Now I’m as much a sucker for a nice revisionist history as the next person … everyone else has got it wrong, but here’s the TRUTH … but I was puzzled by the reception in the London press of Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.

The reviews seem to have swallowed it hook, line and sinker: everyone thought he was a great leader, but now it has been shown he was a pathological psychopath with no special skills or outstanding qualities. See for example The Times and The Telegraph. Now you might argue those are right-wing sources, but theGuardian is only slightly more critical.

Blood & Treasure provides an essential critical corrective.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten.

I had been planning after the first ten weeks to start including bloggers who’d made the list before, but the excitement of collecting 100 women bloggers has gone to my head, and I’ve decided now to go for 200.

This seems to have been a family-orientated week. This Fish Needs a Bicycle has been thinking about how her sister was really there for her when she needed it, while Why not- right says thanks to “the best daddy in the world” and Purple Elephants Corner is combining celebrating the summer solstice and her wedding anniversary with a spot of novel-writing.

On the political side of family, Amy Loves Books explains her decision to put her children into a “inner-city, poverty-stricken, low-performing elementary school”, leaping into a raging international (or at least Western) debate, while This woman’s work is agonising over the issue of international adoption.

Familial links can be chosen, of course, and Ellen has been musing on the importance of the global email village to her life, and the vulnerability of the email list to the sad, the mad, or the ugly.

Turning overtly political, Ginger on LHLS ponders the question: “Did bushco really invade Iraq to keep the oil flowing or did they do it because they’re really insane? Or both?”

Then, in a post to which I can only say YES, Philoillogica deconstructs much of the popular journalism directed at women.

On a lighter note, Sarah on
It’s Not Rocket Science Peeps is lamenting phone callers who waste your time for no particular reason. (Not for the easily offended.)

And Pewari’s prattle says “you know you’re going a bit overboard with foodiness when … ”
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The list of the first 100.

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Please, if you’re impressed by something by a female blogger in the next week – particularly by someone who doesn’t yet get a lot of traffic – tell me about it, in the comments here, or by email.

I found myself musing on waking this morning, somewhat earlier than intended, on the appropriate collective noun for a collection of jackhammers: a “rattle of”, or a “pound of” perhaps?

Working nights has its advantages, but learning just how often they dig up the roads is not among them.

* Surely in litiguous America someone could sue to free a captive 16-year-old boy? Zach has been forced by his parents into a camp to “turn” him from gay to straight. Read the details – female inmates are forced to shave their underarms and legs twice a week. It is hard to think of a worse case of psychological child abuse.

* In Britain, liberty is being attacked by a “religious hatred” bill that will provide one particular set of beliefs with an astonishing degree of protection from criticism. (Replace “religion” with “communism” and see what you think … what’s the difference?) Ephems of BLB sets out the issue.

* There was a lot more to Helen Keller than her work with the blind, yet memories of her have become one-dimensional, a fate she shares with many other famous women, this article argues.

* It is very US-orientated, but then we are all “publishing” in the US, so this Legal Guide for Bloggers is well worth a read.

The problem with unpacking and sorting books is that it is so easy to get distracted.
(I’m supposed to be replacing a lightfitting just now, so that I can hoist up the left-over laminate boards to a shelf in the storeroom, but I just have to record this before I switch off the power …)

“The Committee are directed to investigate the circumstances under which Harriet Walters met her death, 12th June last, at the age of 17.
Her History as an Enamel Worker
She lived with her grandparents in rather poor circumstances at Sedgley. She entered the enamel works of Messrs Ralph & Jordan at Bilston, at the age of 16, in 1892, working as a brusher, and was there for six months.
From the foregoing Report it will be seen that the brushing department is the one where most danger exists in enamelling works.
The distance between her home and the enamelling works at Bilston is about three miles, which distance the girl had to walk in all weathers, in addition to which she had to stand practically all day, stooping over the plate upon which she was engaged, and brushing off this deleterious powder.
In January 1893 she entered Messrs Orme, Evans and Company’s works at Wolverhampton, where she also worked at brushing, the distance she had to work to and from her work being about the same as in her previous employment. Here she worked up to 5th June, on which day she felt so ill she asked the foreman to be allowed to go home. This she was permitted to do, and she accordingly walked back to Sedgley in the company of a fellow worker.
On the 6th she was first seen by Mr Ballenden, who attended her and prescribed for her until her death. This occurred rather suddenly on the 12th June…

The Committee’s Finding
The Committee agreed that she died of lead poisoning … They further believe that her death was accelerated by a persistence in the practice … of walking from Sedgley to Wolverhampton, a distance of three miles, without having tasted food, and of then working till the dinner hour, for, although the employers provided milk at one time, the milk was discontinued when the special rules were issued necessitating the supply of acid drink.
By this means the deceased got into a very low state of health, with great anaemia and constant want of appetite. The result was that, when attacked by lead poisoning, she had no reserve of health with which to resist it. Since the death of this girl the firm have recommenced the supply of milk at 11am….
The Committee found that the respirator in use at the time of Harriet Walter’s death was in reality a common handkerchief. It is probably that in the extreme heat of last May and June the younger and more inexperienced workers would take many opportunities of slipping these off.”
From: report from the Departmental Committee on the Various Lead Industries, C7239 (1983) pp. 20-21; P.P 1893/4, vol 17, reprinted in Human Documents of the Age of the Forsytes, E. Royston Pike, Victorian Book Club, Newton Abbot, 1972, pp. 258-9.

Those who lament compensation rights of today might like to ponder their importance.

Emily Hahn, on whom I posted yesterday, writes of a British Museum (library) reader she identifies only as Miss Stuart, who the writer saw on her first day at the museum (which must be late Twenties or very early Thirties).

“”She rode past me on a bicycle, through the opening in the great iron railings and across the courtyard …. She had a jaunty manner … but there was more than that to be noticed about Miss Stuart. On a cold, raw, dark day in January, in an era when women never wore bifurcated clothing for anything but the most drastic activities, she was attired in very short running shorts, a cotton sweater without sleeves, and socks … (p. 127)

After the war, Miss Stuart’s costume “is covered, winter and summer, by a frayed macintosh … and she now wears a hat as well – a thing like a basket pulled down over her straying, pepper-and-salt hair”.

And she has also got a bit strange …

Hahn is told another reader saw her spitting.
“She would spit on a page, then turn it over and spit on the next. She was very careful not to miss a single page…”

The book was Lives of the Popes, and when this neighbouring reader reported her an attendant came, saying: “Now Miss Stuart, you know you aren’t to do that. You’ve been told before.” As she was led away, Miss Stuart hissed “Papist spy” at the informant. (p. 136-7).

I don’t suppose anyone knows any more about “Miss Stuart”?