Tim Worstall has today posted a graceful response to my, and others’ criticism of the small number of female bloggers represented in his book of the British blogosphere’s year.

> And he does have a point. He drew heavily on his weekly Britblog roundup, and women are only very lightly represented there.

There does seem to be a problem, I’d say, speaking as someone keen to promote women bloggers, that they are not always doing much to promote themselves. I’m not sure why this is – is it that women are not in general encouraged by society to put themselves forward? is it that they are afraid of attracting “the wrong sort” of attention? I’d be interested in thoughts on this.

But go on, DON’T BE SHY – nominate yourself, or a female blogger you know. This is the best posts of the British blogosphere (i.e. either blogging Britons, or people blogging in Britain) of the past week.

To quote Tim:

You can do so by simply emailing the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com. If there is a 2006 version some of the research will come from there, naturally. But it would also be wonderful if more people would nominate posts, most especially from those areas of blogging that don’t normally get a look in. Yes, personal blogs, LGBT, women writers, different political persuasions and all. The entire aim and purpose of it is to do precisely this, to get us reading out of our little groupthink bubbles.

This post grew from the response to a throw-away line when I commented on the introduction of “gay marriage” (in all but name) in the UK. And it is a subject that seems to keep pursuing me in other discussions.

So: why I don’t believe in marriage (as we currently understand it).

To promise to stay together “until death do us part” now has a very different meaning to it had 100, or 1,000 or more years ago. In fact, while I doubt the data will ever exist to give a conclusive average, I suspect the current average length of marriage before divorce – 11.5 years – is roughly equivalent to the average length of marriage in early modern Europe (the area of history on which I have read most), and indeed probably roughly over the past 2,000 years. Given the historic death rates, the median length of the partnership before one or the other died, would probably have been about that.

Yet today in the UK the average age of first marriage for men is 30 and women 28. That means on average the marriage, if it is lifelong, will last 46 years, until the man dies. (Yes I know I’m simplifying the statistics, but that’s broadly accurate.)

Furthermore, there is an expectation today that the marriage will be more than an alliance of families, or the establishment of an economic unit, or a means of providing for children, all things that were seen as its primary purpose in the past. Instead, marriage is expected to, or at least hoped to, meet the majority of the emotional, sexual and personal needs of the two partners.

And it is expected that they’ll live together all of that time – by no means an expectation in the past, when, again using English examples, aristocratic partnerships frequently meant the women stayed in the country while the men spent most of their time in London (e.g. Margaret Paston, or Lady Alice More, whose husband was home at Chelsea no more than a few days each month.) City merchant families, and of course those of soldiers and sailors – saw a similar pattern.

Yet today it is expected that two people will meet the majority of each other’s needs, for the great majority of their lives, and be more or less in each other’s pockets for all of that time. I just find that utterly unrealistic. It fails to allow for the fact that people change, develop, grow in different directions, over their lives. For two people to grow for decades in matching directions might occur, but only very, very occasionally. Otherwise, one partner will have to stifle their personal development to fit in with the other, or else they’ll grow apart.

Rather than that being accepted as a natural development, something to be managed gracefully, the pressure to regard marriage as being “for life” causes huge stresses and strains when the unrealistic nature of that goal emerges.

So what’s needed instead? Well I’d suggest that instead, “marriages” should be five-year rolling contracts, to be renewed or adapted at the expiration of each period, by mutual negotiation between the parties. They might allow for periods of living apart (say if one person wants to travel for a year and the other doesn’t; they might allow for someone setting up their own space in the house to be restricted to them for a certain times … whatever works for the couple.)

The terms of what happens at the end of the period should be agreed at the start. Some might indeed end up being life-long – possibly even more than are now – once the terms of the agreement can be adapted to changing circumstances.

But, I hear the objections, what about the children?

Well many children experience their parents breaking up (whether or not they were formally married) and I’d suggest what causes most of the problems for them is not the break-up per say, but the bitterness and acrimony associated with the ending of something supposed to be “for ever”.

About a quarter of children are living in sole-parent families at any one time. I couldn’t find any figures on children living with step-parents, but I’d reckon that would take the combined figure to well over 50 per cent, so blended families are pretty well the norm anyway.

If children grow up in an environment where this is the norm, where society allows for these “divorces” and doesn’t make them the site of shame or unnecessary acrimony, then they’d be a lot better off than many children are today.

So that’s my proposal – a fundamental reform. You’d probably have to change the name, to avoid confusion – “personal partnerships”, perhaps – but I’d suggest you’d end up with a society that would be both more stable, more harmonious, and happier.

To an IHR seminar last night by Craig Spence (Bishop Grosseteste College): ‘Death hath ten thousand several doors’: accidents and death in the early modern city. The focus was on London, and roughly from mid-17th to mid-18th century.

It also introduced me to the concept of the study of accidents. At first it would seem rather prosaic, but when you think about it they, and the explanations given to them, reveal a lot. Was this “God’s will”, or bad luck, or the fault of someone who must pay in some way, or of the victim? The explanation tells you a lot about society, and the debate around it even more.

And there’s also the human side – you sometimes wonder how anyone ever survived London of the time. Apparently being a brewery worker was particularly dangerous, although no doubt consumption of the product was a factor. And with more than 2,000 carts, drays and wagons coming in ever day, the streets were far fropm safe, although the drivers were less likely to fall victim than passers-by and passengers. But riding a horse was more likely to result in your death than being kicked by one.

With the Thames as a major thoroughfare, drwoning was also common, but floating bodies tended to be regarded with suspicion in that they might have been suicides. Those retrieving and dealing with them thus tended to be paid more for their work than in other cases.

The theological battles were nicely illustrated by a building collapse of 1623 in which more than 100 Catholics were killed and injured. They of course sought out logical mechanical explanations about inadequate consruction for the event; the Protestants had a different theory.

The research was based chiefly on the weekly Bills of Mortality. (And I found that a contemporary analysis of these, Graunt’s Natural and Political Observations on them is online.

Graunt’s analysis is quite sophisticated:

There have been Buried from the year 1628, to the year 1662, exclusivè, 209436 Males, and but 190474 Females: but it will be objected, that in London it may indeed be so, though otherwise elsewhere; because London is the great Stage and Shop of business, wherein the Masculine Sex bears the greatest part. But we Answer, That there have been also Christned within the same time, 139782 Males, and but 130866 Females, and that the Country Accompts are consonant enough to those of London upon this matter. …In the year 1642 many Males went out of London into the Wars then beginning, in so much, as I expected in the succeeding year, 1643, to have found the Burials of Females to have exceeded those of Males, but no alteration appeared; for as much, as I suppose, Trading continuing the same in London, all those who lost their Apprentices had others out of the Countrey; and if any left their Trades, or Shops, that others forthwith succeeded them: for if employment for hands remain the same, no doubt but the number of them could not long continue in disproportion.

Then as now, newspapers were keen to report these incidents. It would be interesting to know if, as now, certain types of events attracted disproportionate interest. (As, for example now, car accidents are largely ignored, while “freak” things, such as items falling from buildings, get lots of attention.)

The Carnival of Feminists No 4 is now up on The Happy Feminist, and it is another cracker. It seems to get better every time, although this seems scarcely possible.

I was particularly taken by Reappropriate, who describes how she was brought to call herself a feminist by blogging (and she’ll be hosting the January 4 edition, I’m pleased to say). I also really enjoyed Dave’s account on The Galloping Beaver of how he reacted to being called a feminist. (And his earlier piece about women in the Canadian military is well worth a read too.)

But it seems almost unfair to single anything out – go and read the lot! That is my recommendation!

Since yesterday was St Nicholas’s Day, it was an appropriate occasion for a midwinter celebration come ghost-story night through The London Adventure. The setting was Treadwell’s Bookshop in Covent Garden, the best-smelling bookshop in London, for it’s an occult shop that also sells ingredients for your cauldron. (Or rather nice-looking herbs, if you prefer. I never knew that cumin was supposed to keep away thieves; had thought of it as an ingredient of lamb casserole.)

It also boasts wands for the Harry Potter fan in your life. “From trees in the London area … cut at the full moon, by hand … we have left them au natuerel for you to wax and oil according to your personalised preparations …”

As for the ghost stories – well I guess when you think about it all the Christmas jollity is meant to drive them away. In the deepest mid-winter you huddled around the fire, but just at your back was the dark and the deadly cold. Dickens helped to revive the tradition, but it seems to have faded away again.

But if you want to revive it, some suggestions from last night:
* HP Lovecraft’s “The Festival”
* Vernon Watkins’ The Grey Mare, which refers to a “>Welsh tradition of parading around town with a horse’s skull. The holders would engage in word games and riddles with houseowners, and if they “won” would be able to feast there.
* Walter De La Mare’s The Listeners
* M.R. James

Imagine an alternative history – a great game for a wet winter’s afternoon. The battle of Waterloo turns out the other way, and today in London breakfast means a croissant and an espresso, and all of its women can tie a scarf just so.

Hard to see? Well yes. But had that come to pass, it would have been one of Napoleon’s generals, most likely, living in the house that was called No 1 London, which still today guards the entrance to the formal parts of Westminster.

Instead, of course, Apsley House became the home of the Duke of Wellington – the designer of that famous boot, among his other claims to fame.

But this is not a military museum; you won’t feel like you’re playing war games. The house has been restored to much the state that it was in when Wellington lived there in splendour in the years after Waterloo, a life that embraced both celebration and disappointment.

The former is best represented by the painting in the entry hall of the grand dinner, held every year on the anniversary of Waterloo (June 18), to which scores of his officers were invited. The latter is represented in the scores of political caricatures mocking Wellington the Prime Minister who chose to during his term of office to live here, rather than move to the humbler quarters of Downing Street.

For here was not just a spectacular house, but the fittings and furnishings donated by the grateful crowned heads of Europe – many of whom owed their status to Waterloo. That means it could hardly be grander, for the crowned heads had a taste for luxury, if not a sense of taste. READ MORE