The Free Dispensary for Animals of the Poor was run, starting in the early 1920s, under a railway arch in Camberwell (south London) – four hours a week when the poor could bring their pets to be treated for free by a vet. It was started by a woman described only as “Sister Mabel”, who’d raised the money from “Lord Hertford”.

I’ve not been able to find any web references to it, but read about the dispensary in H.V. Morton’s The Spell of London, first printed in 1926. They are collected sketches from the Daily Express (a very different, far more humane paper than its modern sister) and do lay the pathos on with a trowel, but are gripping nonetheless.

I watched this for an hour: pups run over by motor-cars, dogs with mange and distemper, and always such love, such tender looks, such tail waggings from the dogs, until –
“Please, mother says will you have Arfur killed, ’cause the lady upstairs says she’ll turn us into the street if he don’t stop barkin’.”
Arthur, a nice little fox terrier, stood there with his head on one side, so pathetically unconscious of crime, so pleased with life, and – so near death.
“You can’t kill him?” I said.
“We do our best not to,” said Mr Murt [the vet]. “We have a register of those willing to take dogs. We keep these poor little chaps and try to find them homes, but if we can’t … it’s better than having them kicked about in the streets starving.”

Has anyone else come across Sister Mabel?

Regular readers will know that I come down strongly against “the world’s all going to hell” school of thought. One of the favourite complaits is how “manners”, “behaviour”, “respect” are all going south at a rate of knots.

Today’s Prospect has an antidote to that claim, a piece, based on detailed observation, that concludes that the situation is actually improving in British schools, in large part due to better management.

“The [British crime] survey’s most recent findings suggest, perhaps surprisingly, that the rate of violence against teachers has dropped by more than 40 per cent in the past eight years. Drawing on its results, home office researchers found that in 2002 and 2003 1 per cent of teachers were physically attacked at work. Between 1994 and 1998 the level of assaults on teachers was almost twice as high, running at 1.8 per cent.
Verbal threats against teachers have also decreased, the survey found. Two per cent of teachers reported the problem each year between 1994 and 1998, but by 2002-03 that figure had dropped to 1.2 per cent.

And it makes the seemingly oft-forgotten point that these are children; if the school has got out of control it is not their fault, but that of the management.

I was reminded of the one and only real fight I’ve ever had – arranged in the classic school manner – “meet you in the playground after class” form. And that then was accepted – the teachers must have known about it, but then it was just “kids being kids”. *

A lot of the “bullying”, “violence” and “aggression” we now worry about in schools (and elsewehere) were once regarded as normal behaviour. The fact that it no longer is can only be a good thing, but it does produce an awful lot of unwarranted anxiety about “declining standards”.

*In case you were wondering, I lost. Not surprising since I didn’t have the faintest clue how to throw a punch (something all girls should be taught at a young age), and she was the school “tough”.

The third Carnival of Feminists is up now on Sour Duck and it is a cracker!

For those of you who were around in the Seventies (and remember – as they say) there’s a number of explorations about the then and the now – how far have we come?

If that’s a bit early for you, or if you’d rather just forget the whole decade, there are broader examinations of the feminist world – Feminism 101, and a lovely little tirade against marriage – who wants to live in an institution?

Then moving around the world, there’s several takes on President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, on US abortion politics, and much, much more.

Don’t miss it, and please spread the word!

And don’t forget you can always keep up with the latest on the Carnival of Feminists on the home page.

And if you missed them, the other editions: No 1 and No 2.

***
While I’m on the subject of carnivals, also don’t miss History Carnival No XX, up on Tigerlily Lounge – also a brilliant collection.

And the Carnival of Feminists is my fourth of the week. You’ll also find me on the Carnival of Capitalists (don’t worry, it is my book review of the anti-Wal-Mart business model), and the Carnival of the Green, which you might think a bit more expected.

Hic, hic … think I might have eaten a little too much fairy floss. (Which I think in America you’d call cotton candy.)

LATE UPDATE 17/11: You’ll also find me on the Carnival of Vanities thanks to one of the first bloggers on my blogroll, Dr Charles. Thanks!

Most writers on economics are about as reliable as an old woman wrapped in a silly scarf peering over a spatter of tea-leaves. They just wrap their prognostications is in an impenetrable layer of jargon to disguise their ignorance of the state of the world.

There are, in my opinion, two exceptions to this dismal rule: Anatole Kaletsky, writing in The Times in London, and Ross Gittins, in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Amidst Australia’s latest terror panic – so surprising it coincides with John Howard’s efforts to get through another piece of repressive legislation, Gittins today looks at the actual risk of terrorism.

“There are plenty of things that offer a greater threat to our wellbeing than local terrorism, and they aren’t getting nearly as much attention or money lavished on them. Getting overexcited about terrorism, in other words, has its opportunity cost.
… It’s well known to psychologists that humans have a tendency to overestimate small risks while underestimating big risks.”

Gittins points out that an estimated 1,200 American drivers died in crashes caused by a switch from air travel after 9/11. (Despite, I’d add, the fact that the tactics used that day are obviously unrepeatable – since no plane-load of passengers would then sit by and let men armed with Stanley knives take over their aircraft.)

“The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says the odds of an American dying in a terrorist attack are about one in 88,000. The odds of dying by falling off a ladder are one in 10,000. And, says an article in Foreign Policy magazine, even in 2001, car crashes killed 15 times more Americans than terrorism did.”

He points out that incumbent politicians, police and other officials, and the media, all have an interested in playing up the dangers of terrorism out of all proportion.

Gittins conclude:

“Leaving aside the people whose civil liberties are trampled, these mutually enjoyable terror games would be harmless if time and money grew on trees. Since they don’t, we’d probably save more lives by putting the same effort into fixing black spots on the Pacific Highway.
Or think on this: buried by last week’s avalanche about terrorism was the news that suicide is the leading cause of death among 10- to 14-year-olds in Queensland. Presuming that problem isn’t unique to Queensland, might it not deserve a bit more of our attention?”

Ban all ladders! I say. That’s about as sensible as current government policies, in Australia, and Britain.

When you visit China you’re quickly aware of rather tacky plastic Mao badges on sale – in addition to all of the Mao lighters, cigarettes, watches and just about any other tacky consumer item you can imagine. What I didn’t realise at the time was this is only the modern tip of an historic iceberg.

At a conference for British Museum volunteers yesterday I learnt, from Helen Wang from the Department of Coins and Medals, that these badges, then just bearing the communist star, began to appear in the Forties, when they were primarily given to people attending party conferences.

It was at the start of the Cultural Revolution that the concept – now usually bearing the image of Mao, or his words, really took off – at the same time as the Red Guards were being given Mao’s Little Red Book.

Many show rays of the sun emanating from the Chairman (as left), others feature the phrase (usually in Chinese but sometimes in English) “Serve the People”, the title of an essay Mao had written. This was usually reproduced in Mao’s own hand – he was very proud of his calligraphy.

So, you might think, a minor element of the Cultural Revolution. Not so, either then or now. These were made in enormous quantities and an enormous range of styles. To be considered a serious collector in China now (and there are many at or aspiring to that status), you need a minimum of 40,000!

In 1969 Mao ordered that their production end. “Give me back my aeroplanes,” Mao is said to have said. (It was estimated the metal used in them would have produced 40,000 aircraft.)

It is an interesting example of the way in which something dictated from the centre can spiral out of control. You can just imagine thousands of provincial officials straining every sinew to produce more badges than their rivals, until the state ended up with badge mountains. We were told of one southern province where this was the case. But disposing of this mountain was a serious problem. This had to be done “respectfully”, lest the destruction be seen as a political act.

There’s an extensive introduction on the badges here.

In 1973 the then Labour Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam (who looks like an unbelievable radical from the perspective of today), told the Young Women’s Christian Association in Queensland that the Australian Government could not achieve immediately the revolution required for Australian women to develop fully as individuals … “the first and fundamental step towards freedom is awareness by women themselves of their real inequality, the extent of social, political, economic and cultural discrimination”. (The Age, August 25, 1973)

He was speaking as the women’s movement was only just arriving on our intellectually (and then physically) isolated shores. I was a child of seven. I’d never heard of Germaine Greer, and I doubt my Mum could have told you more than a sentence about her. Two years later two of the foundation texts of Australian feminism would be published. I reckon it was about this time that I can recall my father making jokes about burning bras.

This is the world charted in one of the most evocative books on my bookshelf, Media She, by Patricia Edgar and Hilary McPhee (1974), envisaged as a source book, a conscious-raiser for this new-born movement. The introduction says:

“For some readers this book may be the first time they have considered the stereotyping of sex roles and the effects this has had on their own lives.” That would have been true of me, and pretty well all of my contemporaries for the next decade. Personally, I was angry and rebellious about what being female meant, but I had no framework in which to put those feelings.

I went to a would-be-posh fee-paying school, which was utterly unable to decide if it was educating us to be solicitors’ wives, or solicitors. And perhaps that was not entirely the institution’s fault. As the Media She editors wrote:

“Marriage is regarded as the higest point in a girl’s life and women are defined in terms of the institution of marriage: mum, the wife, the spinster who ‘missed out’. Very few Australian girls leave home before they marry so the Australian woman spends all her life in the bosom of her family.”

All of that has, I’d say, at least for the middle class, changed. So what else has, or hasn’t?

Well some of the editorial and advertising looks purely prehistoric now.

There’s the reader’s story “on how to SURVIVE when the LITTLE WOMAN is away in hospital. ‘Guile will win you lots of dinner invitations if you happen to be batching,’ says Sydneysider Ian Mallard. ‘The secret is in the subtle approach.’

Then the furniture advert, the text beside a snap of the “happy couple”:

“Colin and Pru Tatham, both 20, think marriage is a great scene. The Tathams consider themselves liberated, not least when it comes to furniture. They chose Stag Rondo for the bedroom because it is bold and modern, and full of character. Colin might never admit this, but he checked quite carefully on Stag craftsmanship before settling for Pru’s choice of Rondo. Costing about £145, he decided he liked its value for money. Pru just likes Rondo for its looks … “

And jokes you’d be unlikely to see in a mainstream publication today:

Then there are job advertisement here that, I hope, we’ll never see the like of again.

“Come and work with us now! All over Australia young people are joining the National Bank. .. Chances are they’re guys and gals a lot like you … self-reliant, independent. Today’s generation. That’s the type we’re looking for: to train in any one of a dozen careers; to accept promotion on ability, not seniority; to enjoy beneits like superannuation, medical benefits and education assistance.
And girls, there are lots of interesting positions for you too. And marriage grants.”

And the response to female political candidates:

“Backbench beauty? Parramatta by-election candidate Mrs Marian Pye would be the most attractive MP in Federal Parliament if she is elected on September 22. But good looks are not her only attribute.”

So yes, we have come a long way.

But then, I start looking at the things that haven’t changed. An advert for a new newspaper says: “We didn’t design The National Times for women. Maybe that’s why so many of them read it. … There’s a lot more to being a woman than just keeping up with new recipes, crash diets and what the Royal Family is doing.” Wish they’d tell today’s newspaper editors – who think stories about hairdos, lipstick and sex are all women want to read.

Then there are the “page three girls” (near-naked models “gracing” the pages of newspapers). Well they’re still in place, although when I look at these models I can’t help thinking how small, and natural, their breasts are, compared to their modern sisters’. (Although surgical breast enhancement did exist. “Don’t consider it until you’re at least 20,” says an agony aunt. Advice well out of date now, at least for would-be “glamour models”.)

And the weight-loss advert would pretty well work without change today, although the model is probably a bit on the “fat” side …

And you might not see quite such an overtly sexist advert today:

.. well except in the wilder reaches of men’s magazines, but there’s another one, of a scantily clad woman draped across a tyre, that I saw a dead-ringer for on a billboard a couple of days ago.

So, where has this impressionistic survey left me? In employment we’ve coming an astonishingly long way in 30 years – in the expectation that women will have “careers”, in the jobs they do, in their access to at least the middle and upper-middle levels of management and the professions. The cynic in me thinks, however, that Western economies needed these women’s contribution, and no longer has the clerk-typist jobs that they used to occupy.

Then on the level of rhetoric, many things that could be said with impunity in 1974, in slandering half of the human race, are not – at least publicly – sayable today. As the “advertising guru” Neil French found, apparently to his surprise.

What struck me, however, is that what has really not changed is in the nature and use of the visual images of women. Near-naked women, women who’ve “lost weight”, attractive women in vaguely suggestive poses, blonde women smiling nicely – those are the pictures of women we see on the pages of mainstream newspapers and magazines, as we did in the Seventies.

If women want to be visible – and media visibility that is far more valued today than it was back then – they have before them a million lessons in how to achieve it – lessons that say you must be pretty, petite, fair-skinned, preferably blonde, and definitely young.

If you want to find out if you are a Seventies “good wife” I also posted a quiz from Media She.

And if you fancy a bit of earlier Australian history, I recommended a text here.