Shades of Winston to Come…

Churchill at Yalta with some cronies… My son visited Yalta a few weeks ago.

I have been reading an awful lot about Churchill lately, as I have been reading about England in the Edwardian Era and he was Home Secretary.

I also listen a lot to the BBC where it’s all War all the time and I researched and wrote my own grandmother’s WWII story, Looking for Mrs. Peel, published at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html.

It’s only a recent interest, although a while back, many years ago indeed, I enjoyed a production called Young Winston, with, I think, Simon Ward.

Anyway, I found this little article as I was poring over the November 28, 1910 Montreal Gazette. I was looking for a report on Laurier’s speech on the Naval Bill, which led to his Liberals losing the next election and messing up Norman Nicholson’s life on the railroad.

“Suffragists committed serious disturbances at a meeting at Lambeth tonight, at which Winston Spenser Churchill was speaking.After several men (sic) had been thrown out, Mr. Churchill strongly denounced the suffragist’s tactics and said “I am told that individuals are to be singled out for violence. If that is their language, there is only one answer and that is ‘Come On’”.

Hmm. Edith Nicholson, and I have mentioned often in this blog, was a militant suffragist (suffragette) sympathizer. I wonder how she would have held up in a one-0n-one with Sir Winston. She was Commandant of the Quebec Red Cross during WWII.)

The December 1, 1910 newspaper also has an article about a pro suffrage talk given by a Dr. Charles Zueblin of Boston to the Montreal Women’s Club. He says that the Anglo Saxon woman is more than ready for the vote and has proven it with her public service and community activities. He says that although there isn’t a man on the street who does not feel himself to be superior to a woman, that is protozoan thinking. (ouch!)

He says that women are suffering a similar plight to the Negroes. He cites the trials of the brilliant Booker T. Washington as an example of how Negroes have been oppressed. Well, he used the word ‘handicapped’ rather than oppressed. (In a 1905 letter from Normal School Marion Nicholson writes about attending a talk by Booker T. Washington. She says he is a terrific speaker and that he told some great jokes.

The Dr. also said he believed women should be educated, although they should take different subjects, perhaps meeting at meal times, as men seemed to have lost the art of conversation.

Tell that to the great orator Winston Churchill.

Lessons from the Past

Stoves from the Eaton’s catalogue 1909. Ranges. An essential for the home, as important as the roof over your head.

The first thing I notice, looking at the cooking stoves above, which provided sustainance and heat, is the price. This household essential cost less than a woman’s fur jacket by a third or a half, and, in one case, just a little over double the cost of the woman’s hat Edith bought at Ogilvys.

And these suckers were made to last, as were the ranges we purchased for a huge chunk of salary, in the 60′s.

Today, ordinary ranges (like everything else) are much cheaper in relation to average middle class salary but they are made to fall apart, with obsolescence built in.

Now, I am about to copy and print out all my installments of Flo in the City, my novel in progress on this blog, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ and edit the first part. I have done this before, the printing part, at least, at the end of 1908, but this is a more natural place to end my chapter, I think.

As I do this, I ponder my previous blog, where I found evidence that women with poor homemaking skills were being blamed for the huge social problems of the day. Due to this, women’s suffrage became an issue for more than just an elite group of agitators. For every woman.

Is anything like this happening today? Well, yes, with global warming. This week yet another poll came out (polls, the scourge of our age) that reveals that the average Canadian feels he or she is not doing enough personally to stop climate change.

It’s very similiar to 1910, in that average Canadians are no more responsible for climate change through their day to day actions than average wives were responsible for the social problems of 1910. (If we stopped buying crap, like appliances designed to crap out in a year, and cheap throw away clothes, that might be something different)

And the actions every day people take in the home in the West will not be able to save the planet, which contains billions of people who crave the cheap crap they can’t have, anymore than a hardworking housewife in 1910 could scrub out ‘the social evil’ in the cities with abrasive powder and a scouring pad. (Old Dutch had an ad campaign in the 1910 era, “Old Dutch believes in women’s rights: the right to a clean home.)

This line of thinking (the three R’s, and that idiotic bag business in grocery stores)in my opinion is all designed to make us feel were are being useful and have some control, but we don’t, that is unless we take more tangible social action, through the avenues democracy still provides in much the same way the suffragists did. Unless we get political.

Of course, in 1908 era, some suffragists became militant, supposedly because they were being thrown in jail anyway, even for peaceful, lawful protest. (They threw rocks and such) and they were reviled by almost everyone, except the Nicholson women, who were all for militant action. Imagine, those well bred Nicholsons, throwing rocks.

The militant suffragists (or suffragettes) were thrown in jail in the UK and the US and when they went on hunger strikes, some were force-fed, through their mouths and their vaginas.

Imagine if suffragettes were around today, how they might be branded and how they might be treated.

Yes, there is a lesson to be learned here, I’m just not exactly sure what. I say this as I look out onto my suburban garden, which is virtually free of snow in mid March. Canada has had a very warm winter, and Montreal a drought. There was more snow this winter in Philadelphia than in Montreal. Fluke or pattern?

Ps. Just an aside, the other day, I decided not to ask the question when shopping “What does this cost?” but to ask “What does this cost the Earth?”

If you asked that question in the modern grocery store, you might well end up taking your reusable canvas grocery bag home empty.

School Marms and Suffragettes

Left. Edith? and Marion. I wasn’t sure as this picture wasn’t pasted into the Tighsolas album, just tucked there, but the age of the photograph and the fact that this little girl -indeed- looks like young Marion, (as I have another studio shot) leads me to believe this picture was taken in 1889. Is that possible?

Well, only an expert in baby carriages could tell.

When I get around to writing that next bit of Flo and the City (soon, on this blog) I want to introduce the subject of suffrage. Flora is going to say that in five years she will have joined the suffragettes.

I will have Marion return from Montreal, to watch Flo and Mae while Margaret is away. She will have with her a pamphlet on suffrage, 1908, with a lecture by a McGill Professor E H Macnauten. This pamphlet was found amongst the Nicholson material! Marion will have attended a lecture by this man in Montreal. Why not?

Militant suffragism was just getting going in 1908. That’s what suffragettes are, militant suffragists. And the Nicholsons were all for the militant suffragists. I know from a certain letter.

The militant suffragists were both mocked and reviled. They were also tortured in jail. In England, when some suffragists went on a hunger strike, they were force fed, through their mouths and through their vaginas. Tortured. Indeed, it is likely the suffagists became militant, because when they used peaceful means of protest they were still thrown into jail like criminals.