August 2021 – Page 4 – Historical Miscellany

An Experiment Interrupted

Does the imagination of a pregnant woman have a physical effect on the child she is carrying? A certain English doctor was convinced that it did, and wrote a short book in refutation of another doctor’s opinion that it did not. Unfortunately, however, when he attempted to prove his thesis by experiment, he ran into difficulty.

Whilst I was writing the ensuing Refutation, I thought I had the fairest Opportunity that cou’d be wish’d, for beginning the direct Proof of the Question by certain Matter of Fact; but I was most unaccountably disappointed. There came an honest Country-Girl, to be House-Maid, where I then was, from whom I learnt, very unexpectedly, this curious Particular, relating to herself: That she was mark’d in the Neck with a Beef-Stake, because her Mother, when with Child, had longed for it; and that she could eat, nay, loved Beef raw, better than any wise dress’d , for the same Reason. She said moreover, that she would eat some in my Presence, whenever I pleased. Indeed the Mark had very much the Resemblance of a Beef- Stake.

Well, says I to myself, this happens very luckily for my Purpose; 1 must not let this Opportunity slip: Accordingly, the first Day we had Beef-Stakes, I went into the Kitchen: Come, says I to the Girl, let me see now, what you promis’d me. No, says the Cook-Maid, there’s none to be spared. Nay, says I, she must eat her Dinner. Well, but it must be broil’d a little, replied the Cook. The Girl seemed a little concern’d. At last she said, she was ready to eat it, with a little Pepper and Salt. Oh! says I, that shall break no Squares. So to eating she fell: Then came little Miss, who ask’d me, Whether I would make the Maid sick? Last of all comes Mrs. House-keeper, who tells me in a great Passion, You shan’t kill the Maid. In a Moment after the whole Posse of the Kitchen was ready to fall upon me; the whole House was in an Uproar; and, I believe, would have torn me to Pieces, if I had not made my Escape. This was very vexing; for the Girl had, by this Time, almost eat up the Slice she had cut off, and I had consented to, for the Experiment. After the Fury was over, I told them, that there was a great Controversy among Physicians, upon that Subject; that I had taken the Women’s Part, in a Dispute I once had with some Divines, upon that Head; that I had just flatter’d myself with the Hopes of convincing my Adversaries, by that Matter of Fact; but that, since they had thus disappointed me, I must put off my Design till some better Opportunity.

This is a plain Narrative of my Adventure, without any Flourish or Disguise.

——Dr. Blondel Confuted: or, the Ladies Vindicated, with regard to the Power of Imagination in Pregnant Women, by John Henry Mauclerc, M.D., 1747.

The Case for Woman Suffrage

In 1913, more and more states were jumping on the woman-suffrage bandwagon. A forward-looking observer might have said that universal woman suffrage seemed inevitable in time. Pictorial Review magazine decided to run a series of articles describing how the women who could vote were using that right—and, as an introduction, the editor of the magazine, Arthur T. Vance, decided that the time had come to declare his own support of votes for women.

An Editorial Declaration

The editor of Pictorial Review believes in Equal Suffrage. This declaration of opinion is no snap judgment, but is made after careful consideration of the pros and cons of the most momentous question before the nation today.

We have yet to hear an argument against woman suffrage that doesn’t apply with equal force against man suffrage. After all the half of the human race to whom we trust the management of our homes and the bringing up of our children might just as well be entrusted with National Housekeeping and National Housecleaning. Why should the ballot for women lead them to neglect their home duties any more than the ballot for men leads them to neglect their business? We believe when all is said and done, that if we recognize women to be human, it follows as a matter of simple justice that they have as much right to a voice in governmental affairs as the men.

We say these things with a lively appreciation of the fact that woman suffrage will be no panacea, that there will still be political jobs and jobbers, that the problem of good government will not be immediately solved by extending the suffrage; but we also believe that it will be a step in the right direction and a help toward obtaining better laws and better government. We recognize also the danger of giving the ballot to unprepared voters. The nation has had one lamentable experience in this line. But we give the ballot to the ignorant man, and why not to the unprepared woman? There is this saving grace—that in every State in the Union where American women have the right to vote they have most diligently set out to prepare themselves to use it intelligently.

Woman suffrage is not only coming; it is coming fast. At the November election three more states granted women the ballot, thus making nine states in which there is genuine democracy. One great political party has already declared for equal suffrage. In five states, including New York and New Jersey, all political parties have equal suffrage planks in their platforms. Labor organizations in twenty states have endorsed equal suffrage by overwhelming votes. The movement cannot be stayed.

So the pertinent question is not, “Will they vote?” Rather it is, “How will they vote?” To answer that question Pictorial Review sent Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Edwin Theiss to the states where women have been voting, where they spent many weeks watching the workings of woman suffrage. They saw the women preparing for the presidential election. They saw the women vote at that election. They saw them—note this—keep right on working after election. Mr. and Mrs. Theiss report that the women of the West are as busy with politics as other women are with church sociables, bridge whist and pink teas. Women everywhere are banding together to study civic questions. The very air is resonant with the hum of political activity. And the things the women are working for are such measures as juvenile courts, eight-hour laws for workers, prohibition of child labor, better schools, mothers’ pensions, workingmen’s compensations, pure food, clean cities, better health and marriage laws and other issues that make for better children, better homes and a better nation.

Mr. and Mrs. Theiss have found by 10,000 miles of travel and months of observation just how the women vote and what they vote for. And in the following article they begin a series in which they will show something of the working of equal suffrage in America.

——Pictorial Review, March, 1913.

A Servantless House

Even novelists who do meticulous research for their period pieces tend to underestimate how much of domestic life in the ordinary middle-class home depended on servants until about the First World War. Here, from 1913, is a magazine article that describes an extraordinary novelty: a middle-class house kept without servants, thanks to modern technology.

A Servantless House

By Agnes Athol

On my street lives a woman who has rented a furnished house for the year with the express stipulation that she shall not keep a servant; that she is to use the kitchen utensils and crockery personally and surrender the house in the same exquisite condition in which it was when she entered. This clause in the lease does not bar her from having a woman in to attend to the cleaning, or from getting the washing done, though as a matter of fact a woman takes it home. It is intended, however, to provide against any of the three fastidiously furnished bedrooms being given over to a maid of doubtful habits; against the abuse of the unusual housekeeping facilities with which the house is equipped or of the appropriate and rare china which the owner was willing to leave to her tenant, Mrs. Baldwin.

The latter, after taking me through her remarkably convenient kitchen, assured me that therein lay the entire secret of the ease with which she had entertained and dined her friends through many months.

“The work is reduced absolutely to a minimum. I do not take an unnecessary step or waste a single movement putting things into temporary positions until I have made room somewhere else for them. Every modern device for doing housework is provided. I would never go back after the freedom and privacy of the home we have had, to the endurance of a presence continually in and out at our meals, listening to conversations and reporting them elsewhere, always about the house and always requiring supervision, correction and forbearance.”

The first thing that struck me about her immaculate little workshop was the fact that no boxes, bottles, paper bags, dishes, pots or other paraphernalia were in sight. Of up-to-date utensils there were many, both for cleaning and cooking; but they were put away in securely closed closets where they collected little or no dust. These closets were within arm’s reach of the sink so that dishes could be lifted directly into them as soon as dried. Not an inch of space was allotted to anything infrequently used.

A completely equipped kitchen cabinet stood between the zinc topped table and the deep, porcelain sink. Beneath a window next to the sink was a dish washing machine.

“Do you use it?” I asked. “I’ve heard they are not altogether satisfactoгу.

“I like it,” my hostess replied. “I prefer to wash and dry my silver separately, although here is a compartment for the tableware, and of course I clean up the pots and pans as I am dishing my dinner. But think of the motions and time saved on all the china. I leave it to drain in the dish washer, and my hands never go into the dish water.”

Mrs. Baldwin showed me a hose attached to the hot water faucet which was used to fill the dish washing machine.

“We have an instantaneous water heater in the cellar,” she explained, “that heats as long as the water is turned on. A servant might be apt to waste gas in using it; but I do not find the bills higher, since I am my own maid.”

“I suppose you have a fireless cooker?” I inquired.

“Yes, indeed. That is the secret of the frequent little dinner parties you have been reproaching me for having. With a fireless cooker I can manage to cook a delicious dinner for six people with very little labor and thus save my strength for serving my guests. It also means that I do not have to bend over a hot stove all afternoon and come to the table a tired and fretful hostess. No woman who does her own work ought to be without this labor-saving device a day, because it eliminates much of the real drudgery of cooking.”

The gas range in Mrs. Baldwin’s kitchen was a labor-saving device in itself—a splendid, modern type with elevated ovens and an oven thermometer, a plate warmer and a broiling oven, all within reach without stooping. A block on the wall which was provided with two chains served to regulate the furnace damper in the cellar, saving many steps daily.

The most important mechanical helper in the house was tucked out of sight in a closet off the kitchen. This was a stationary vacuum cleaner piped to both floors. Mrs. Baldwin could manage it easily alone.

“Your work wouldn’t be so easy without electricity,” I commented.

“Well, no, of course not. Still there are any number of electric devices that are good, and I get along without them. I wouldn’t like to give up my electric toaster but I’d manage somehow without it. And I could use everything else here without electricity except the vacuum cleaner. If there had been no electricity available you may be sure the owner would have put in some sort of sweeper or cleaner that could be used without it. Have you ever seen a gasoline iron? I seldom have occasion to use this one as there is no place here for doing laundry work. However, I sometimes need to press a skirt or waist and then I simply fill the gasoline iron and sit up on a high stool to my ironing. One filing will last three hours.”

Mrs. Baldwin declared that after her experience with modern household labor-savers she would never employ a servant again.

“Besides the cleanliness, quiet and privacy, it’s cheaper in the long run to install good apparatus. Machines and utensils of metal are permanent. What you lay out for them in one year does not have to be repeated the next. The cost of housing, feeding and paying a servant for just one year is more than enough to buy all the modern, helpful devices you see in this house.”

“How do you estimate that?” I asked.

“A girl’s wages for general housework range from $16 to $25 a month. If you pay only $16 you will probably have to hire a woman to do the washing as I do now, and you will certainly find yourself doing all the cooking. I have had capable girls at $20 a month who would not wash clothes. However, take the lowest figure—$16; add to it $10 a month for extra food the girl consumes; count $5 a month more for waste, breakage, additional light and fuel—a conservative estimate you will agree—and you have $31 a month or $372 a year as the least cost of your servant. Now let’s see how many of the things right here in this house we could buy with $372. My vacuum cleaner was $125.00, the hot water heater $35.00, the gas range which has unusual improvements $50.00, the kitchen cabinet $25.00, the electric fireless range $25.00, and the dish washing machine $10.00, which makes $270.00 in all. This estimate leaves about a hundred dollars of a servant’s cost for investment in the little devices that help the work along—a mop and wringer pail, dustless dusters and mops and such things.” As I left Mrs. Baldwin I felt fully convinced that she was solving the problem of the high cost of living.

——Pictorial Review, March, 1913.

Prayers for the Unhappy Deluded Americans

On December 13, 1776, all the churches of England were directed to offer prayers for the success of His Majesty George III against his rebellious subjects in America. Here are two of the prayers that were directed to be offered in the Anglican liturgies on that day.

O Lord God of our salvation, in whose hands are the issues of life and death, of good and evil, and without whose aid the wisest counsels of frail men, and the multitude of an host, and all the instruments of war are but weak and vain; incline thine ear, we pray thee, to the earnest and devout supplications of thy servants, who, not confiding in the splendour of any thing that is great, or the stability of any thing that is strong here below, do most humbly flee, O Lord, unto thee for succour, and put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. Be thou to us a tower of defence against the assaults of our enemies, our shield and buckler in the day of battle, and so bless the arms of our gracious Sovereign, in the maintenance of His just and lawful rights, and prosper His endeavours to restore tranquillity among His unhappy deluded subjects in America, now in open rebellion against His Crown, in defiance of all subordination and legal government, that we being preserved by thy help and goodness from all perils and disasters, and made happily triumphant over all the disturbers of our peace, may joyfully laud and magnify thy glorious Name; and serve thee from generation to generation in all godliness and quietness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O Blessed Lord, who hast commanded us by thy beloved Son to love our Enemies, and to extend our charity in praying even for those, who despitefully use us, give grace we beseech thee, to our unhappy fellow subject in America, that seeing and confessing the error of their ways, and having a due sense of their ingratitude for the many blessings of thy Providence, preserved to them by the indulgent care and protection of these kingdoms, they may again return to their duty, and make themselves worthy of thy pardon and forgiveness: Grant us in the mean time not only strength and courage to withstand them, but charity to forgive and pity them, to shew a willingness to receive them again as friends and brethren, upon just and reasonable terms, and to treat them with mercy and kindness for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

——A Form of Prayer, to be used in all Churches and Chapels…by His Majesty’s Special Command, 1776.

What Is Taught at a Public School?

The English public schools, Edward Lytton Bulwer has demonstrated to his own satisfaction, offer no social advantage to the aristocratic pupil now that the Reform Act has closed the rotten boroughs, and ordinary people have access to good education. But what of the academic advantage? Here, he says, the picture is even bleaker.

I have thus sought to remove the current impression that public schools are desirable, as affording opportunities for advantageous connexion and permanent distinction. And the ambitious father (what father is not ambitious for his son?) may therefore look dispassionately at the true ends of education and ask himself if, at a public school, those ends are accomplished? This part of the question has been so frequently and fully examined, and the faults of our academical system are so generally allowed, that a very few words will suffice to dispose of it. The only branches of learning really attempted to be taught at our public schools are the dead languages.* Assuredly there are other items in the bills—French and arithmetic, geography and the use of the globes. But these, it is well known, are merely nominal instructions: the utmost acquired in geography is the art of colouring a few maps; and geography itself is only a noble and a practical science when associated with the history, the commerce, and the productions of the country or the cities, whose mere position it indicates. What matters it that a boy can tell us that Povoa is on one side the river Douro, and Pivasende on the other; that the dusky inhabitant of Benguela looks over the South Atlantic, or that the waters of Terek exhaust themselves in the Caspian sea? Useful, indeed, is this knowledge, combined with other branches of statistics;—useless by itself,—another specimen of the waste of memory and the frivolity of imitation. But even this how few learn, and how few of the learners remember?

Arithmetic and its pretended acquisitions, is, of all scholastic delusions, the most remarkable. What sixth-form ornament of Harrow or Eton has any knowledge of figures? Of all parts of education, this the most useful is, at aristocratic schools, the most neglected. As to French, at the end of eight years the pupil leaves Eton, and does not know so much as his sister has acquired from her governess in three months. Latin and Greek, then, alone remain as the branches of human wisdom to which serious attention has been paid.

*Formerly a nobleman, or rich gentleman, in sending his son to school sent with him a private tutor, whose individual tuition was intended to supply the deficiencies of the public course of study. This custom has almost expired, and aristocratic education, therefore, instead of improving, is still more superficial than it was.

——Edward Lytton Bulwer, England and the English, 1833.