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This is my entry for the Weeping Horse award for the most boring blog post of the year. Another item stuffed in the back of the drawer of things I didn’t know what to do with.

We were told to buy one of these when I started my Computing Masters course in 1980. Except for the square and rectangular boxes, I never used it. 

What is it? I don’t really know, other than to say it is a template for drawing symbols used in computer flowcharting. I hardly gave it a second glance until now. It relates to an approach to programming that was becoming outdated before the course began. I think it was used for designing COBOL programs that took ages to run with no human input once started. I have no idea how to use the symbols. What is an auxiliary operation, a terminal interrupt, or a transmittal tape? And there were even more symbols on the packet it came in, on both sides. 

The packet it came in, and an example of how the symbols are used

The course taught us a different technique called Jackson Structured Programming (JSP) which was more suited to programs that interact with the user, as in most of today’s software. JSP defines programs as combinations of sequences, selections, and repetitions. It uses a notation consisting only of rectangles, plain for sequences, marked O for selections and * for repetitions. If you adhere to its rules for putting them together, you avoid the unintelligible, spaghetti-like tangle of code that defeats most novice programmers. I found it invaluable. 

Later, I used something called Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM). This employed a further set of techniques with names such as Data Flow Diagrams, Logical Data Structures, and Entity Life Histories. It organised data into the most flexible and efficient form, which was helpful in systems that handle complex information, such as customer orders, stock control, or bus timetables. This figure shows some of the notations. I could probably just about remember enough to explain them further, but it would be gobbledygook.  

Jackson Structured Programming example from my Masters Dissertation
SSADM Logical Data Structure and Data Flow Diagram

I know it is off the end of the autistic spectrum, but I enjoyed this kind of stuff and took great pride in it (and in what I was paid to do it). If the design is right, software works as intended without bugs that need fixing all the time. At the computer company I worked at, our large and complicated service management system did what it was supposed to do. It was used throughout Europe and elsewhere. The design was right. I would say that, today, companies like Amazon and Ebay largely have it right. So why don’t government systems such as for the DSS Carers Allowance? Why didn’t the Post Office? There used to be a saying based on the quality-time-cost triangle which was that you can have it good, you can have it quick, and you can have it cheap, but you can’t have it all three. 

To come back to the template, it was not used. Like with books, do not buy anything a university or college recommends until it is needed. It might not be. 

What to do with it? It takes up little space. It is back in the drawer with all the other useless rubbish. 

Edwards’ “Harlene”

Another oddity from the side branches of my wife’s unusual family tree. 

Reuben George Edwards was born Reuben Goldstein, but like many others changed his name to something more “I’m not Jewish” which was better for business. His wife’s family had changed from Nathan to Newton, and other relatives to Lewis, Lawrence, Harris and Ellis.   

Reuben founded Edwards’ Harlene, manufacturers of hair restorers for men and women, in the 1880s. Bizarre and rather unsettling newspaper advertisements made claims that would be illegal today. One pictures a young mother with high-maintenance knee-length hair, standing at her dressing table, being asked by her daughter, “Mama, shall I have beautiful long hair like you when I grow up?”, to which she replies, “Certainly, my dear, if you use ‘Edwards’ Harlene’.” Another shows an improbably hirsute man with beard and handlebar moustache, and a woman with thick wavy locks:   

Edwards’ “Harlene” positively forces luxuriant hair, whiskers and moustachios to grow heavily in a few weeks without injury to the skin and no matter what the age.

The world-renowned remedy for baldness, from whatever cause arising. As a producer of whiskers and moustachios it has never been equalled. As a curer of weak or thin eyelashes, or restoring grey hair to its original colour, it never fails. 

My goodness! If only you could still get it. With some of that I could have been in Jethro Tull, or more likely Wizzard for which I’ve got the nose but not the hair. It would be Christmas every day. 

The business was very profitable. When he died in 1943, Edwards left £86,500, equivalent to over £3m today. 

They founded the Edith Edwards Preventorium at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire, for the treatment of tuberculosis, in memory of a daughter who died aged 15 in 1914.

Housewives’ Choice

This is where I lived until the age of 6. It seems unchanged except for replacement doors and windows, and the back bedroom has been divided to make a bathroom. That attic is where I played with my dad. 

The front door opened on to a passage past the front room and stairs, to the back room, with a single-storey kitchen behind. There was an outside toilet behind the kitchen, and we hung a paraffin lamp under the cistern to stop it freezing in winter. There was blue paraffin and pink paraffin, just different brands I think. They had the same distinctive smell, both liquid and alight. 

For hot water we had a gas ‘geyser’. It had blue flames underneath when in operation. For large quantities to fill the bath and laundry dolly tub we heated it on the gas cooker, or lit a fire in an outhouse (the “wash house”) at the end of the garden. A bit later we did get a stand-alone Ada washing machine with a wringer on top and a hose that hooked over the kitchen sink. 

Here we are at the back of the house, ‘tin’ bath against the wall. With no indoor bathroom or toilet you needed a ‘po’ under the bed. The music of the tinkling deepened with the content, especially with enamel metal ones, although I guess they were warmer than porcelain for women to sit on. Did couples have one each, or share? If that sounds primitive, my grandma still used an earth closet. ‘Pos’ were also useful in freezing weather. It was all very well for men; they could wee in the kitchen sink over the dirty dishes. Now we want en-suite bathrooms and a shower every day. 

Before I was old enough for school, I was at home with my mum. Dad went off to work, and Mum began clearing up the breakfast table and doing things in the kitchen (and of course emptying the ‘pos’). I would play on the back room floor. After starting school, the same routine continued during holidays, and after my brother was born and we moved to another house with the luxury of an indoor bathroom. 

At 10 past 9 each weekday, Housewives’ Choice came on the ‘wireless’ as we then called it. It played popular songs. I soaked them in. Before I was 10, I could sing the tunes and at least the first verse of possibly 100 contemporary popular songs. That does not include the older songs my dad sang, traditional tunes, or hymns and carols.  

Last month’s post about uncool singers had me wondering how many I still know. Over the following days they came tumbling out of my head until I was begging them to stop. Here are some I can still make a decent attempt at. I tend to remember the tunes, but not always the words or singers. 

For a start, there was the Housewives’ Choice signature tune. I can also do Workers’ Playtime, Two Way Family Favourites, and Children’s Favourites. Or how about the music Granada Television (then the commercial channel for the whole of the North of England) played before starting up at five o’clock? 

The earliest contemporary song I remember is The Ugly Duckling by Danny Kaye (1952). Danny Kaye also sang Wonderful Copenhagen (1953). I doubt my memories are from those years because I was very young, and they were played incessantly later. 

Also from 1953 is She Wears Red Feathers (Guy Mitchell). He also did Singing The Blues (1957) but I suspect it is the slurred and affected Tommy Steele U.K. version I remember. An older boy copied it as he rode his bicycle along the street. Tommy Steele also sang Little White Bull (1959). 

I mentioned Memories Are Made Of This (Dean Martin, 1955) and Magic Moments (Perry Como, 1958) in last month’s post. Perry Como also sang Catch A Falling Star (1957) and Delaware (1959). I am pretty sure I remember them from that time and still know most of the words. 

Alma Cogan was hugely popular in Britain in the 1950s. I can still do Where Will the Dimple Be, Twenty Tiny Fingers and Sugartime (all 1955) which are fairly awful. But I seem to recall her recording of the brilliant Love and Marriage (1956) being played a lot, even though it was Frank Sinatra that had the hit. Illusion; conclusion; institute; disparage: good for the vocabulary, too. 

Another awful song was Pickin’ a Chicken (Eve Boswell, 1955). Sadly I still know it.

Michael Holiday had a wonderfully rich voice, but died tragically young. I knew The Story Of My Life (1958) all the way through. Is that why I write what I write?  

The Beverley Sisters were also very popular. As well as Sisters (1954), they were well known for Little Donkey and Little Drummer Boy (1959). 

My mother liked to point out that David Whitfield was from Hull whenever he came on, but I could not bring to mind anything he sang. I am surprised to read he sang the theme tune for the TV series, The Adventures of William Tell (1958). Ronnie Hilton was also from Hull.

That’s over 20. There were so many more. This is the personal compilation of a child of the 50s. I had to stop somewhere. It was becoming painful. I can still sing them all. I made the list from memory and looked up other details later. Some were covers of American songs by British singers, and some the silly kind of songs that appeal to children. Commercial compilations of 1950s hits are very different. 

When older, I had a transistor radio. I listened to 208 Radio Luxembourg at night under the bedclothes (Radio Luxembourg circumvented the BBC monopoly and ban on advertising). One night there was a request for ‘Love Me Do’ by The Beatles. I’d never heard anything like it. It stuck fast in my head, and music changed for ever. Parents thought it rubbish, not that it troubled them much. It would be some years before you would hear it on Housewives’ Choice. 

Philately will get you nowhere (unless you’re Dennis J. Hanson)

New month old post: first posted 26th March, 2015

From when I was fairly new to Blogging, and often wrote very long posts. Yet it has had over 12,000 views, so I have left it unchanged. The original 70 comments are here, although most commenters (other than Kid - thankyou) seem now to have dropped off Blogger. 

 

The ads were irresistible: 

ALL FREE OVER 200 STAMPS PLUS THE FAMOUS PENNY BLACK & CAPE TRIANGULAR FACSIMILES The famous 1840 British “PENNY BLACK” and the 1853 “CAPE TRIANGULAR” facsimiles (originals worth about £45) plus a genuine dealer’s mixture of 200 unsorted stamps (Catalogued over 30/-.), all ABSOLUTELY FREE! Just ask to see our New Approvals. (Please tell your parents.)

This old PENNY RED and approx. 500 stamps for only 1/-. Here’s a super bargain that no collector can afford to miss! Send only 1/- today for this guaranteed and unsorted collection of about 500 stamps, often containing scarce and unusual stamps, plus this Great Britain 1d. Red issued 100 years ago. ... This very valuable offer ... is to introduce our Latest Approval Books. Please tell your parents when sending for Approvals.

This famous BLACK SWAN plus 213 stamps all FREE! The 213 are all DIFFERENT and include 14 Special Stamps (catalogued at over 10/-) such as the 80 year old British ‘Penny Lilac’. Whole collection is catalogued at over 45/-, yet it will be sent FREE to all who ask for our New Approvals. Please tell your Parents.

Wow! Two hundred FREE stamps! Five hundred for a shilling! ‘The Children’s Newspaper’, ‘Meccano Magazine’ and most comics were full of such offerings from a massed approval of stamp dealers – heaps of stamps free, or for just a few pence, if only you would ask to see their Approvals. The most prolific pedlars were the Bridgnorth Stamp Company and - undoubtedly the best because it was just along the road from where I lived - Dennis Hanson’s Philatelic Services of Eastrington. Some of his promotions took the form of a super stamp quiz. 

The quiz is from 1963 but for anyone who fancies submitting a late entry (at the time of writing I believed the business still existed) I’ve added my answer attempts below at the end. I suggest you increase the value of the 3d. stamp to take account of inflation (second class should do it), and oh yes, don’t forget to tell your parents.

Dennis Hanson started buying bulk stamps while still at school in Scarborough in 1935, sorting them into small packets, and selling them to his school friends and also through his father’s general store. He moved to Eastrington two years later and over the years has traded under a variety of names including Philatelic Services, D. J. Hanson, The Stamp Club and The Universal Stamp Company. He was still in business seventy-five years later although he has never gone online. Over this time, dozens of Eastrington ladies have found agreeable employment fixing stamps into Approvals booklets and posting them out to customers.

Dennis Hanson and his staff in 1993 (from Howdenshire History)

As one of those customers it’s not easy to explain the appeal of stamp collecting to the screen-fixated youngsters of today, yet it used to be among the most popular childhood hobbies for both girls and boys. You could spend hours in exaltation, sorting through piles of stamps, carefully separating them from their envelope corners in a bowl of water, and drying them out between sheets of blotting paper.

The attraction was of course in the sheer beauty of the stamps, their vivid colours and stunning art work, and the way they captured the imagination by association with the history and geography of the world - conflict in Europe, communist revolution, African exploration, colonial independence. Looking again at my old stamp album (having just retrieved it from the loft where it was in a brown paper parcel wrapped up long ago by my dad). I’m amazed to see how much time I must have spent drawing little maps and transcribing information about different countries.

Stamps from Aden, where my aunt and uncle lived for a time, overflowed their page very quickly

 

Dennis Hanson clearly had a great knack for marketing. The whole purpose of the give away offers was to entice you into spending your pocket money on his Approvals which were mouth-wateringly presented in little chequebook sized booklets. Even when you managed to resist and return them all unpurchased it wasn’t too long before another booklet arrived, and then another, and you had a job to stop them coming.

A wodge of approval booklet pages from which the stamps have been removed show that I didn’t resist. I spent a small fortune – around 60 empty pages with a total value approaching £5 (which would have a purchasing power of around £100 today, and more than double that in terms of earnings): “Very scarce set of 6 mint & used Albania 1917 Koritza Eagles 2/-”, “Complete fine-used set of 2 Hungary 1952 Railway Day (catalogued 1/6d.) 9d.”, “Handsome set of 6 mint Paraguay 1958 President Stroessner 1/6”. And then a page in red ink: 

Superb stamps given Free. They are not for sale they are FREE . . . Set of 3 unused Herm Island 1954 Triangular Sea-Birds, local stamps with a face value of 1/2d., from part of the United Kingdom. Now obsolete and scarce. . . . YES, ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE. If you purchase 5/- worth or more from this Approval Book you may take this page right out of the book and keep it. These grand stamps will add lots of value and interest to your collection! It’s our way of showing our appreciation of your valued patronage.

This doesn’t count yet more pennies expended at the corner shops that also plied philatelic produce in racks of cellophane packets.

Very soon, my spring-backed, loose-leafed Movaleaf Stamp Album, bought one afternoon from Clifford Moss of 31 Woodhouse Lane on a trip to Leeds with my dad, was bulging with stamps from all the old countries, many no longer in existence, such as “Jugo-Slavia”, the Weimar Republic of Germany, and British colonies such as Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. 

Still more interesting is my dad’s 1930s Triumph stamp album where among many other surprising things we find Queen Victoria’s head adorning stamps from the six Australian territories which issued stamps separately until 1913. It’s also surprising to note that my dad must have continued to collect stamps into his twenties and thirties because his album contains lots of Elizabeth II issues.

As with most people, my interest waned as I grew older, although losing myself in my album now, in reverie, I could easily imagine taking it up once more, becoming expert in a specific area, something unfashionable and politically incorrect, perhaps stamps of the British Empire, assimilating all the lessons from history they bring with them.

What began to turn me off was in fact the antics of the very same Dennis Hanson who so altruistically cultivated my interest in the hobby in the first place. His bulk packets of unsorted stamps contained far too many cheap and flimsy ones from far eastern countries, and a disproportionately high number portraying the grim bespectacled face of King Baudouin of Belgium who looked like the dad of one of my friends.

Even more unforgivable were the Approvals that weren’t really proper stamps at all. The Herm Island stamps mentioned above were one example, used only for a private postal service from Herm to the nearest official post office on Guernsey, and obviously printed as a commodity to sell to tourists. But it was the stamps of South Molucca that really annoyed me.

“These Stamps will never be catalogued” it said on the front of one booklet. On another “Stamps of the South Moluccas Republic and the Forgotten War. ... although not listed by Gibbons, they are undoubtedly of philatelic interest.” And although they may have looked magnificent with their colourful images of the mammals, birds, fish, butterflies and plants of a small group of Indonesian islands, the republic never gained independence. Some stamps were issued by a would-be government in exile in the Netherlands, and others were produced without authorisation by a German stamp dealer. None were ever postally used and no reputable dealer should ever have touched them. Four pages crammed-full of bogus Republik Maluku Selatan stamps in my album show I was well and truly taken in. 

So, Mr. Hanson, having worked up a fury over being diddled fifty years ago, I’ve decided to send in my quiz answers even if you are over ninety. I’ve just now posted them off. It will be interesting to see whether I get any response. Sadly I can no longer tell my parents.

My quiz answers: 1 – Twopenny Blue; 2 – No; 3 – British Guiana 1 cent Magenta; 4 – Yes; they are produced for collectors but many avoid them; 5 – Sweden; 6 – Yes, they bear the name Grønland; 7 – Yes; 8 – Hungary; 9 – Yes; 10 – No, they are for guidance only.

POSTSCRIPT  - No reply at all. Not even a facsimile.

SECOND POSTSCRIPT
In early August 2015 I received the following email:

My name is Charlotte Hanson I was googling my Grandad Dennis Hanson and came across your recent post. My Grandad sadly passed away on 29/07/2015. I know he would have loved to have read your post and give you a personal response to your quiz questions if it wasn't for his ill health this year. It makes us proud to find so much information about him on the Internet so thank you.

I replied to say how sorry I was to hear of her grandad's death, and thanked her for not jumping on my rather irreverent post. Dennis Hanson made a go of doing his own thing – an example for us all I think. A notice appeared in the Yorkshire Post and other regional newspapers, and an obituary on the East Yorkshire Local and Family History blog.


Other Hanson items (right click and open in new tab for full size):

In the original comments was a discussion of a box of around 200 unused approvals booklets sold on ebay in August 2017 for £227. Here are the images associated with the listing (right click to enlarge):

Not So Smart

Two things: energy meters and me. 

A succession of energy suppliers has been pestering us for years to have a smart meter. We’ve held out this long because we don’t see the point. It’s for their benefit, not ours. The energy suppliers are paid to fit them, and meters don’t save you any money if you don’t use energy unnecessarily. 

But we don’t think it will be all that long until they become compulsory, and as EDF were offering us a fixed rate tariff that cut £150 off the annual bill provided we had a smart meter, it seemed the right time to do it. We checked their calculations and signed up two months ago, made an appointment for the meter installation, and got the lower rate immediately. 

The installer couldn’t do it. First of all, there is not enough space on the electricity supply base board. Secondly, because the gas meter is in the garage at the other side of a double brick wall four yards from the electricity meter in the house, the signal strength would probably be too weak for the two to communicate. He took some photographs and said that EDF would be in touch about what happens next. 

They weren’t. All we had was emails saying we must have a smart meter to remain on the fixed tariff. So I phoned them. It seems we continue to wait. Apparently, they cannot alter the tariff while the matter remains open. 

I estimate it needs at least £500 of work to resolve the problem with the electricity base board. I hope they don’t say it is our responsibility. And that would not solve the issue with the gas meter anyway, so we would still have to submit manual readings. 

Smart meter roll out in the U.K. is a farce. It was all supposed to be finished five years ago. The mistake was to give the energy suppliers their way to fit them piecemeal, rather than have the national power grid install whole areas at a time. Private industry knows best, of course! We all pay for the inefficiency through increased bills, while the energy suppliers rake in the payments to give to shareholders. 

I am not so smart either. First of all I had another fit and a night in hospital. It was two days after flu and covid jabs, and I also got the fine balance of hydration, nutrition, temperature, and tiredness wrong that day, but whether they had anything to do with it, I don’t know. 

I am also struggling more generally. In addition to the reading difficulties written about previously, the pills I take to poison the tumours also poison me. One side-effect is to deplete blood albumin. It should measure 35-50 g/L. Mine is 21. 

Albumin transports all kinds of things around the body, so the consequences are challenging and many. When you have a serious condition you learn more about human biology than ever they managed to teach you at school. 

Reading with text-to-speech is slow, and I feel very tired much of the time. Posting and commenting take a lot of time and effort. I no longer comment as much as I would like, but I read more than I comment. I enjoy your posts, and continue to do what I can.

This is not to seek sympathy, but just to say how things are. I am more interested in your thoughts about smart meters. 

Farmwashing

I have a pre-school memory of going into town with Mum to do the shopping. She stacked it on and around me in the pushchair. 

In those days you had to shop for fresh food two or three times a week. No fridges for us until the 1960s. Meat kept only for so long in a mesh-fronted meat safe. Milk was delivered daily to the door. You had to buy from different shops: the grocer, the butcher, the greengrocer, and others. Nearly all produce was locally grown and in season. Life was simpler and less frantic. Most mothers did not work, and one ordinary wage could support a family. 

Now, of course, you can buy anything you want at any time of the year: fresh peas and new potatoes in Winter, strawberries at Christmas, and oranges at other times. You never saw blueberries at all. It is flown in cheaply from all over the world. 

Perhaps we expect too much. The toll on the environment is enormous, therefore many prefer to spend a little more and buy locally-grown, ethically-produced meat, fruit, and vegetables. To meet this need, supermarkets offer special brands with idyllic-sounding farm names on the front of the packet. It implies that the product is from those farms. 

This is deliberately misleading. Behind the image of quaint British family farms usually lies a reality of industrial-scale production, with much imported from abroad. Three of the biggest producers have a combined annual turnover of £4.8 billion. The ‘farm’ on the label, such as Tesco’s Redmere Farms, does not exist. It is just a marketing device. At the same time, the real farms this imitates are being driven out of business as their own products are devalued. Large numbers of small farmers fear having to give up their farms, and few believe that supermarket claims to support British farming reflect their actual behaviour.

This is in effect theft, stealing the goodwill of the small farmers. Such cynical manipulation of customers and consumers by big businesses of all kinds (we can probably think of others), with the pursuit of profit above all sense of morality, needs to stop. I can get very angry about it.  

We buy some of our own vegetables from Riverford who have created a website and four short videos with more about Farmwashing. You will never look at a supermarket vegetable aisle in the same way again. 

The website and videos are at www.stopfarmwashing.co.uk and also on YouTube:  

Reginald

I keep going on about how family history research can turn up fascinating and unexpected things. My wife’s great-great-grandmother, who was widowed at 19, re-married a high official of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, 40 years her senior (23 and 63). We therefore find well-connected, upper-class cousins amongst the distant relatives. Many were odd, or potty, or both. One of my favourites is this splendid gentleman, John Reginald Rowallane Armytage Moore. He was born in County Cavan in 1876. 

Reginald lived in Ireland until his early twenties, and then moved to Vancouver as an estate agent. There, in 1909 aged 33, he met and married 22-year-old Amy (Maisie) Campbell-Johnston. Their story then becomes distinctly unusual. 

On paper it seemed a perfect match. He was high-born Anglo-Irish, and she was descended from the first Marquess of Montrose. But Maisie left after just a few months. She told one relative it was because Reginald was gay, but I am not so sure. You will have to make up your own mind. Not that it would matter much these days, but it did then. 

By 1911, Reginald is back in London alone, still an estate agent, while Maisie has gone to California to stay with a friend called George Mordecai. Soon afterwards, Reginald moved to Sydney, Australia, where a newspaper reports he had joined the rowing club, having previously won competitive rowing competitions in Canada. 

He remained in the southern hemisphere up to and through the First World War, serving with different forces in different countries. He spent a period in the Matabeleland Mounted Police in Southern Rhodesia, and then served in the forces in both New Zealand and Australia. One would have expected someone of his background and class to have been an officer, but it appears he was only an ordinary serviceman. He seems to have found it easy to move around. 

In New Zealand, he was one of the 23-strong relief force that sailed to Samoa in 1916 to replace part of the garrison there. New Zealand forces had been the first anywhere in the world to recapture land back from the Germans, i.e. Samoa, and the relief force was made up of men aged 40 and over to free up younger men to fight in Europe. 

He turns up in Australia early in 1918. He enlisted as a gunner in the 12th Field Artillery Brigade, which sailed for Europe in June that year. The photograph is from this period. They arrived too late for active service, but were engaged in post-Armistice duties in France. He was discharged in England in 1919. 

For the rest of his life, he lived in a flat in Earls Court Road from where he ran a dancing school, a highly unusual occupation for a man of his background and era. It does not seem to have been particularly successful. Although both his mother and his sister treated him more generously in their Wills than other siblings, excusing his debts, and setting up trusts to provide him with a good income, he left only £167 when he died in 1951. Surprisingly, he left this to Miss Kathleen Fricker, one of three unmarried sisters who lived in Wandsworth. Who was she? His Will had been made over 20 years earlier. 

This leaves a lot of gaps and questions. He apparently had a lady friend, but was also a man’s man and adventurer. How was he able to move easily between military postings, or was he forced to? And the school of dance? He sounds every bit as dashing as the photograph suggests. Ships’ passenger lists describe him as 6 feet tall, with dark complexion, brown hair and blue eyes. What could be more arresting than a handsome, six-foot Matabeleland Mounted Policeman? I bet he looked grand in the uniform. 

The South African Mounted Police in 1960 probably had a similar uniform

It is not clear what his relationship was with Kathleen Fricker, but had they wanted to marry, they would not have been able to, because he remained married to Maisie. And before blaming him for the shortness of that marriage, it is worth hearing a little more of Maisie’s story, which is even more bizarre. 

Maisie Armytage-Moore was a larger-than-life character who dressed in black, smoked cigars, and loved boxing and American Indians. Three years before marrying Reginald, while still a teenager, she became friends with a notorious American stagecoach robber, Bill Miner. He taught her to ride and built her a skating rink. Another friend was a North American Indian girl, Lena Vogt, who taught her about Indian ways and the outdoors. This was later very significant. Also around this time, she wanted to elope with a Christian preacher, the George Mordecai mentioned earlier. 

Three years after her short marriage, she went off to the USA with a man called Martin Joseph Murphy, a lumberjack and part-time boxer, with whom she managed a boxing troupe travelling around logging camps. She also worked for a union called International Workers of the World, which in 1919 was involved in a serious labour riot in Centralia, Washington, and she had to return to Canada. She had five children with her, presumably all born to Murphy. 

Around 1927, she began to work for a lawyer called Tom Hurley, an advocate for American Indian justice. Maisie also founded ‘The Native Voice’, a publication for and about first nation people. She was still known as Armytage-Moore, but was by now with Tom Hurley. She seems not to have divorced because of her Episcopalian faith, and could not have remarried because Hurley was Roman Catholic. Maisie only married Tom Hurley after Reginald died in 1951.  

Maisie became very well-known as a champion of First Nation people, and there is lots about her online. Many thought it subversive, and she and Tom were sent to prison at one point. It would certainly have appealed to Maisie’s non-conformist nature. She was clearly a headstrong woman, but also very odd. 

One story tells how she inherited a casket said to contain the preserved heart of her ancestor, the first Marquess of Montrose, who was executed in 1650. She had it sent out to Canada. Her grandchildren used to open the casket, take out the heart, and play with it. Imagine them daring each other to touch it, or chasing after their friends with it. One granddaughter remembers her horror when she took it out and it broke into two pieces. 

So, why did Maisie walk out of the marriage so quickly? Wild, dynamic, independent woman or ineffectual, possibly gay, dreamer? Six of one and half a dozen of the other is my guess. 

Maisie’s collection of Indian art and artefacts is in the North Vancouver Museum and Archives. The heart is in the Montrose museum in Scotland. 

Uncool Singers

I have had a song on loop in my head for two or three days, by one of those uncool singers you would not have admitted you liked to your friends at school. The kind that during the height of sixties and seventies top and rock, would never have been played by Tony Blackburn on Radio 1, and would probably have had their own prime-time television show on a Saturday night. 

There were lots of them: Val Doonican and Clodagh Rodgers, or perhaps in America, Doris Day or Andy Williams. Memories were made of this by Dean Martin, and magic moments by Perry Como. 

We also had Andy Williams. He was pretty good, but most definitely not cool. I much preferred Britain’s Matt Monro, who was not cool either, but his recordings of Portrait Of My Love, Born Free and the James Bond theme From Russia With Love are incredible. What a voice! What a singer! If I was asked to name favourite uncool singers, he would be top of the list. 

I am thankful for that train of thought because it evicted the tune that was stuck in my head. You can have it instead. Any covert Roger Whitaker fans out there?  

He gave the impression of having a high opinion of himself, but Leaving Durham Town possibly vindicates it. Sugary sentiment but a great tune. 

So, who was your favourite uncool singer? Did Yorkshire Pudding have a regular date with Moira Anderson Sings? Did Dave Northsider just pretend he never watched the Des O’Connor show? Was JayCee just an old-fashioned girl who liked Eartha Kitt? Who was yours? You can own up here in complete confidence. Your secret will be safe with us.  

Knitted

I am constantly amazed by what some bloggers make in wool and fabrics. They have spent a lifetime on crafts I would not know how to begin. But it does not stop me from writing a post about knitting. 

The village of Upper Denby not far from where we live has a knitting and crafts group that has been busy creating a display on the village green for Remembrance Day, this weekend. Here are some of the things they have made. All are either knitted or crocheted. 

Meanwhile, Mrs D is busy knitting little Santas and Snowmen to sell and provide raffle prizes for the school Christmas Fair. 

I sometimes think there are satisfactions in life us blokes miss out on. Surely I could knit a rat. 

Solar System

But the fool on the hill sees the Sun going down
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round

I have been watching Brian Cox's series Solar System in absolute astonishment for the past five weeks. Our solar system is bigger and far more complex than we could have imagined only just a few years ago. 

I write this from memory, so may have some things wrong. Whatever I write cannot possibly do the series justice. 

Most of us grew up with nine planets, more recently reduced to eight, but the latest telescopes and space exploration reveal infinitely more objects within the sun's gravitational field than this. Many are very small, while others are quite large. 

And while we may have thought there was little beyond the dwarf planet Pluto, there seem to be millions of icy objects in the same region, known as the Kuiper belt. The largest known so far, discovered only in recent years in the darkness, has been nicknamed FarFarOut. All these objects, like the planets, orbit the sun in the same plane, but even further out lies an enormous sphere of rocks and particles a light year across. It contains mobile objects that travel across the heavens and approach the earth from all directions. They are the comets. 

It is not just the number of objects that is astonishing. It is the variety. They can be made of rock, gas, water ice, nitrogen ice, or something else. Ice can form mountains and canyons ten times the size of those on Earth. Other objects have internal heat sources that create violent monsoons, dust storms, or volcanoes that shoot out into space. 

How these phenomena have formed can often be deduced from space probe photographs and other data. They are subject to similar physical and geological processes whatever they may be made of. Underlying it all are just a small number of forces, mainly gravity. But the gravity of different objects can interact in numerous ways. Some are heated by gravitational friction, alternately squeezed and released by the gravity of a larger planet. 

There are some very strange objects indeed. Once above a few kilometres in size, objects will be shaped by gravity into a sphere, but one body has been seen to defy this law. This is thought to be because it rotates at eight times the speed of the earth, which flattens it into an elliptical shape through centrifugal force. 

The strange rings of Saturn are also down to gravity. They consist of particles of various sizes, possibly from a decaying moon. They orbit at different rates, and the larger objects are gradually speeding and slowing the others with the eventual outcome that all the particles will fall down to the surface of the planet. They have not been there forever, and will in time disappear. It is only coincidence that we are here at the same infinitesimal moment in time, able to see them. 

Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter, has a salt lake of water beneath the rocky surface, more than all the water on Earth. This was deduced from the magnetic aurora of the moon, which does not behave as it otherwise should. It has all the conditions we think necessary to support life. What form aqueous life buried deep inside a moon or planet might take, we cannot begin to guess.

But the strangest planet of all is the Earth. It is the only one with liquid water on the surface, maintained by a combination of gravity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure. If different, the water would boil away into space, or freeze solid.

What I like about Brian Cox is that he explains these processes, and how they have been worked out, in lay terms, without exaggeration or the loud, overenthusiastic excitement that spoils so many documentaries these days. Give him the concentration he deserves, and you are rewarded. What he is telling us speaks for itself. It is outrageous. And he laughs, as if he cannot quite believe it either. 

Then I thought about looking into the night sky and the millions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, probably most with solar systems of their own as complex as ours. And the billions of stars and planets in all the other galaxies there are. And the time scales involved: thousands of billions of earth years. 

Unimaginable. Beyond belief. Beyond understanding. 

Tips, Ships and Executorships

New Month Old Post: first posted 14th April, 2017.

'Waylands', 93 Ferriby Road, Hessle (now 'Woodlands Lodge')

“Never appoint a bank as executor to a will.” My dad’s advice was born out of sheer frustration.

“You’ll be all right one day son,” his own father had told him in expectation of a life-changing legacy due on the death of an ailing wealthy spinster then living permanently in a hotel in Harrogate. As things turned out she lived another forty years, by which time the legacy was no longer life-changing, having dwindled away in excessive, unnecessary fees.

Edwin Ernest
Atkinson (1872-1939)

It was one of those quirks of family history that testators fail to foresee, which result in their money going to unrelated beneficiaries they never knew or had heard of: in this case my father, his sister and the husband of their late cousin. It originated in Edwin Ernest Atkinson, chairman of the Yorkshire Dale Steamship Co., and Atkinson and Prickett Ltd., shipowners and brokers of Hull. 

On leaving school, Edwin had first worked as a clerk for the Aire and Calder Navigation Company at Goole docks, and then as a coal exporter with the shipping company J. H. Wetherall & Co. In 1906 he began in business on his own, joined in 1911 by Thomas William Prickett.

Within twenty-five years both were wealthy men with handsome houses on the outskirts of Hull at Hessle. Edwin’s was called ‘Waylands’, at the corner of Woodfield Lane and Ferriby Road. It had eight bedrooms, an oak-panelled dining room, two other large reception rooms, a billiards room, domestic quarters, coal-fired central heating, outbuildings, cultivated gardens, a heated greenhouse and vinery, tennis courts and a croquet lawn. Thomas William Prickett had a similar property nearby,  ‘Northcote’, at 85 Ferriby Road. Among their dirty British coasters with their salt-caked smoke stacks were the SS Yokefleet, SS Swandale, SS Easingwold and MV Coxwold. There were trains of railway wagons bearing the company name.

Atkinson and Prickett ships: SS Yokefleet, SS Swandale, SS Easingwold, MV Coxwold

When Edwin died in 1939 at the age of 66, he left a life interest in most of his £27,000 estate to his wife and only surviving daughter. In terms of price inflation, this would be today’s equivalent of £1.5 million and a great deal more in earnings or property price inflation. It was a considerable sum of money. His wife died less than two years later, thus his daughter, Constance Ruby, still in her thirties, assumed a life interest in the whole sum, to live in comfort and luxury for the rest of her life. She was the lady in the hotel at Harrogate.

Note that Edwin only left a life interest to his wife and daughter, rather than the capital sum outright. They therefore received income from investments, and the capital remained intact. It was a throwback to earlier times when women were not expected to manage their own financial affairs. It also kept the money out of the hands of unscrupulous husbands they might later marry.

Numbers 8 to 2 North Bar Without, Beverley, with the fifteenth century gate to the right

Constance Ruby never did marry, although she did have a brief engagement at the age of twenty. She later became Clerk to the Archdeacon of York, living in the Precentor’s Court at York Minster. After her father died she moved with her mother to Harrogate. Later in the nineteen-fifties, she moved to Beverley, into a half-timbered eighteenth century house immediately without the North Bar (the fifteenth century gate). She died there in 1983. As she was the last surviving descendant of Edwin Ernest Atkinson, the capital passed in equal shares to the families of his three siblings. 

One sibling was my great-grandfather’s second wife, who he married five years after his first wife had died. There were no further children, but a deeply shared interest in Methodism saw them happily through the next twenty-four years. They, and Edwin’s other siblings, died long before Constance Ruby, so the money passed to their families. One-third of the capital passed through my great-grandfather’s second marriage, through his children who had also died, to my father, his sister, and their late cousin’s husband.

It was not so simple. An unfortunate legal charade had gobbled up much of the inheritance. The solicitor who managed the capital trust had sensibly established, with documentation, the names of the beneficiaries in readiness for when the trust was wound up. But then, at some point during the nineteen-seventies, the National Westminster Bank trustees department persuaded Constance Ruby that her affairs would be better handled by them. They began the costly process of establishing the beneficiaries all over again, but after several years were still not convinced they had identified them all. Everything came to a standstill after Constance Ruby’s death. It took considerable persistence to have the case transferred back to the original solicitors and at last sorted out.

Around this time, bank Executor and Trustee departments were becoming known for their outrageous fees. An article in The Times in 1985 explained how one executor saved nearly £7,000 by handling a simple £100,000 estate himself. Solicitors charged less, but were still expensive. We have no way of knowing what fees were taken out of the Atkinson trust, how well the investments performed, or how much income was paid out over the years, but when my father and his sister at last received their legacies, what would once have been life-changing sums had shrunk away to just over £3,000 each. Their cousin’s husband (i.e. Edwin’s sister’s husband’s granddaughter’s widowed husband) got £6,000. Welcome amounts for sure, but nothing like what my grandfather had predicted. £3,000 might then have bought a small car. The total value distributed to all beneficiaries was around £37,000. Had the capital kept pace with retail price inflation it would have been ten times that amount (fifty times today). 

In later years, when my father made his will, true to his principles he appointed me as executor. After he died I handled everything myself. It was fairly straightforward. In another case, I was able to manage sums in trust for children until they reached the age of eighteen. More recently, I handled all the paperwork for the estate of another family member. Despite being complicated by inheritance tax (inevitable for owners of houses in the Home Counties) it was still trouble-free. Estate administration can be a long-drawn-out and time-consuming process that tests your patience and endurance, but if you have the time to cut out the banks and solicitors and do things yourself you can save an awful lot in professional fees; sometimes tens of thousands of pounds. You can bring things to completion much more quickly too.  

Further information:  Patrick Collinson (2013). Probate: avoid a final rip-off when sorting out your loved one’s estate. The Guardian, Sep 21, 2013. Maggie Drummond (1985). Finding a will and a way to cut costs. The Times (London, England), Feb 16, 1985; page 16. 

Late Fruit

From the garden today. Unusual this late in the year.

My Brother: The Engineer

From early on, it was obvious my brother would become some kind of engineer. He had little interest in History or English at school, it took two or three goes to pass English Language at Ordinary Level, but when it came to Maths or Physics or anything mechanical or electronic, he was a natural. This was also apparent in the toys he had. 

In the few years between us, toys became more sophisticated and technological. My early toys were mainly metal, the most complex being a Hornby clockwork train set, a Meccano construction kit, and a working model steam engine used only under supervision. My brother’s toys were more electronic, with increasing use of plastics. He had a Scalextric electric motor racing track, Lego instead of Meccano, and model aeroplanes that were light enough to actually fly. 

Two toys in particular showed his talents. The first was a Philips Mechanical Engineering kit he received around the age of 9 or 10, followed by a matching Electronic Engineering kit shortly afterwards. 

Suggested Projects: Mechanical Pump and Electronic Organ

The mechanical kit had a variety of plastic wheels and aluminium parts that could be assembled in limitless ways, and an instruction book of projects from the simple to the sophisticated, such as clocks, pumps and vehicles of various kinds. They were powered by elastic bands, water power, air pressure, or gravity, or by the electric motor included in the kit. The electronic kit was similar, with resistors, capacitors, coils, transistors, diodes, switches and loudspeakers, which could be wired together to create circuits on a baseboard. Suggested projects included radio receivers, amplifiers, alarms, a moisture indicator, and a time switch. With both kits together you could create vehicles controlled remotely by lights or sound. 

Brother with his Electronic Engineering Kit

But my brother had most fun when he began to dream up his own projects. He made a device to administer electric shocks, and another to close his bedroom curtains automatically when it got dark, and to open them again with a switch. There was a similar device for the door. 

We moved to a house where the previous owner had a burglar alarm which we wanted taken out, but the alarm company removed only the control unit, leaving all the wiring throughout the house and the magnetic door switches (which is how alarms worked then). Before long, my brother had a panel in his bedroom indicating which doors were opening or closing. No one could sneak up on him. He worked out a way to tap the magnetic emissions from the house telephone wire, and could listen in to everything that was said. Another device automatically switched on the tape recorder if there were any sounds in his unattended bedroom. 

Not all went as intended. Up later than he should have been, an air-raid type siren he was making went off in the early hours next to our parents’ bedroom. 

He tried out all kinds of ideas. Our parents had a butane-fuelled cigarette lighter refilled from a pressurised canister. He used the canister to make a powerful flame thrower that could squirt burning gas and incinerate the enormous spiders that lived behind the garage. And, if they were squirted with non-burning gas,, they dropped frozen solid to the ground and smashed into brittle pieces. 

At a time when relatively few got into university, he was offered a place at Bradford to do Mechanical Engineering. Not only that, but tipped off by an uncle who was active in the engineering professional bodies, and knew who was going to be on an interview panel, their interests, and hence the questions they were likely to ask, he got a bursary from the government’s Property Services Agency, and was paid a salary. He had, of course, to work during the university vacations, and was expected to remain with the agency after graduation. He was based in  Croydon, designing air conditioning systems for a series of new prisons under construction, when he became ill, and we lost him a month before his thirty-seventh birthday. His children are older than that now. He would have been 69 today. 

Politically Incorrect

Son gave a look of disapproval. I had used an unacceptable word (yet again!). 

Because of swollen feet, a side-effect of pills to inhibit Exon 14 tumours, it was becoming difficult to put my shoes on. I had been wearing mainly walking shoes for some months, but even these had become tight, and I had bruised the side of my ankle making it painful to walk. Shuffling awkwardly, I stepped down heavily and hurt my back. It took three inactive weeks to get better. In the meantime, I finally gave in to nagging advice from our resident family occupational therapist, and bought some wide-fitting, wide-opening Cosyfeet shoes. And cosy they are. I can walk around the village again.  

“I’ve had to get some spastic shoes”, I told my son. 

The thing is, “spastic” was once a perfectly acceptable word. It was not until 1994 that The Spastics Society renamed itself Scope, the charity for people with cerebral palsy. “Spastic” had become a term of abuse, and parents were being put off. Children would call each other “a daft spastic” for clumsiness or mistakes. Just as a word, it sounds effective and humorous. It actually means subject to spasms, and remains in medical use in other circumstances. “Scope” is neutral, but the Society lost public awareness. 

In contrast, Mencap, the society for children and adults with learning disabilities, continues under a name with negative connotations, but everyone recognises what it is. The name went through several changes after the charity was founded in 1946 as The National Association of Parents of Backward Children. “Backward” became another term of abuse. “Are you a bit backward?” was hurled at someone slow to understand a point. 

Many other terms have fallen out of use. Mongolism was the scientific name for Downs Syndrome. Cretinism was thyroid deficiency severe enough to cause confusion and physical changes. They were accepted medical and academic terms into the 1980s. I still have a small book by a professor at the university where I did my psychology degree, an internationally respected authority in learning disability, that contains a table setting out the legal and scientific uses through the years of terms used to describe ‘mental deficiency’, ‘mental retardation’ and ‘subnormality’ according to I.Q. It is interesting that ‘idiot’ denoted the lowest I.Q., with ‘imbecile’ slightly higher, and ‘feeble-minded’ and ‘moron’ above, which does not seem to be the pejorative usage today.

From Clarke, A.D.B. and Clarke, A.M. (1975): Recent Advances in the Study of
Subnormality. MIND (National Association for Mental Health), London. Page 5. 

Such terms were used to discriminate and exclude people from society, irrespective of ability. Until perhaps the 1960s, eugenics, sterilisation, and euthanasia, were openly discussed. Institutionalisation lasted even later, although, with support, many occupants could have lived independently. Alan and Ann Clarke did a great deal to alleviate this by showing what people could do, rather than what they could not. 

Then there are the labels for nationalities, ethnicities, and race. They were not always used maliciously. When a Canadian-born great-nephew turned up on leave during the Second World War, my great-grandfather said that this “Yank” (can I still say that?) had knocked on the door. It was a description, not a judgement. The family put him up for a few days, delighted to hear about their Canadian relatives, and it seemed to relieve some of his anxiety about having to go back to the war.  

Returning to the slang term for Americans, no doubt many will dislike it, and it wasn’t used accurately anyway. I dislike being called a Brit. I am British, or English, or from Yorkshire, but as Brit is now used widely in the British media, and by some British bloggers, I am not likely to win that one. 

National and racial labels are often used to stir up division and hatred. There is a Monty Python sketch about a television show called Prejudice, in which viewers are invited to come up with derogatory names for various nationalities, and contains a section called “Shoot the Poof” (although even Monty Python in 1970 steered clear of race). The sketch can be found online, but some will find it so offensive I am not going to post a link. On watching again, I still find it hilarious. Michael Palin as the awful show host is brilliant, but as with the comedy series ‘Till Death Us Do Part’, not everyone sees that the laugh is at and not with the holders of these views.  

I misused one of these words in frustration. If you saw my feet you would see why. I’ve got some spastic slippers as well now.