I have been meaning to put on the record that the anecdote about Miss Lydia Becker comes from a magazine, Free Lance, published in Manchester by John Heywood of Deansgate & by Beresford & Havill of Corporation Street from 1866 to 1880
Described as A Journal of Humour & Criticism, Political, Municipal, Social, Literary & Artistic, it is a kind of cross between old fashioned Punch & today’s Private Eye, mixing satire & straight reporting with a measure of literary pretension - it introduced itself on Saturday 22 December 1866 with a long (nearly 2-page) poem in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer
So the story about Lydia Becker is probably – but not, absolutely definitely - a joke
