Beatrice Webb's 'Other Self'

Beatrice Webb’s family, the Potters, were upper-middle-class, self-made wealthy business people from the north, her father Richard becoming chairman of the Great Western Railway. Older generations of Potters had been radical dissenters, linking them with the ' Chamberlains of Birmingham. Beatrice was the eighth of nine sisters. Their only brother Dickie arrived four years after Beatrice and cut her out from their mother's affections. When Dickie died, aged two, Mrs Potter transferred her love to the youngest child, Rosy. Here was the setting for 'an unloved youth'; and Beatrice believed that her troubles originated there. Or, as we now see it, here was the seed-ground of her very touching and sympathetic 'Other Self'.