The Bryant and May “match girls” strike of 1888 is one of those carefully selected events from which women pop into mainstream history; being a a nice balance for the suffragettes certainly helps.

But another talk today put flesh on the bones in more ways than one, suggesting that the strikers were considerably older than the 12 to 15 that is generally suggested. Certainly this picture of the elected organisers doesn’t suggest young teenagers.

The talk covered the life of Sarah Chapman, one of these organisers, and the highest-paid worker involved in the strike (40s in the week before it started – CORRECTION, this should be 40 pence – see comments)). She is listed as a “booker”, although apparently no one knows now exactly what that meant.

A huge amount of research has managed to almost entirely map out her life, and those of her relatives. She remained active in the trade union movement until 1891, when at the age of 29 she married. Yet despite probably two decades of working in a job that must have been in today’s terms at least semi-skilled, no occupation is given on her marriage certificate. (Her husband, Charles Harry Dearman, is listed as a cabinetmaker.)

It’s a good example of how so many women who were nothing of the sort end up listed as “housewife”.

An excellent account, and some 1,200 documents relating to the strike, can be found at the TUC library.

… doesn’t mean Special Branch is not following you.

A character shown in a new light at the seminar today was Nancy Cunard, of whom I was vaguely aware as a rebellious socialite. She was, however, I learnt, much more than that, being a writer, scholar and significant political campaigner, as this account indicates. Also here and an image of her by Man Ray here. (The biography by Anne Chisholm is apparently the one to read if you want to know more.)

A scholar studying the recently declassified files told us that while she was often dismissed as being paranoid for complaining about the police following her, in fact they were, very closely. The file only ends with her death in a French hospital in 1965.

Some of the PC Plods must have been seriously out of their depth in the job, however. There was a lovely letter from a local police station reporting the arrival of a letting agent from her flat (called out by neighbours’ complaints that “lots of Negros” were going into it). The agent was charmed by her, seems to have accepted her explanation of political work, but immediately rushed down to the police station to hand over the “communist” pamphlets she had given him. A PC was waiting for Special Branch to collect them.

General discussion at the seminar today produced a fascinating snippet; until at least the early 1970s “unaccompanied women” were not allowed into Wimpy’s restaurants (a British burger chain) late at night. (Differing opinions suggested the cut-off was either 11pm or midnight.) This restriction was actually printed on the menu.

So, a former nurse recounted, she and a colleague, in full uniform, were supposed to stand outside to eat their meal, at least until the staff took pity on them, although they had to eat fast, before the shift changed.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that we have come a long way.

I’ve been distracted (from various things I’d been planning to do) over the last couple of days by the arrival of several fiction purchases. I don’t read much fiction these days – I find it just doesn’t grab me the way facts do – but I have been building my Dorothy L Sayers collection, adding this time Busman’s Honeymoon.

Sayers writes beautifully, intelligently, yet in no way pretentiously, sketching out her characters in a few deft strokes. You do have to feel that she was wasted on detective fiction, even though her efforts go far beyond the usual run of the genre. (I still have to read her Dante, as I suspect I promised to do about three months ago – one of these days.)

My favourite is Gaudy Night, a wonderful exploration of the difficulties the women of the Twenties faced in trying to carve out a place for themselves in the male world of academia, and the professions more generally, particularly in fighting their own conditioning.

But Busman’s Honeymoon comes a close second in the favourites’ list; its start, with a selection of “diary” items from different people about the same event, the wedding of Sir Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, is laugh-out-loud funny.

As with all of the books it is a wonderful portrait of the time, as was confirmed by a matchup of fiction and non-fiction today.

I spent most of the day at the London Archive Users Forum/Women’s Library conference, which had a real mix of papers, including one on the “child development experts”, a profession that developed in the first half of this century. At least I think that was what the paper was about; I only got to hear half of it due to the massive traffic jams caused by the Lord Mayor’s Show – an annual irritating attempt to create total chaos across the City.

Anyway, whinge over: in Busman’s Honeymoon, the Duchess, Peter’s mother, an apparently scatterbrained woman who uses a fluttery manner as cover for a penetrating brain, reports on this trend. She writes: “Wonder whether Mussolini’s mother spanked him too much or too little – you can never know, these psychological days. Can distinctly remember spanking Peter, but it doesn’t seem to have warped him much, so psychologists very likely all wrong.”

How right she was: the talk today started on the later Victoria, early Edwardian approach, in which mothers were supposed to ensure that their children, particularly the boys of course, were fearless to the point of stupidity, so they could serve the empire. Any sign of fear in the children, nightmares etc, all the things we’d now regard as a normal part of development, were seen as a failure of mothers.

The paper then discussed the approach in the late 1940s and 1950s to “schoolphobia”, invented in 1924 and much discussed post-War. It was a middle-class disease; working-class kids were just truants – not much has changed there then.

It was not, however, perceived to be a disease of children; no of course the mothers were to blame – they were around too much and too close their children. To deal with the problem, so the experts said, it wasn’t even necessary to see the children, you just had to treat the mothers.
(Busman’s Honeymoon quote, p. 33, 1941, Ninth Impression, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London.)

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aplha2, originally uploaded by natalieben.

I didn’t think it would reproduce, but for a picture taken from a near 100-year-old photo, printed in a newspaper, then scanned 15 years later, Amy’s boat hasn’t come up too badly. The story’s here.

… but the memories keep being stirred up.

The Marlowe quote is one of my favourites, but events have been conspiring lately to bring up most past.

Gordon of The Worsley Blog” has been remembering one of his former “guests”, a persistent possum, whose story is told here.

His description of their “good imitation of hobnail boots when trotting across ceilings” reminded me of when I was a teenager in my study, which had a flat tin roof. Possums didn’t seem to like to live in the huge old oak tree in the front yard, but they certainly liked its acorns, so they used to stamp across the roof from the trees in the backyard to the front in the early evening, then back at various stages during the night. If the cat happened to be out during the procession they’d sit on the guttering and hiss and snarl at her.

(Sadly the oak tree, and the house, are gone now. It was older than the Edwardian house, perhaps one of the oldest oak trees in Sydney – reputedly the site used to be a nursery and they’d pot new plants in its shade – but they knocked down both to build four villas on the big block – no doubt making a big profit since it was close to Epping station. So goes the history of Sydney.)

I’ve also been putting up on my website a couple of stories from my early days as a journalist (for reasons on which I may later post) in Henty, in southern NSW. The stories, I’m pleased to rediscover, make quite decent oral history – even if I’d now like to edit aspects of the writing.

There’s the story of Amy Kleeman, who grew up on a Murray river paddleboat, the Alpha, and of Myrtle Jenkyn, for 50 years, on her own account, an (unpaid) correspondent for local papers. That’s all so far; I might add more later.

I have only a dim memory of interviewing Mrs Kleeman – a very crowded, knick-knack-infested sitting room – but Myrtle was definitely memorable – a huge old farmhouse living room with every surface, and most of the floor, covered with piles of newspapers, magazines and clipping files. I also remember her “despatches”, always written on small pieces of paper. The old-fashioned, spidery handwriting started in lines but then snaked around the sides, was squished in the corners, and generally almost impossible to follow. (Thanks Pat, who often helped me decipher it.)

The only story of hers that I remember was about the time an old carthorse was brought back into service after a car, then a tractor, both got bogged. The report was that it got them both out.