100 Year Old Christmas List

Christmas 2011 and is over, but most of us won’t be tabulating the damage until next month, when the credit card statements come in.

Lots of DVD’s and video games,  I imagine. And Apple products of the decidedly uncrunchy kind.  Some relatively inexpensive clothing made mostly in Asia.

Soaps from Lush and the Body Shop.  Packets of those fancy designer teas, including Green De-Tox for use after New Years. (OK. So that’s my list.)

Here’s a Christmas cost list my husband’s great grandfather, Norman Nicholson, tabulated exactly 100 years ago: He was the patriarch of a family from Richmond, Quebec.

1 gent’s shirt 1.75

One lady’s hair brush 50

Edith one pair gloves 1.25

Marion one pair gloves 1.25

Flora one pair gloves 1.25

Tuning piano 2.00

Nuts 18

1 doz oranges 20

5 pounds sugar 25

2 lemons

Allspice 2

Citron peel02

1 box honey 10

1 Barrel flour (Red roses 2.90)

I pair gents braces 30

Flat irons 35

Ice bill 5.50

Masonic Fees 4.00

2 tickets to Christmas Concert 1.50

6 lb turkey 1.20

I pound candies 25

½ pound almonds 25

3 pounds raisins 25

½ pound knitting yarn 80

One pair ladies boots 1.40

Church collection 20

1 ladies scarf 1.00

2 pairs ladies hose  95

One pair arm braces 10

Washwoman 50 (ah, everyone gets a break from the laundry duties)

1 bottle shoe polish 25

And the final item. Fare Flora home (To Ste Anne de Bellevue Macdonald College)2.20

I imagine his daughters, Edith 27, Marion 25, Flora 19,  gave each other gifts not on the list, likely ribbons and bows from the milliner, for their Easter bonnets, which would be the new hat for the season.

Ummm. Oranges in season. They must have tasted so good. I must admit, the clementines tasted good and juicy this Christmas, although these days you can get them all year around – but most of the time they don’t taste so good.

100 years ago! Imagine.

Ribbons Eaton’s Catalogue 1909

I printed this list in my ebook Threshold Girl, a story based on genuine family letters from the era, family letters belonging to a middle class Canadian family. I have 100’s of these letters, bearing stamps with portraits of Edward VII and George V and some earlier ones with Victoria.

So, you see, this was a middle class list.

I had to include this list in the story, because there exist no letters describing the family’s Christmas day habits. Everyone is home together at Christmas. I can only guess at what they did. Well, they went to church, probably often. That’s a no-brainer as they went to church often even when it wasn’t Christmas.  No radio or TV, you see. And the motion picture houses were only in the big city and mostly frequented by the working class.

I may still have something on that very list. The flat iron. I have two of this family’s flat irons. I use them as doorstops. They weigh about 7 pounds each!

My ebook covers the life of Flora Nicholson 18, from April 2011 to June 2012, for it was her year at Teachers College. The Titanic would sink while she was at school. Her sister would attend the funeral of Charles Hays, the President of the Grand Trunk Railway, in the American Presbyterian Church.

Flora’s sisters, Edith and Marion, were already teachers in the big bad exciting city of Montreal. Her brother was out West, in Saskatchewan, clawing his way up the ladder of success, or at least trying to.

Flora spent many a weekend in the City, going to theatre plays at the Princess on Ste. Catherine Street or His Majesty’s Theatre on Guy.

And on other weekends her sisters and their friends would head up to Macdonald College, especially if they were holding a dance. The family was close and protective of ‘the baby’ Flora.

In January 2012, Flora returns to school and graduates and gets a job teaching at a brand new city school, William Lunn, where the students are mostly the children of newly arrived immigrants from Russia.

Many of these immigrants would find work in the textile industry. In Threshold Girl Flora meets up Miss Gouin, a French Canadian textile worker, with eyes on the prize, a glamorous high paying job in millinery, that is the hat-making industry.

Textiles and clothing in those days was made right at home in Quebec – or imported from Britain and the U.S.

Miss Gouin is fictional. Her situation is not. In one scene she describes, all too vividly, the child labour at Dominion Textile. Flora, so protected by her family who aspire to the genteel life, is truly disgusted.

Woman’s Proper Sphere 1910

A soap is a soap, but

A soap is a soap is a soap. How did Ivory Soap distinguish itself from the rest, then? Not by claiming it was 99.9 percent pure (all products in the era advertised themselves as pure). But by keeping the copy to the minimum.

They created “lifestyle” advertising, that promised a less stressful time of it - sometimes even a mood altering experience. Coke gave and still gives happiness and Ivory Soap promised calm and serenity while you keep house, or oversaw servants who kept house for you.  The ads were generally full page but the picture took up most of it..And |Ivory was mostly advertised in the Ladies’ Home Journal.

 

What follows is an excerpt from an article called Twenty Six Hours a Day by Jeanne Wheaten from the July 1911 issue of Food and Cookery Magazine.

It is quite pertinent to ask, What is woman’s proper sphere? Every true woman instinctively feels, and she may profess it or not, that a woman’s happiest place is, as Mrs. Browning says, ” in the sweet safe corner of the household fire, behind the heads of the children.” Such a home is the ideal of almost every girlish heart.  But there are some who never have it. To enter upon life with the desire to get such a home is to defeat that very purpose, or to obtain in its place a miserable substitute; for, like very other gracious gift, it comes not by seeking, but in its own natural way. With some, a bright vision of married life faded in its realization into cruel mockery. With others the black pall of bereavement has shut the very sunshine out of the heavens. In other homes, the woman’s heart yearns for little ones, but she looks forward to a future of childlessness. What shall these women do? Because the heart is desolate and the hands are empty should the head be empty too? Let us not deceive ourselves. Whether a woman works in the shelter of her own home or outside of it, she has duties to society and an influence over it, which she cannot avoid. How good or how broad that influence depends upon her intellectual and moral nature.

Whatever the past may have been, we know that the future woman can and will take any place she is competent to fill. She ought to wish for no other. It is of little use for women to whine over their wrongs or to storm or scold at man’s tyranny. Men are quite willing to give us a place in the ranks of the world’s workers as we are to earn it. Still, it is well to remember that whatever has helped to elevate women to her present position has been done by those brave spirits who have resolutely wrought at their chosen labour, ignoring the petty ostracism of their next door neighbors, who called them “singular” ‘eccentric’  or “strong-minded.”  We must not judge harshly those who are called to work outside of the beaten paths. When a woman has exceptional gifts, she has probably exceptional work in the world to do, and she ought to do it.

A Story Censored… But I’m Gonna Tell It.

Westmount Methodist Teacher 1910

Edith in her school teacher uniform

 

Well, it’s coming to me, the plot of Edith’s Story, about Edith Nicholson’s life and work in 1910, in Westmount Quebec. A sequel to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

 

Edith, a militant suffragette sympathizer, if not ‘activist’ as there were no activists in Canada, will learn from Carrie Derick about the murky side of the suffrage movement, its relationship with eugenics.

 

And as Edith teaches at a missionary school,one  that converts French Canadian Catholics to Methodism, she will be able to see the ‘illogic’ of it all… even if Carrie Derick, esteemed social activist and scientist, does not.

 

In real life, Edith stepped out with Derick at McGill. According to at least one scholarly paper, many people at McGill turn of the last century, supported eugenics. But then the President of the US did.

 

I’ll have Edith argue with Marion about IQ.. a new test in 1910, invented by a French man to help even the playing field socially speaking, but then usurped by elitists and racists and brought to North America.

 

Converting Catholics to the WAY

French Methodist Institute, corner Staynor and Greene, as depicted in Preparing the Way by Paul Villard.

Well, Preparing the Way explains: French Methodist was an evangelical school.

Edith worked their three years, from 09 to 12, but I am only surmising the 09. No letters exist from her at the period, but she was in Montreal.

The ultimate purpose of the school was to convert French Canadians to Protestantism. There were two prayer sessions a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, and Wednesday Night was a prayer meeting, where a student could give a testimonial.

“Many who entered with a mind full of prejudice and superstition have been so influenced by the Gospel of Christ that their eyes have opened, and they have renounced Romish errors to accept pure Gospel Truth.”

“The French Canadians belong to a most bright and intelligent race. As they come under the influence of men and women of lofty and pure Christian character, they soon become transformed adn show the bright side of their personality.”

The book gives examples: “A Roman Catholic girl in employ of____, the businessman, went to his office and reported to him that he was in some way being cheated by his own people. Why did you tell me? he asked. “Because,” answered the girl, in the school where I attended (French Methodist) I learned how to distinguish right from wrong.”

Another story tells how a student, who learned at the Institut that the Sabbath was a day only for quiet talk and prayer, convinced his parents not to drink and play cards on Sunday.

This reminds me of a line from Western Canada magazine, that tells how a girl with immigrant parents, learned to cook at school, and then went home to show her mother how to cook. Every mom loves to be told what do to by her kid, especially about how to cook.

Preparing the Way gives the school schedule, a very disciplined agenda, but with daily time for play and Saturday afternoon off. (I have Edith go with Flo to see the suffragette Saturday evening.)

But I still have to figure out why Edith and a few other teachers rebelled in 1912. I see by the Book, that the older girls were the ones who set the tables and did the dishes. Maybe I will have Edith upset at the unfair division of labour, that the girls do more than the boys. Yes, that might be it.

The school will consider this ‘part of their education.’

The school took in all level of student, from 12 on, pre-literates and young adults ready to take their Provincial exam.

They taught the same course as regular Academies, like St. Francis. And according to the book, the teachers taught in both English and French. I know from a story on the web, that Edith taught Bible class.

So, without her diploma she did, indeed, teach the same course as other teachers in the Montreal Board.

During the early war years she taught at St. Francis, but only after taking a special ‘interim’ course at Lachute in the summer. She got a provisionary diploma. And then she gave up teaching, likely because it became absolutely necessary to have a diploma…and this despite her experience. Or she was fed up with the low pay.

She went to work for Sun Life. And she got that job, which she didn’t much like, through connections as per usual. Her boss was a neighbour of Marion’s in NDG.

I will have Edith drawn to the Montreal Council, not so much for suffrage, but for work issues… And she’ll meet Miss Gouin and try to convince her it is still time to go to school.

Textile Research 1910.

Well, I’ve finished the outline of Flo in the City, the one with the plot involving garment workers. And it works. I just need to keep on working on it and hope that I have a few creative brainstorms. I used to have them on command, but, alas, my brain is old.

I had the major brainstorm to revisit the 1911 Census, to see what garment workers in Magog did. I know from another source, that the plant produced print materials for Dominion Textile.

Well, sure enough, there are many many people working at the the plant, and most are Tisserands.. weavers.

The most common other job says “journalier d’oc” occasional worker. Oddly, everyone has put 60 hours work a week down. (That must have come down from the company, to do so. Otherwise it makes no sense.)

The pay lines are all messed up, for the workers. One amount superimposed over another. Anyway 218 a year over 400 a year. Makes no sense either. Were they deliberately made obscure, because they all are!

I found one 12 year old working there (admitting to working there) and a 14 year old, which was legal, I think.

In 1909 Dominion Textile’s union went on strike and asked that child labour not be used, so.. there you go.

It’s hard to read, as the enumerator scribbled, and I’ve only looked at a few pages, but “carder” is another job…or cardeuse.

Useful and I’ll look at the other pages. 1000 people worked for that place at one time back then.

I also found out that the Milliner in Richmond was Vitaline Goyette, 27, whose father was also a merchant. She calls herself a modiste de chapeaux. No income entered for her.

There are also a number of dressmakers in Richmond. One woman, Esther Proulx, 25 ish, calls herself a couturier de robes and she made 108 dollars in 1910. Whoopie Do.

Well, lots of fodder for my story. It seems that’s why the Nicholsons could afford to hire a seamstress, on occasion. These poor women made next to nothing. But then again, Edith Nicholson made only 250 a year teaching at Westmount Methodiste Missionary School.

Dominion Textile and its wares 1910

American Textiles Workers 1914, perhaps in South. From TRiver “American 1910″ set on Flicrk. Some rights reserved.

Products of Dominion Textile Co. (Ltd.)

The Dominion Textile Co. is foremost in imitating and displacing American cottons, and on ordinary prints, for instance, now has the great bulk of the trade up to the 15-cent retail class. At 15 cents and above they meet strong English competition.

All Canadian prints are made at their Magog Print Works. They now have six classes of shirting prints, which are marked, respectivelj’, “L.X. ” “3,” “C,” “D.C.” “T.B.,” and “G.C.” The “L.X.” are narrow 26/27 inch subcount prints that are sold by the mill at 6 cents a yard less 12 per cent. The 12 per cent, is the trade discount assigned to the jobber as his margin and he has to sell the retailer at the ‘-’list” or restricted price of 6 cents. Some of these 26/27 inch prints actually measure only 255 inches, but the demand for such narrow prints in Canada is small, anyhow.

The “3″ prints are 29/30 inches wide, come in indigo, aniline, regatta, blouse, plates, reds, cardinals browns, omish, pinks, lilacs, and chambray, and are sold by the mill at 8 cents a yard less 15 per cent.

In assorted lots the same price is charged for all kinds, but if indigos only are specified a higher price is charged.

The “C” prints are 31/32 inches wide and seem to be more largely sold than those of any other class. They come in regatta, blouse, pinks, cardinals, solid colors, borders, omish, two-tone stripes,aniline, etc., and are sold by the mill at 10 cents a j’ard less 15 per cent.

The “D.C.” prints are 31/32 inches wide and sold assorted in indigo, navy and gold, navy and white, and Copenhagen at 10 cents a yard less 15 per cent, with increased price for indigos alone. The “T.B.” German prints, guaranteed pure
indigo dyed, are 29/30 inches wide and sold at 11 cents a yard less 17^ per cent.

They are heavy prints with large designs and used especially by the Doukhobors and Mennonites of Western Canada.

The “G.C. indigo” prints are 30/31 inches wide and are sold by the mill at 13^ cents a yard less 15 per cent.

The Dominion in addition makes printed delaines, challies, foulards, crepes, dress ducks, drapery cloths, tickings, etc.

The Dominion makes gray sheetings from 25 to 40 inches wide, its “Bengal” and “Bombay” brands being mainly 33 to 36 inches and the “Mount Royal wide grays” 40 inches wide. The gray drills are mainly of the 29-inch width, with some up to 34 inches, and gray twills of the 36-inch width. The Dominion makes three grades of ordinary gray ducks: “Savannah,” of which the 6-ounce invoices from the mill at IH cents and the 12-ounce at 21 1 cents a yard; “Trident,” 12 J- and 22^ cents for the 6 and 12 ounces., respectively;and “Eagle,” 14 cents for the 6-ounce on up to 26 cents for the 12-ounce. Its gray cantons run from 25 to 31 inches and the bleached cantons from 22 to 29.’ inches. The wide gray and I)leached sheetings are made in 6 to 11 quarter widths.

The Dominion bleached shirtings, cambrics, and longcloths are mainly 35/36 inches wide; bleached interlinings 36/37 inches. The white summer suitings
are 36/37 inches; white duck suitings, 26/27 inches; and bleached drills, 30/31 inches. The circular pillow cottons are 40 to 50 inches wide and pillow siijis, 40, 42, 44, and 46 inches. The Dominion quilts run 60 bv 80, 72 by 70,
71 by 81, 70 by 90, and 72 by 90, with mill prices of 75 cents to $1.10 each. The gray huck and honey comb towels run from 52j to 90 cents a dozen at the mill, with bleached towels in fancies up to as high as $1.42 a dozen. The 32-inch butter
cloths sell at the mill for 2f to 4 cents a yard.

The Dominion makes two classes of cotton blankets, the “Dragon,” which sells in the 10/4 width at 82 cents and in the 11/4 width at $1, and the “Ibex,” which sells in the 10/4 width at 87^ cents, in the 11/4 width at $1.05, and in the 12 4 width at .$1.25 at the mill. The Dominion blankets are made entirely by the Montmorency mill near Quebec, which turns out about 7,500 pairs a week, and which has an up-to-date equipment with 14 German-made napping machines. The Montmorency mill has a complete waste-spinning plant with 17 sets of triple cards for making waste yarns on the German woolen principle.

The mill buys cotton waste from the United States, as well as from other mills, and makes many blends for sale to hosiery mills and to mills needing colored waste filling for flannelettes, cottonades, etc. The most popular yarn blend made for underwear purposes is produced by running 1 brown lap to 12 white.

Kitchen Wars and Hunky Chefs

Picture of essential kitchen utensils from Marion Nicholson’s 1912 Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Jamie Oliver has a video on amazon.co.uk about the same thing for 2011. For his book 30 Minute Meals.

( I still have some utensils belonging to Marion, those enameled kinds popular in the 1910 era. I wonder if they are toxic, or more toxic than today’s utensils?)

This Christmas season my youngest son was over, on and off, and one day he sat in the living room watching ‘a marathon’ of the British reality show Chopped, I think it is called, where professional chefs are put to the test, making 3 course meals out of crazy ingredients.

“Why are there only men chefs?” I naively asked. (Well, there was one woman.)

“Because commerical chefs are almost always men,” he replied.

“How come?” I asked.

“Because women can’t take the heat in a commercial kitchen,” he replied, or something to that affect. (He works part-time as a chef in a commercial kitchen.)

“Why?” I repeated. “When women still do most of the cooking in the home.”

“Because the atmosphere in a kitchen is like a war zone. “

Well, I deferred to this opinion, because it is obvious that commercial chefs are mostly men, and young men, at that, even if plenty of TV chefs are women.

And in this case, the pay’s not great. No, it’s a labour of love.

And I didn’t have any ready answer, anyway, as I would have had, at 20. And I don’t argue with my kids, not any more. What’s the use?

But after reading more of Angels in the Workplace, about women in the garment industry in Canada, and about the 1912 Eaton’s strike of garment workers, I have to wonder.

Women’s work in the factory was under-valued because of just that, because they performed these duties “for free” in the home.

In the sultry month of July, 1912, when many Montreal Garment workers were on strike, Margaret writes in a letter to her husband Norman: “We are not doing much, just some sewing when it is not too hot.”

Margaret cooked and Margaret sewed. She was terrific at it. In the McLeod genealogy I discovered, the words written after Margaret’s name: “won many awards for her baking and crafts.”

But she still couldn’t earn her own living and this frustrated her in 1912 when her family was in dire financial trouble due to her son Herb’s lack of responsibility and she complained as much, in those very words: “If only I could earn my own living.”

(Taking in boarders was the traditional way middle class matrons made extra money, but Margaret did not want to do that and be tied to the stove. She was contemplating at one point going to live as a housekeeper for her daughters in the city.)

I wonder what she felt about the 1912 garment workers strike, if she heard about it. (In my book, Flo in the City, I’ll have Marion explain it to her.)

Did she feel, as many upper-crust social activists felt, that the girls were plain lucky to be getting paid for doing this kind of work? Or did she sympathize with them as downtrodden members of the ‘working class’. In letters, it is clear, she considered her own family working class.

(Remember, some one in the Nicholson clan cut out an article titled “Away from Nature” about the unhealthy nature of factory work, especially for girls.)

Yes, that’s how I’ll write it in Flo in the City. Marion will be for the strikers, Margaret won’t be as sympathetic and Flora will be on the sidelines, listening. She will identify with the young girls her age out on strike (after hearing that some young girls are forced to ‘date’ their bosses) and she will be happy she is going to work as a teacher at the Montreal Board, for 550. a year, even if that salary is 250. less than male graduates earn to start.

She ends up working in Griffintown in William Lunn School. I have a 1913 letter where she says the school is closed on the Jewish Holidays. Therefore she will be teaching the children of these garment workers. Nice symmetry.)

Canada’s First Woman Lawyer:Token or Role Model

In the 1910 era, magazines often ran stories about women in ‘manly’ positions: I’ve read one about a stockbroker, Superintendent of Education (Chicago), and about various pioneering women lawyers in various locales.

I just found an 1910 era article in the Canadian magazine, about Miss Mable French, who was the first woman lawyer in New Brunswick and BC.

As I’ve written before, it was commonly said in the era that, with respect to work, women had finally made it. That no profession was closed to them, as if ONE woman working in any given field meant that ANY WOMAN could easily enter the field.

The fact the Nicholson sisters all became teachers is a case in point: teaching was about the ONLY profession open to them as middle class women. And they had no choice but to work! And as I wrote in an earlier blog, they were begging for teachers in Quebec.

Anyway, these ‘working women’ articles tend to strike a similar tone. Remember, having a career in those days meant you gave up on love and, yes, sex and any intimate male companionship. Spinster City. The professional women interviewed were always asked to meditate on this Choice.

Mabel speaks:

“Of course,” she went on more seriously,”it is quite obvious that a woman who is looking to marriage as a career (sic) wouldn’t want to spend five years studying the law. It would seem like wasted effort. The average man, you know, is usually a bit afraid of the so-called clever woman. The average man prefers a woman who is charmingly ignorant of serious subjects.”

The author replies: “It is frankly admitted on behalf of our sex, that our tastes frequently runs to what Wells calls “the little fluffy type fool. We are the vainer part of the race and our vanity takes subtle forms. We feel greatful to those ladies who are so ignorant that they think we are very wise and clever.”

“I’ll reward your frankness with equal frankness, ” replies Miss French. “On behalf of my sex, I’ll admit that any woman is ready to be talked to if the right man comes along. But on the other hand, if a woman has persevered and made her way in her chosen profession, I think she would meditate very seriously before leaving it. Having secured a position of economic independence, she might be very reluctant to forgo it. Certainly she would be more critical of her choice.”

Ps. How I Met Your Mother had a show along the same theme this week. The show asked, why do men like women who ‘talk like little girls.’ I once knew a woman (a beauty)who often talked in baby talk at 25, and she had a PhD! In mathematics. And she had scores of boyfriends.

A New Feminine Citizenship

I found this article from Harper’s 1911, reprinted in Maclean’s, that supplies a cure to the era’s RESTLESS WOMAN SYNDROME. The author suggests that women are ‘natural slaves’ of a sort, but that they do, indeed, need an upgrade in status in a State that believes (rightly or wrongly) in equality between citizens.

The author totally ignores the place that money, economics, plays in relationships and, especially, in whether a woman marries or not. But don’t laugh, the Powers That Be in Canada actually bought into this solution: they created “the new profession of homemaking,” a profession just for women, with a new improved status but NO PAY.

“It is necessary to point out the scope of our present ignorance and indecision upon those two closely correlated problems, the problem of family organization and the problem of women’s freedom. In the Normal Social Life (sic) the position of woman is easily defined. They are subordinated but important. The citizenship rests with the man and the woman’s relationship to the community is through the man. But within those limitation, her functions as mother, wife and homemaker aare cardinal. It is one of the entirely unforseen circumstances that has arisen, from the decay of the Normal Social Life and its autonomous homes while great numbers of women, while still subordinate, have become profoundly unimportant. They have ceased, to a very large extent to bear children, they have ddropped most of their homemaking arts, they no longer nurse or educate such children as they have, and they have taken on no new function to compensate for these dwindling activities of the domestic interior.

That subjugation, that is a condition of the Normal Social Life, does not seem to be necessary to the Great State. It may or it may not be necessary. And here we enter upon the most difficult of all our problems. The whole spirit of the Great State is against any avoidable subjugation; but the whole spirit of that science (sic) which will animate the Great State forbids us to ignore women’s functional and tempermental differences. A new status has still to be invented as women, a Feminine Citizenship, differing in certain respects to the normal masculine citizenship. Its conditions remain to be worked out.

We have indeed to work out an entire new system of relationship between men and women, that will be free of servitude, aggression, provocation, or parasitism. (Who’s the parasite, the Man or the Woman?) The public endowment of motherhood as such will perhaps be the first broad suggestion of the quality of this new status. A new type of family, a mutual alliance in the place of subjugation, is perhaps the most startling of all the conceptions that confront us directly, as we turn ourselves towards The Great State.”
“

This was reprinted in The Review of Reviews section of Maclean’s.. a summary of articles printed elsewhere. Obviously the Maclean’s editors thought this was interesting, but whether they agreed or not, I cannot say. The next review is of an article titled “Why the Chinaman is the next Jew” and that article says that as Chinese are good with money they should be kept out of Canada.

I just can’t tell whether these articles where reprinted with a giant SIC or not.

A 1912 Chicken Tale

Marion Nicholson’s 1912 Fannie Farmer Cookbook, open to page on how to cook a chicken.

I have been listening to Singled Out on BBC 7, the serialization of book by Virginia Nicholson about the women left manless after the First World War.

I have heard it before, on BBC Radio Four, but I am catching new items of interest, especially in relation to Tighsolas. Of course, in England where 700,000 young men were killed and millions others maimed, eligible women far outnumbered eligible men in the post War Period. Indeed, some women were told they’d have better luck in the colonies, but not in the cities,where there were women aplenty, but in the tough rural areas.

Nicholson repeats one point over and over, that single women’s freedom was severly limited because of the stigma of prostitution. So Edith and Marion Nicholson, of Richmond Quebec, were typical of the women of the era.

I have been writing about a final chapter in the Nicholson saga of 1908-1913, when Marion Nicholson took the bold step of finding a flat on Hutchison to share with three other girls, one being her sister Flora, who was in her first year of teaching in Griffintown. In this she helped by family friends, the McCoys, so not everyone got their knickers in a twist over girls, whoops, young women, living alone.

In March, Marion writes to her Dad.

” We have had a very busy day here. Dr and Mrs. Skinner and Lloyd were here for dinner and I had some job preparing it. Aunt Christie had sent us in a chicken with Christina and I cooked it. Was rather scared as I had never done one before then they managed to eat it so perhaps it wasn’t too bad. I also treated them to one of my apple pies. Tell Mother I made three and on the Sabbath too and there is not a crumb left now so I think they must have been good. George Miller came up and went to church with Flora and May. He seems to be quite a nice chap but of course not like Hughie. But not the old Hughie you had in the cards last Xmas.”

(That “in the cards” business stymies me. Hugh is the man Marion will marry in October, but did he write something nasty at Christmas, or did Margaret get her fortune told. I suspect the second thing. I have letter from Hugh to Marion at Christmas and it is,well, a bit conflicted. He thanks her for her Christmas gift and then says his gift, a Teddy Bear, must have been lost in the mail. Hmm. Maybe that’s it. He had cold feet and sent Marion no gift. He was also involved with another woman his parents wanted him to marry. Alas.)

Chicken was a relatively expensive meat in those days, available only half the year. Here’s Fannie’s recipe. “Dress, clean, stuff, and truss a chicken. Place on its back on a rack in a dripping pan, rub entire surface with salt, and spread breast and legs with three tablespoons butter, rubbed until creamy and mixed with two tablespoons flour. Dredge bottom of pan with flour. Place in a hot oven and when flour is well browned, reduce the heat and then baste. Stuffing 1: I cup cracker crumbs, 1/3 cup butter, 1/3 cup boiling water, salt and pepper, Powdered sage, summer savory or marjoram.”

The legendary Fannie Merrit Farmer ran a cooking school in Boston, where the specialty was a course for nurses in sick-room cookery. According to info in the back of the cookbook, the training course offered one lesson weekly for ten consecutive weeks, by appointment. The cost: $65.00 and travelling expenses if given at a hospital. Lessons were on the chemical composition of food; correct proportions for well-balanced dietaries; proteids; starch; gelatin; fats and oils; alcohol; fermentation; fish classification and preparation.

Living in an era where a healthy person could catch pneumonia “The King of Death” one week and drop dead from it the next, (in the US almost 200 cases per 100,000 population in 1900 according to a 1912 article in Technical World Magazine) Fannie Farmer believed in the healing power of food.

But then nothing has changed in 100 years. Salmon in a blueberry sauce anyone, with some shitake mushrooms for good measure?