orphanage, at St Phillip’s Cathedral in Birmingham on 16th April 1784. Within three years he was dead, leaving Sabrina with two children and no income. Happily, she moved to London where she found work as a housekeeper and school manager and died at the age of 86.

There have been suggestions that Sabrina’s story may have inspired George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and whilst on the subject of books, I highly recommend you read Wendy Moore’s ‘How to create the perfect wife’, for the full story of this appalling social experiment. The Lunar Society may have been the leading lights of 18th century Lichfield society but for me, their seeming complicity in Thomas Day’s treatment of Sabrina Sidney at Stowe House casts a very dark shadow indeed.