Little Buckets: 20 May, 1913

Topics of the Day include a discussion on the possible benefits of moving pictures for education purposes.

Evening Post, 20 May 1913, Page 6

Naturally there are a number of dangers to be considered.  The tendency of the French to produce work with an erotic sensibility, and of the American to produce sensational material.  Cryptically the Editor comments: “It is against the second of these tendencies that there is the most need for protection in this country.”  Presumably the sensible New Zealander is above erotic stimulation.

There are other dangers too,

Thankfully children’s shows nowadays steer well away from silliness, vulgarity and melodrama.  Nothing attracts juvenile viewers more than sobriety, and good taste.

Little Buckets: 2 May, 1913

[The historian] will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.

Lytton Strachey

Topics of the Day today include creating some kind of Empire Parliament to better run the Empire, and the election of women to Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards.  The recent elections saw two women receive the highest number of votes, and one – Dr. Platts-Mills – was returned to the board with great enthusiasm.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 103, 2 May 1913, Page 6

100 years later I suspect you would not fare well in a Health Board election if you were known for “practical eugenics” that advanced “the race”.  The final part of her speech given in December 1912 strikes me as very odd coming from a highly educated woman: “every day of school life forced the girl further from the goal to which she must ultimately return – the goal of motherhood.”  This sin of sexless education was the fault of men.  I’m not sure that the 1913 New Zealand man was at the forefront of thinking on female education, but I could be wrong.  It is certainly true that the educated woman has fewer children than the uneducated one, but – unless you want a large family – this is generally considered a good thing in the “modern” world of 2013.  There were certainly enough young men to go around in 1914 when they started machine gunning each other in Gallipoli and France.

Dr. Platts-Mills (1913)

Dr. Platts-Mills was an extraordinary woman.  In 1900 she was one of only five female doctors in New Zealand, and the first female doctor in private practice in Wellington.

Tall and striking in appearance, an excellent public speaker and a trenchant writer, Platts-Mills used her talents generously in community affairs, especially those relating to the health and welfare of women and children. For six years from 1912 she was house physician to the children’s ward at Wellington Hospital. She also served for two successive terms on the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, topping the poll in both elections.

DNZB

Let’s see what else we can turn up on Dr. (Mrs.) Platts-Mills.

 

Little Buckets: 26 April, 1913 – Part One

[The historian] will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.

Lytton Strachey

To choose my articles for Little Buckets I go to the Evening Post archive for 1913 and then use Random.org to select a page, and then a column in a page from “today’s” newspaper.  I mention this because after selecting this advertisement from column five of page 16 I found myself on a very long internet trail with strange connections to my life.  But let’s start with the original advertisement.

I feel like this product is aimed squarely at the wealthier woman of leisure rather than the working class wife.  The times on the clocks seem a little skewed towards the life of leisure.  Technically, I suppose, 11am is the morning, but it seems a touch late to be taking a glass of Wincarnia to brace you up for the morning work.  Mind you the definition of work seems to involve shopping, travelling, and walking.  In the evening (way past my bedtime) it does seem curious that a drink that invigorates also ensures a good night’s rest.

I was very pleased to find that Wincarnis is still in production in Norfolk, England.  A Wincarnis blog states:

Wincarnis (which is derived from Wine Carnis Latin for ‘of meat’) is a brand name of a British tonic wine, popular in Jamaica and some other former British colonies. It is a fortified wine (14%) now made to a secret recipe of grape juice, malt extracts, herbs and spices, but it no longer contains meat. It tastes a bit like sweet sherry.

Wincarnis

It is hard to go past the line “it no longer contains meat” without flinching.  Just as it is hard not to look at this ad without delight.

Brain-fag.  Mental prostration.  Two terms I am immediately bringing into my everyday speech.  Never mind, let’s find out about this meat thing.

Wincarnis was originally called  Liebig’s Extract of Meat and Malt Wine, and was a product of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company founded by the German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1865.  It was Justus’ company that would create Oxo beef stock cubes, and eventually established their company in London in a building under what would become the famous Oxo Tower.

Liebig wanted to include a tower featuring illuminated signs advertising the name of their product. When permission for the advertisements was refused, the tower was built with four sets of three vertically-aligned windows, each of which “coincidentally” happened to be in the shapes of a circle, a cross and a circle.

Wikipedia

It should be noted that Liebig died in 1873, about 50 years before the art deco remodel of the building in question, so it seems that Wikipedia may be wrong on this point, but it’s a good story.

I suppose that it was the winter of 1998 that Cathy and I had dinner in the restaurant at the top of the Oxo Building.  Matt took us there and I think Danyl came too.  Cathy and I had gone to Osaka in 1998, and by December already had enough money to go to London for Christmas.  It was the first time I had been to England (or pretty much anywhere outside of Osaka) and that trip remains vivid and fresh in my memory.

Little Buckets: ANZAC Day

[The historian] will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.

Lytton Strachey

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 47, 23 February 1917, Page 7

The article begins: “The Reverend A. C. Lawry, president of the Methodist Conference, in his retiring address last night, made an important announcement.”  It is commonplace to suggest that Darwin’s ideas had a damaging effect on religious belief in Victorian society, but I suspect this is the view of intellectuals about other intellectuals.  Far more damaging to the belief in God in society as a whole must have been World War One where religious leaders could attack objectors as hypocrites, and state: “even Jesus Christ might be expected to lead a bayonet charge.”

Even Jesus who took the commandment given to Moses not to kill and said, not only do not kill but: “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…  first be reconciled to thy brother” (Matthew, 5:22-3).  Or was it the Jesus who said: “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew, 5:39).  Is it that Jesus who will be leading the bayonet charge?

And so it goes.

On 24 May, 1943 Owen O’Malley, the British ambassador to the Polish government in exile, wrote to Anthony Eden about the murder of 22,000 Poles by the Russians.

If, then, morals have become involved with international politics, if it be the case that a monstrous crime has been committed by a foreign government – albeit a friendly one – and that we, for however valid reasons, have been obliged to behave as if the deed was not theirs, may it not be that we now stand in danger of falling under St. Paul’s curse on those who can see cruelty “and burn not”?

The so-called “fog of war”.  Well, we might not know precisely what evil we will participate in, but we know we will participate in evil if we take an eye for an eye.

Drones over Afghanistan.  Years after the drones started someone thought to start to make up some rules about how drone terror should be applied (they’re not finished yet),

“Don’t you think there should have been clear rules and fair procedures in place before the Obama administration ordered the killing of hundreds of human beings?  The Washington Post reported on January 20 that even if the rules were adopted, the CIA would be exempted from following them in Pakistan.”

The New York Review

The news in this country reports the success of the mission in Bamiyan and the need to save translators who helped the New Zealand forces while they were there from almost certain death at the hands of the Taliban once the New Zealand forces leave.  We are told the success of the mission to Bamiyan and follow the story of Malala, who somehow survived execution at the hands of the Taliban and remain powerful and virulent in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the poppy isn’t a bad symbol after all for Flanders as well as the war in Afghanistan.

I won’t be wearing one Reverend Lawry, nor will you see me at the dawn service.

Little Buckets: 24 April, 1913

[The historian] will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.

Lytton Strachey

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 96, 24 April 1913, Page 8

I think we should give this a go.  Anyone found drunk should be ordered to leave town.  There are only a couple of problems I can see.  One would be that there is no official definition of what a town is in New Zealand.  We would have to tidy that up.  Secondly, we would need to know how many towns there are in New Zealand.  Perhaps about 450?  Any system that gives you 450 chances before you get deported is a pretty generous system.

Also, mulcting people.  Governments should definitely bring this word back because people won’t know what’s happening and are less likely to complain.  Imagine being found guilty of something and being told you will be mulcted?  Possibly you imagine some kind of disturbing and unpleasant punishment (being licked by a toothless man?), but it can’t be as bad as paying a hefty fine, right?

Right?