sandr020

Avery Brundage (1887-1975) grad­uated civil engineering from the University of Ill­in­ois in 1909. His links to anti-Semitism were first seen in his university days, where he was pres­id­ent of a fraternity chapter who would accept any Aryan male who did not have a Jewish parent. Brundage was a fine athlete who won the American National dec­athlon three times. He competed in the 1912 Summer Olymp­ics in Stockholm , where he represented the USA in both pentath­l­on and decathlon, but did not win any medals. He began to involve himself in sports administration, event­ually at the American Olympic Committee level. In 1928, Brundage was elected AOC president. Many sports administrators disliked women’s involvement at the top level. So the anti-woman movement was not pleased when, in July 1932, American athlete Babe Didrikson did brilliantly to win two Olympic gold medals in javelin and 80m hurdles. Didrikson was charged with “professionalism” because she had appeared in an advertisement ...

WW1 hospitals were tough, partially because the conditions in which the medical staff had to tend to the terrible injuries were too crowded and poorly equipped. But necessity was the mother of invention; the wounds inflicted on millions of soldiers drove the search for new medical tech­niqu­es. Technological innovations had a massive impact on survival rates. The Thomas splint, for example, secured a broken leg. In 1914, 80% of all soldiers with a broken femur died. By 1916, 80% of such soldiers survived. The British Army began the routine use of blood transfusion in treating wounded soldiers, where blood was transferred directly from one person to another. That was until a US Army Dr Captain Robertson realised the need to stockpile blood; he established the first blood bank on the Western Front in 1917, using sodium citrate to prevent coagulation. Blood was kept on ice for up to 28 days and then transported to casualty clearing stat­ions for use in life-saving surgery. But professi...

A Scandal in Bohemia by Gideon Haigh (Hamish ­Hamilton, 2018) tells an incredible story.  Mollie Dean (1905-30) was a very attractive Melburnian, a young woman who had great plans for the future. Many men said she was an excep­t­ional person, with great vital­ity and was a good conversation­al­ist. Women (like playwright Betty Roland ) said Mollie was sul­try or sullen-looking. Everyone agreed she was slim with dark bobbed hair and simple makeup. And that she was forceful and Bohemian, wanting to energet­ically discuss art, culture and pol­it­ics with the males. Clearly Mollie was a rising star, writ­ing a novel that would be call­ed Monst­ers Not Men . Mollie’s family was already problem-filled. Her father George, a tough school prin­cipal, died during her childhood. Her mother Ethel Dean was manipul­at­ive, controlling and physically violent. Ethel had just one plan for Mollie: to quickly marry her off, to a specific groom - mechanic Adam Graham (the Deans’ lodger in Elwood ...

Ida Wells (1862-1931) was the first child of James and Lizzie Wells who had been slaves of the Confederate states. The par­ents were freed by the Union, thanks to the Emancipation Proc­lamation in Dec 1862 . However living in Missis­sippi, these African Americans still fac­ed racial prej­ud­ices and discrim­inatory practices. As a member of the progressive Republican Party during Re­const­ruction, Ida’s father was involved with the Freed­man’s Aid Soc­iety  - a group that sent a supply of teachers from the Nor­th and pro­­vided housing for them in the South. And James also served on the first board of trustees at Shaw Univ­ersity-Rust Coll­ege , a school that opened in Holly Springs MS for new­ly freed slaves in 1866. Southern Horrors, one of the many books and booklets written by Ida Wells But Ida suddenly had to leave school when both of her parents and one sibling died of yellow fever in the 1878 epidemic; she became the primary care giver for her 6 surviving siblings! Only in...

The first part comes from the Blavatsky Archives ; many thanks.  Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia, in 1831. She was the daughter of Colonel Peter von Hahn, and writer Helena de Fadeyev. Her mat­er­nal grandmother was Princ­ess Helena Dolgorukov, noted botanist-writer. After her mother’s early death in 1842, Helena was brought up with the grand­parents. This clever linguist was a sensitive child, and was soon aware that her psychic powers puzzled others. At 18 she married the much older Nikifor Blavatsky , Vice-Governor of Yerivan Province. The marriage was never consummated and she soon escaped and travelled across Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Only 2 years later, in London in 1851, she met the Mahatma/ Master  Morya of her childhood visions, and fully accepted his guidance. In 1852, Helena left for Canada, the USA, Mexico, South Am­erica and the West Indies, then went via the Cape to India and Tibet. Then to Britain, America again, India vi...

Charles Dodgson   ( Lewis Carroll 1832-98) was born in a NW English vil­l­age, third child of Rev Charles Dodgson. As the fam­ily grew to in­clude 11 children, Charles told stor­ies to his siblings, made up games and wrote magazines with them. After enrolling at Oxford in 1850, Dodgson became a fel­low at Christ Church College. According to the rules, fellows had to be ordained, but Dodgson ignored the ordin­ation rule and lived at the college unmarried. He was a maths lecturer and a devout deacon of the Anglican Church. Like many Victorian bachelors, he became an “uncle” to his friends’ children, taking them out. In 1855, Dodgson’s Dean Henry Liddell arrived at Christ Church with his wife, Lorina and their first four children. As the 3 sisters grew older, Dodgson took the girls under his wing, with their parents’ blessing. In summer 1862, he took the Liddell girls on the river in Oxford and told them stories. Alice Liddell  (1852-1934), then 10, was delighted that the ...

English King James I granted a charter to the Virginia Co. to form a North America settlement in 1606. The Virginia Co. was to search for local riches and a sea trade route to the Pac­ific Ocean. 100 colonists left England on three ships and landed on a narrow peninsula in the James River. Cap­tain John Smith chose the inland location to hide them from Spanish ships and to pro­vide protection from any Native American enemies. John Smith and the English colonists stayed near the Powhatan on nearby Jamestown Island, but later began to explore out-lying areas. In the meantime Smith terrorised Native people when he put guns to heads of village chiefs, demanding food and supplies. In fact the early 1600s were a horrible time for all local tribes. Young children were targets of rape, so the Native women offered themselves to men, to keep their children safe. The Powhatan people were in an unwinnable situation since the English government offered them no protection. The true story of ...

The women’s suffrage movement in Britain had been fractured in 1903. This was when Emmeline Pankhurst led a break­away group from the Nat­ional Union of Women’s Suffrage Societ­ies, arguing that it had become too content waiting for male approval, rather than actively demanding women’s rights. The militant Women’s Social and Political Union , run by the Pankhursts, had begun disrupting political meetings attended by prominent MPs. The suffragettes’ tact­ics reawakened public interest in the issue, but the Pankhursts were often seen as overly autocratic. Robert Wainwright* wrote of a young actress named Muriel ­Matters (1877-1969) who grew up in South Australia . The art of elocution back then required its exp­on­ents to weave a tale onstage, often set to music or poetry. Muriel trained with Lionel Logue , a family friend who later helped the stuttering King George VI. From an Australian state where women got the vote in 1894, Mur­iel arr­ived in London with little money, some let­t...

For those of you who remember 1956 clearly, Australian television expos­ed Annie Oakley (1860-1926) for the first time in a fictional American Western series. Featuring act­ress Gail Davis, each weekly programme lasted half an hour. My parents didn’t have a tv in the 1950s, but our elderly neighbours let the local children watch between 7-7.30 PM. Thank you Wild West Magazine for the historical data. Early Family life Phoebe Ann Moses was born to Jacob and Susan, Quakers who had migrat­ed from Pennsylvania to a farm in rural Darke County Ohio. Annie was the sixth of their seven children. In 1866 her father died, leaving her mother and the seven young children in poverty, so mother sent Annie to the live at the Darke County Infirmary/poor house. At 10 Annie become a servant for another local farming family. She stayed with them in dismal conditions for two years before running away, then she returned home to her mother, again in poverty. Annie did not live in the West but she fi...

As in other European societies, New Zealand women were excluded from any involvement in politics in early colonial times. Most people accepted the idea that women were naturally suited for domestic affairs i.e home and children. Only men were fitted for public life and the hurly-burly of politics. New Zealand History  has provided the first half of this post. Some women began to challenge this narrow view. New opportunities were opening up for women, especially those from upper or middle-class families, in education, medicine, church and charities. Attention soon turned to women’s legal and political rights. The suffrage campaign in New Zealand began as part of a broad late C19th movement for women’s rights that spread through Britain and its Empire, the USA and northern Europe. This movement was shaped by two main themes: a] equal political rights for women and b] a desire to use them for the moral reform of society eg through prohibition. New Zealand’s pioneering suffragists were...