Agatha and the Asylum: a fragment

Footnote on Hanwell Asylum and asylum attendants

Acknowledgement: This connection was drawn out by Dr Jonathan Oates in a Local History talk in Ealing Central Library a few years ago, about Agatha Christie and Ealing, where she spent quite a lot of time during her early years, in the home of a great-aunt. 

Agatha Christie's The Big Four (1927) is, to put it mildly, not one of her best books. Not so much a crime novel as a portmanteau of preposterous plots tenuously linked in the rather leisurely attempts of Poirot and Hastings to combat a more than usually unbelievable world-domination mini-conspiracy. (Mind you, some aspects are less implausible than others, such as the arch-villains' motivation, "lust for power and personal supremacy" and the backing of "unlimited money".)

Published in the aftermath of its author's disappearance trauma and sensation, it may have been written partly as therapy, to get back on track, or under pressure from publishers to produce something before the publicity subsided, or to use up every idea she'd ever had (or borrowed) and see what she could get away with (while incidentally releasing some of her more cynical and exasperated feelings about her most famous character) - or perhaps a combination of such things might explain it.

In Chapter 2, 'The Man from the Asylum', it looks as though part of the plot may be the one about the good guy falsely certified insane. (This - spoiler alert - turns out not to be the case; the inference that it could happen in the real institution named might have led to some bother):

'A big burly man in uniform' turns up claiming to be "From 'Anwell - from the 'Sylum"  (thus establishing  his lower-class, uneducated and 'uncouth' persona) and to be seeking an escaped inmate who has been confined for two years: "'Armless enough", not homicidal, but suffering from "persecution mania". Of course "They all say they're sane", the keeper observes "callously".

It later transpires that the presentation of this character conforms exactly to Captain Hastings' mental picture of "what an asylum attendant should look like"; since his own personality is established as ultra-conventional and accepting of prevalent stereotypes, this may not be the view of his creator, but she says nothing to counteract it. The experience of no doubt having had anxieties about and aspersions recently cast on her own mental state could well have fostered lurking fears of incarceration. (From memory, Why Didn't They Ask Evans? - 1934 - also contains a plot-strand about confinement on supposedly spurious mental-health grounds, in a private nursing home, but that's another and rather better story.)

"Hanwell Asylum" - in the 1920s it was the London County Mental Hospital - in spite of its association with reforms in the treatment of mental patients, may have been an object of some awe, pity and terror for local residents, as such places tend to be. Anecdotally, its later incarnation "St. Bernard's" was something of a hissing and a byword among 1980s Hanwell schoolchildren, to the extent that the sight of a "St. Bernard" label on clothing from Northern Ireland was an occasion for taunts and embarrassment.

Tales of Gender and Medical Life

A few Notes and comments on Conan Doyle's Tales of Adventure and Medical Life.



The collection was first published in 1922, this paperback edition in 1963.

Dates for the individual stories are not given, but Internal evidence  suggests a setting in the 1880s, that is around the time when the author was trying unsuccessfully to establish himself as a general practitoner. The 'Medical Life' section provides a wealth of authentic detail relevant to several aspects of the history of medicine.

The second story of the 'Adventure' set also has a medical theme, as may be guessed from the title, 'The Surgeon of Gaster Fell'. The inclusion of a young female character, not essential to the plot, rounds out the narrative and incidentally provides a kind of baseline for considerations of gender in the 'Medical' set. Noting that this duaghter and sister of medical men does a lot of reading, the narrator encourages her: "Women have opportunites now such as their mothers never knew. Have you ever thought of going further - or seeking a course of college [sic] or even a learned profession?"  When she denies having any ambition and expresses anxiety about her future, he reassures her that she seems "... destined to fulfil the lot of women - to make some good man happy..." The year is 1885.

Women are present in strength in the medical stories, admittedly viewed primarily in relation to medical men, as patients, relatives, or occasionally fellow health professionals. Although they are often the subject of patronising generalisations, even misogynistic insult from the less sympathetic male characters, the latter are likely to be shown the error of their ways or are let in for some sort of comeuppance, The author displays nuances and subtlety of understanding; while still clinging to assumptions about supposedly universal 'male' and 'female' attributes, gender-based expectations may be confounded and stereotypes undermined.

No.1, 'A Physiologist's Wife', illustrates the unthinking dependence of medical high-flyers on the help and support of well-disposed women - wives or unmarried sisters - whose grateful acquiescence is blandly assumed (some at least of the speaker's  taking-for-granted turns out to be misplaced):
 "... I cannot imagine any higher mission for a woman of culture than to go through life in the company of a man who is capable of such a research..." (p.107)
 "You... have a worthy mission before you in aiding the life-work of a man who has shown himself capable of the highest order of scientific research..." (p.121)

No.5, 'The Curse of Eve', tackles the reality of a difficult chidlbirth in a modest home, not so much as experienced by the mother, but partly from the points of view of doctor and consultant, and first and foremost through the increasingly desperate anxiety of the expectant father (so often the subject of feeble jokes and clichés) about what was happening to his wife:
"Where was the justice of it?.. Why was Nature so cruel?.."

Childbirth as agonising, dangerous and unfair is a recurring theme, There is a link here with Dr Joseph Bell of Edinburgh, famously associated with the character of Sherlock Holmes, who is credited with having been among the first senior doctors to insist on hand-washing before examination of pregnant and puerperal women, thus saving many from potentially fatal infection. (He may also, of course, have inspired the creation of aome of the medical characters in these stories.)

The husband mentioned above does not get off scot free, but his night of emotional torment is outdone by the ordeal by which another father, in No.6, 'A Medical Document', chooses or is made to 'share' his wife's experience. This story is in fact a portmanteau in which doctors from various specialisms, and a generalist, frankly exchange views, discuss cases and swop anecdotes after one of the quarterly dinners of the Midland Branch of the British Medical Association. A contribution on chidlbirth stands out, and could almost stand alone as a striking short-short:

The post-prandial medics go on to agree that obstetrics and gynaecology (not so called) is 'a very wearing branch of the profession' and discuss what is apparently the main reason for this:
"I was a very shy fellow myself as a student, and I know what it means...
"Take some poor, raw young fellow who has just put up his plate in a strange town. He has found it a trial all his life, perhaps, to talk to a woman about lawn tennis and church services. When a young ma in shy he is shyer than any girl. Then down comes an anxious mother and consults him upon the most intimate family matters. "'I shall never go to that doctor again,' says she afterwards. 'His manner is so stiff and unsympathetic.' Unsympathetic! Why, the poor lad was struck dumb and paralysed..."

A logical conclusion from such a state of affairs might be the recruitment of more women to the profession, and some similar atttiude may lie behind Conan Doyle's more than comparative openness to the idea of women as doctors. Perhaps a part was played too by his sense of justice, or vicarious guilt over the vicious behaviour of Edinburgh medical students in this connection, not very long before his time there - not to mention a fine sense of the irony and absurdity of male attitudes.

Story No.8, 'The Doctors of Hoyland', opens with a description of a 30-plus male doctor whose position in the locality, "a clear run of six miles in every direction", seems secure: "He was particularly happy in his management of ladies. He had caught the tone of bland sternness and decisive suavity which dominates without offending."
Then a well-qualified rival sets up, and shock-horror, Doctor Verrinder Smith turns out to be a woman - "'What?' he gasped. 'The Lee Hopkins prizeman! You!'
"He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed..."
Later: "Not that he feared competition, but he objected to this lowering of his ideal of womanhood... It revolted him the more to recall the details of her education. A man, of course, could come through such an ordeal with all his purity, but it was nothing short of shameless in a woman."

Dr, Smith comes off best in the immediate argument:
He: "Ladies are in danger of losing their privileges when they usurp the place of the other sex. They cannot have both."
She: 'Why should a woman not earn her bread by her brains?" [...]
He: "'... I must say that I do not think medicine a suitable profession for women and that I have a personal objection to masculine ladies." [...]
She: "... Of course, if it makes women masculine that would be a considerable deterioration."

She also comes off better professionally. "In a month, Doctor Verrinder Smith was known, and in two she was famous." She takes on cases and performs operations that would have defeated him: "For all his knowledge he lacked nerve as an operator, and usually sent his worst cases up to London. The lady, however, had no weakness of this sort, and took everything that came in her way."
When he has become her patient after an accident he finds himself defending her to his assistant-surgeon brother, visiting from London: "She knows her work as well as you or I"; "... [W]e may have been a little narrow in our views". Eventually he confesses himself to have been "quite in the wrong" over this woman question.

"And yet under all her learning and firmness ran a sweet, womanly nature..." The reader may by now, if not from the start, be inclined to suspect a traditional battle-of-the-sexes plot to be resolved in romance, and a proposal does indeed ensue, but (spoiler) without the conventional 'happy ending'. Happy enough for Dr Smith, who has only intended her stay in the area to be temporary, and had already decided to devote her life entirely to science: "There are many women with a capacity for marriage, but few with a taste for biology. I will remain true to my own line, then."
"And so it came about that in a very few weeks there was only one [now sadder and wiser] doctor in Hoyland...'

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References

Further discussion of the medical stories can be found in some of the biographies of Conan Doyle, e.g.:

Rodin, Alvin E. & Key, Jack D. The Medical Casebook of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle: From Practitioner to Sherlock Holmes and Beyond..(Robert E. Krieger 1984)  

Booth, Martin. The Doctor, the Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography. (Coronet Books)

Two Female Physicians of the early 20th Century

(This post was sparked off by a recent similarly-themed one from 'lenathehyena')

A Flett from Findochty and a MacCallum of Muckairn Manse

By the 1920s the occurrence of women's names in the Medical Register (and Medical Directory) had become less of a rarity than it had been, although they were still very much in the minority and would remain so for many decades. As it happens, two such names in particular leapt to the eye in the course of previous research for this blog, those of Nelly Flett (no relation, as far as is known, to other Fletts looked at here) and Margaret MacCallum, sister of Dr John Cameron MacCallum.

Nelly Flett is not the only woman with that surname listed in the 1927 Medical Register (MR) - the others were Jessie from Uddington and Isabelle from Bathgate - but her address, 5 Seafield Street in the Flett stronghold, Findochty - links her geographically at least with the family background of Joe Flett and of two First World War Conscientious Objectors. She gained her registration on 10th May 1924, having qualified MB ChB (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) at Aberdeen. (Joe's elder brother Alexander was a doctor: MB ChB Aberdeen 1904; MD 1906).

The more likely of two Nelly Fletts in the 1901 Census was living at 18 Blantyre Place, Rathven (the parish/registration district, often used interchangeably with Findochty in the records). Her father John was a fisherman. (Joe's family were in the fishing and fish-curing business).

Findochty Harbour

In 1930 Nelly is still appearing (Registration being for life, unless struck off) but her address has changed to 'c/o National Bank of India, Bombay' - no clue as to her reason for emigrating, whether off her own bat or in order to join her future husband. 'Nelly Flett' disappears from subsequent MR volumes, to be replaced by (Mrs.) Nelly Tarlton:
British India Office Marriages - on 2-2-1929 at Calcutta, Bengal:
Nelly Flett (30) and Edward Smedley Tarlton (43).

The Bombay address continues through MR 1933 and 1936 (volumes in the National Archives library) but by 1939 Nelly is evidently back in Britain, at Cherington Park, Avening, Stroud.

The Tarltons duly appear in the 1939 Register of Electors online, although it doesn't give Nelly her due. Her 'MB ChB' is transcribed erroneously as if middle intials, 'Ma Mb C?' and her occupation as the default for married women,'Unpaid Domestic Duties'.  Her d.o.b.is 26-12-1898. Edward is described as 'Engineer (Mechanic) Retired', d.o.b.19-1-1884.

It is not clear without further research whether or for how long Nelly practised medicine in Gloucestershire, where she evidently continued to live. She appears in the Medical Directory for 1942 and 1944 as 'Tarleton, Nelly, née Flett', and (consistently as Tartlton) at the same Avening address in the MR until 1966, when she would have been in her 68th year.

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Incidentally, Alec Flett's daughter and Joe's niece Elizabeth Horne Flett joins her father on the MR listing in 1942, with the qualification MRCS Eng (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England) LRCP London (Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London) 1941. Her home address was 34 The Avenue, Bedford Park, Chiswick.

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Margaret Nathaniel MacCallum, apart from being female, was a more likely candidate for the medical profession, being the daughter of a Church of Scotland minister and younger sister of a doctor. What's more, her family showed signs of holding progressive views. Her brother's stand as a 'conchie' is well documented, along with his concern for workers' health and rights, while her father Malcolm stood as a Labour and Land League candidate in the 1920 Argyll by-election.

Margaret, born in 1892, studied medicine at Edinburgh - scene of notorious rioting against women in the medical faculty a few decades earlier - and qualified MB ChB in July 1913, so that she appears in the Medical Register and Medical Directory from 1914. In 1916 she added a Diploma in Public Hea;th (DPH) from Birmngham, suggesting an inclination towards social involvement rather than an elitist career. Her address until 1921 is given as the family home, Muckairn Manse, Taynuilt in Argyllshire (now a Category B listed building).

Muckairn Manse, designed by Thomas Telford (1828)

Changes in the listings from 1922 are explained, like Nelly's at the end of the decade, by the fact that she married. This record too is slightly inexact, but clear enough in meaning:
McCallum, Margaret Nathan married Dunst[a]n, Robert at Newington in 1922.
Robert Dunstan was also a doctor, registered from 9-11-1900 (MRCS Eng, LRCP  London).

Margaret continues to appear under her married name, Dunstan (Mrs.) Margaret Nathaniel (formerly/née MacCallum), coincidentally also until 1966 like Nelly, when she would have been about 75. But for a time in the MR, at least until 1933, she had remained as MacCallum. Her address and Robert Dunstan's are the same: 84 Boyson Road, London SE17 during most of that time. In MD 1929 Robert has the additional address 'Paper Ridge, Temple'; this and other volumes show his additional attainments: Barrister-at-Law, Gray's Inn; Mem Med Leg (Medico-Legal) Soc; late Lt.RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps - one wonders how he got on with his brother-in-law John).

The Dunstans do not seem to show up on the 1939 Register of Electors (frustratingly England and Wales only) online, although the MD for that year lists them both as living at South Green Cottage, Fingringhoe, Essex. Twenty years later (MR 1959) they were at Ivy Lodge, Martock, Somerset, and from 1964 Margaret was at Shipley Avenue, Torquay.

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Neither of these is a noted pioneer among women in the medical profession nor celebrated for having practised medicine in a particularly adventurous or dangerous environment, but they like many others are part of the story of what the pioneers enabled women to achieve, even if the process was slow.* It took even longer in some specialisms, as indicated by the moderately well-known 'riddle' about the surgeon who turns out (spoiler alert) to be a woman  - who would have thought of that?!
* http://www.medicalwomensfederation.org.uk/about-us/facts-figures

Edinburgh Tenants' Struggle, c.1973: More from Muirhouse

Note for fellow-pedants: 
The title of this article was typed without the apostrophe, which is grammatically possible if 'struggle' is read as a verb, but it is more likely that the author would have intended it as a noun, i.e. 'struggle of Edinburgh tenants'.  (Authors' manuscripts were typed up on stencils for the duplicator, the main means of unofficial publication at the time.  Pages were then collated by hand in group sessions.)

First published in Solidarity (for Workers' Power) (London) vol. 7, no.5, pp. 5-6
Slightly edited.

EDINBURGH TENANTS' STRUGGLE

• The tenants' fight against the Housing Finance Act continues despite the dual trad-left mystifications of the role of the unions and the Labour Party (e.g. I.S. (International Socialism): "Link up with the unions, force Labour Councils to act". This article about the Edinburgh tenants continues along the lines of the article in the last Solidarity [about Manchester, by someone else], namely - that only collective understanding can provide the basis for meaningful tenants' action.          - Editors of the mag.

On October 5 1972 Edinburgh Corporation voted to implement the Housing Finance Act. On November 20 rent increases of about £1 per week came into effect. Tenants' Associations have existed for some time in many parts of the city, and combined to form the All-Edinburgh Tenants' Association to oppose the increases. The decision was taken to withhold increases rather than attempt a total rent strike.

Door-to-door canvassing resulted in several hundred tenants signing a declaration that they were willing to join the collective refusal to pay the increases. Other actions have included demonstrations, pickets at rent collection points, street and factory meetings and production of leaflets and bulletins. Many of these are still going on.

But the promise of a couple of months age (when meetings of Pilton T.A., for example, could draw a hundred people, and street meetings in areas like Wester Hailes could draw 50 at short notice, with volunteers coming forward as convenors for their street or block) has not been fulfilled. External signs of commitment would not matter so much if tenants were deeply involved with the struggle on an informal basis - talking about it, knowing their neighbours were refusing to pay, and confident they might influence events.Unfortunately, it would be self-deluding to pretend that this is happening so far. The most consistently active seem to be those of us with a political commitment to supplement our commitment as tenants.

The problem is not, as the International Socialists have suggested, a 'crisis of leadership', but the question of what limits people's ability to dispense with leaders and take things consciously into their own hands. Although Local Authority housing brings people together in a physical sense, they are juxtaposed rather than being involved collectively. They have the same landlord, the same management in some respects, but the imposition of authority and the simultaneous necessity to resist it are much less obviously present than in the productive process. In each privatised compartment traditional values, fostered within the family, reinforce themselves and militate against initiative.

This situation is only made worse by the orientation of traditional left parties towards trying to get people interested in choosing 'better' leaders, instead of encouraging autonomy. Edinburgh was one of the places where the Corporation dithered about a bit before deciding to implement 'Fair Rents', so there was a lot of preoccupation with Labour Councillors - putting pressure on them, urging votes of 'no confidence' when they 'sold out' (as if one should have confidence in the others; as if one couldn't have every confidence in them to act as good Labour politicians anyway). And we still get the monotonous reiteration of the adjective 'Tory' before every reference to the Rent Act, with the implication that Labour should be voted in instead. Securing their own power would of course be the prime aim of any Labour politicians 'pressurised' into 'taking up the fight', i.e. invited to take it over (it's not, after all, their fight), defuse and defeat it.

Going along with this, the objective of linking tenants and industrial workers tends to be approached through orthodox trade union channels, aiming to influence the hierarchy instead of making it redundant. As someone said, if you want to talk to a trade unionist, don't go to Vic Feather (or even the secretary of the local Trades Council), go to the bloke next door. However, there has been some emphasis on the desirability of rank-and-file link-ups, not with a view to substituting industrial action for tenants' struggle but to bring out the common interests and potential for mutual support between groups artificially differentiated by the system.

On January 11 1973 the All-Edinburgh Tenants' Association changed its name to the Edinburgh and District Tenants' Action Committee, re-emphasising the aim of fighting rent increases. Provision was made for affiliated TU branches, shop stewards' committees and similar groups (not including political organisations as such) to have one voting delegate each, while each Tenants' Association has two. We hope this will help to get it together in a more dynamic form, but we're still hamstrung by constitutionalism which allows people to be alienated by their own previous decisions about office-bearers elected with no provision for recall, regular delegates whose absence leaves their areas unrepresented, and the diverse interests of community involvement. (As an example of what the last can lead to, one delegate suggested that something we might act on at an All-Edinburgh level was wall-slogans, because people were concerned about them; he didn't mean we should use them as a method of propaganda, but that we should exert influence on the Corporation to stamp them out!)

We have to combat the differences between tenants, e.g.'respectable' versus 'problem' families, as well as between tenants and other sections of the class. Only their collective involvement, consciousness and confidence can guard against incipient bureaucracy - and replace those of us who are self-selected activists.In the meantime, we can raise some of the questions basic to the tenants' situation: not only why sudden and escalating rent increases, but why we have no choice about where and how we live; why the division between workers in the home and workers in the factory; how much (or little) sense it makes and what we can start doing about it.

L.W.

Muirhouse, Edinburgh

A Council Flat in Edinburgh, 1972-74

24/1 Muirhouse Park

The experience of living in a council flat on the northern fringe of Edinburgh in the early 1970s was rather different from that of a council house in Stornoway in the late 1950s, but the culture shock was not total, and there were some redeeming features - especially for those whose sojourn was temporary, with an end and a 'flitting' in sight after a couple of years.

In the early 1970s Muirhouse was seen (by some) as only the second-worst of Edinburgh's outlying housing estates, second to Pilton, across a main road, which had rather more boarded-up empty dwellings and a bleaker air of dereliction. Muirhouse and Pilton were both so far from a being an environment of choice, however, that some flats were made available to graduate students and their partners, with or even without small children, who would probably not otherwise have found themselves in the social housing sector at that stage. As it happened, a few of these were affiliated to left-wing groups - International Socialism, Leninist Communism, Solidarity - which gave them a particular take on the experience and an extra incentive to challenge the conditions. At the same time there were naturally longer-term residents with more traditional Labour and Trade Union views, with whom they attempted to work, not always perfectly harmoniously, on tenants' issues. Occasional social events were organised (there was some kind of community centre), as it might be a 'ceilidh' with eightsome reels and songs like 'Ye canny fling pieces fae a twenty-story flat' and, once, an attempt (it didn't go down well) at 'The workers' flag is palest pink/ Since Wilson washed it in the sink...'

Muirhouse Weans

Occupants of 24/1

Intrepid visitor with bike

A shared drying green at the back of no.24
(Not sinister smoke in the sky, just a mark on the print).

Anyone for gardening?

Greener and Pleasanter

At some remove from the sections of wasteland decorated with litter and graffiti (YMD passim; 'Even Hitler feared the Real Mental Drylaw' etc.),there were possible places for walks or picnics within pram- or buggy-pushing reach, although it was usually a good idea to 'wrap up warm' against the almost constant keen-to-bitter north/east wind. 

On the shore of the Firth of Forth

A road beside the golfcourse

Tenants (and others) on the march

... in support of the miners against the Heath government, 1973

40+ years on...

and  the flats at 24, like many surrounding buildings, were no more

But struggles continue...

Stop the Evictions, Campaigners Tell Edinburgh Council

"... The campaigners also demand more social housing – e.g. the demolition and rebuilding in Muirhouse is resulting in a 70% reduction in council tenancies. The movement insists on an end to the bad conditions in temporary housing, regulation of private sector rents, and for the Council to do repairs promptly and eradicate dampness. There must be an end to the inhuman practices of refusing to allocate homeless people temporary accommodation and telling them to come back next day, and of telling homeless people to report to the council office on eviction date and wait indefinitely for temporary accommodation..."

'Insufferable' conditions at Muirhouse council flats - BBC News

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-45508172   13 Sep 2018 - An urgent investigation into living conditions in flats in the Muirhouse area of Edinburgh has been launched.

Muirhouse sixth most deprived community in Scotland – The NEN ...

https://nen.press/2016/08/31/muirhouse-sixth-most-deprived-community-in-scotland/  31 Aug 2016 - Muirhouse is the only Edinburgh area to feature among the ten most deprived communities in the country ...
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COMING SHORTLY:

How it looked at the time

A Council House in Stornoway, 1954-59

38 Kennedy Terrace

During his time on Stornoway Town Council one of Calum Smith's main concerns was the provision of more and better homes at an easily affordable rent, what is now called 'social housing'. He used to point with some pride  at a small 'scheme' destined for older people, claiming credit for the decision to paint the front doors in different colours instead of all in one of the traditional darkish school-uniform shades. In his memoir Around the Peat-fire (Birlinn, 2001 and 2010) he described the inadequate conditions in which his parents had to raise their large family, and the surprise of finding them accommodated in a council house in Goathill Cottages (later Anderson Road) on his return from university. His future wife Peggy in a similarly large family had moved into a parallel street (Nicolson Road). Their respective parents and younger siblings were subsequently moved to Bain Square, Manor Park (Smiths) and Springfield Road (Fletts), still in council schemes.

 

38 Kennedy Terrace, 1959
(with accidental ink blot)

In the mid-1950s the social housing sector was expanding in Stornoway as elsewhere to try to cope with postwar demand. At around the same time Calum, now married with two daughters, was faced with the loss of the family's accommodation after the death of Peggy's maternal aunt, in whose house they had been living (paying rent). They had been on the council waiting list for some time and were offered a new home in one of the first blocks to be ready for occupation in Kennedy Terrace. (Not, be it noted, as a result of undue influence; in fact a previous offer had been declined precisely because Calum did not wish to appear to be jumping the queue. He was still on the council, however, although not for very much longer, and there were some ill-natured mutterings.)

Their new house was at one end of a block of four. It had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a living room and kitchen downstairs. Several of the neighbouring households were new to town life, having come in from 'the country', Gaelic speakers and staunch Free-Kirk Presbyterians. Next door to Calum lived Captain Smith (no relation) of the mailboat, the old Loch Seaforth, with his wife and four daughters. As more families moved in around them the children of the Terrace soon got to know each other and developed their own ways of interacting. They communicated in English, with the occasional borrowing ('deoch' for drink), and a sprinkling of the Stornoway argot (two wing meek = tuppence ha'penny).

Post-election-defeat letter to Calum

It wasn't a bad place to be growing up, notably good for street play, with very little traffic. Few people had cars. There was space in the cul-de-sac, with steps down to paths past back gardens to Leverhulme Drive, and a square of stubby grass where the watchman's hut stood until the buildings around were complete. In the early days unfinished houses were a site of illicit ploys, with the risk of being chased by the 'watchie'; later, he would sometimes invite a few children into his hut of a cold evening, for warmth and a 'yarn'.

A more approved pastimes (for girls) was skipping using a long rope (two wielding it, one performing in the middle) bought from the ironmongers (Calum spliced the ends of one for his daughter, using his wartime-navy skills) accompanied by the usual sort of chants (Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales/ All turned up like the monkeys' TAILS!), many preoccupied with supposed romantic prediction;, e.g.
'Gooseberry, raspberry,strawberry jam/
Tell me the name of your young man. 
A - B - etc.' 
(The intial at which you tripped up would be that of your 'boyfriend'. Then the traditional 'Tinker, tailor..' would find out his occupation, and 'Castle/ palace/ pigsty/ barn' where you would live.)

After the skipping season came 'doublers', using two multi-coloured rubber balls from Woolworths (they had to be the right kind) to test your dexterity and coordination against any fairly smooth vertical surface, usually that of the 'close' that ran through the middle of the block, for as long as the inhabitants would or could put up with the thumping. Refinements included overhand and underleg throws, clapping, and twirling round fast enough to catch the ball on the rebound, the game being not to let one fall. The actions might be performed in a prescribed sequence: Plainy, stooky, dummy, stooky-dummy, right hand, left hand, right leg under, left leg under... or to various rhymes.
One clasic chant for Doublers went like this:
"Are you gong to golf, sir/ No sir/ Why sir?
Because I've got a cold sir/ Where did you get the cold sir?
At the North Pole sir./ What were you doing there sir?
Catching polar bears sir/ How many did you catch sir?
One sir. two sir.." and so on.
On every 'sir' a special action (overhand etc.) would be performed, the winner being whoever could reach the highest number without missing a catch.

Meanwhile the wee-fellows (boys) might be kicking a football, 'scrapping', trying to make home-made go-karts go, or something. While some games such as the above were gender-specific, boys and girls would sometimes hang out together, kidding back and forth under the lampposts, chasing and hiding in groups or competing in activities in the swingpark. Once there was a play-off between boy and girl champions at jumping off a swing at its highest point and seeing how far you could jump. The boy won the token prize (choice of a penny toffee or Xcel chewing gum from Rossie's on Bayhead), but not by much (and the girl claimed to prefer the second choice anyway).

From time to time a mini-craze would take hold: hula-hoops; a version of hopscotch called 'Beds'; 'Truth, dare or promise'; slides and snowballs in the few really snow-and-icy winters; making 'spoogers' (water-pistols) out of lemon-shaped Jif juice dispensers...

On Sundays, of course, the most innocent forms of play (as well as all work - absolutely no washing out on the lines) were barred by majority public opinion, and even quite small children who ventured on frivolous make-believe in their own back gardens on the Sabbath risked solemn admonition from the peer group. On one memorable occasion a little friend hurled the scandalised accusation at one of Calum's daughters: "Your mother was singing on Sunday!" The defensive assertion that she was singing hymns didn't cut it, only psalms in proper places of worship were allowed. It was likewise considered scandalous by some when the Church of Scotland (Martin's Memorial) Sunday School summer treat was diverted to the cinema because it was too wet for a picnic, the 'pictures' being the work of the devil:"Surely the Minister wouldn't allow that?"

All the same another game involved guessing the name of the filmstar the other team was supposedly thinking of from shouted initials - DD could be Diana Dors or Doris Day - and popular songs of the time like the latter's 'Que sera, sera' were sung happily (except on Sundays), There were few counter-attractions to rival calling on friends and going out to play - television did not reach the island until 1959 - but plenty of influences from popular culture in the world at large, what with the Picture House, radio, Gazette, Sunday Post (but not until Monday) and the Weekly News (Saturday), not to mention relatives and visitors from Away.

Cat on Peatstack
Kennedy Terrace, Stornoway, 1959

Quite a few people had peats - renting a peatbank and going through the laborious process of cutting by hand, drying and turning in stages and conveying the peats to the roadside before they were taken home by lorry. On a fine summer evening this would be the occasion of a more traditional-seeming, almost 'folklorique' scene with neighbours, including children, rallying round and helping to carry the peats from the lorry in wheelbarrows and buckets, to be built into a stack near the back door by those most skilled in that art. The resulting tiredness, heat and dust were mitigated by the reward of tea and cake in the kitchen. 

Calum's and Peggy's second daughter (left) and friend
in the garden backing on to 'Macninch's Park'

A few years on, with big sister's friend
in the same garden, nearer the house

Behind the Smiths' block and the next one there was a large field, now built over, known as Macninch's Park, extending to Goathill across present-day Balmerino Drive. The gardens backed on to it, and the fences were easy to get through, to enjoy the pastoral setting and pick wildflowers, or make 'houses' in the long grass and among grain-stalks, or just for a short-cut. Capturing bees in jamjars (albeit with air-holes and flower-heads supplied) was popular for a time until discouraged by Calum on the grounds that these useful insects should be left to go about their business, When the field was being used for cattle, cows and the occasional bull would come up to the fence and accept offers of cabbage leaves through the widely-spaced wire, it is to be hoped without coming to too much harm. Some years a corncrake could be heard on summer nights, its distinctive 'skraak' quite loud in the back bedroom.

Other downside aspects, apart from the religious repression, were inevitable, squabbles, rivalries, name-calling, gangings-up and so on being more or less endemic among bunches of kids, and these were normal enough kids whatever their denominational (if any) background. It would perhaps be a mistake to depict any childhood as an unblemished idyll, and this was far from such, but there were certainly good points about it. In many respects girls and boys could have, by modern standards, a remarkable amount of unsupervised freedom, running round the streets till all hours in the long summer evenings, and often well after dark in the winter, in reasonable expectation of safety.

No.38 and the rest of its block in 2017.
Houses on what used to be Macninch's Park can be seen in the background.

Kennedy Terrace runs SW-NE roughly parallel to Westview Terrace,
with offshoots (blank on map), square and cul-de-sac

From Leyton to Stornoway to Dartmoor... A CO's journey.

The Middlesex Appeal Tribunal records, as noted previously, are a valuable resource for historians interested in the Conscientious Objectors (COs) of the First World War, often providing appellants' accounts of motivation, beliefs and political affinity in their own words. For the most part, however,  such material is not available for other parts of the country, including areas of London which were located in the county of  Essex.

Exceptionally, one CO from what is now the London Borough of Waltham Forest does have an appeal file, because by 1916 he  had moved to the Isle of Lewis. In Scotland, not only were the records for Lothain and Peebles pteserved as the example set (like Middlesex for England), those for Lewis also happened fortuitously to survive.

58 Borthwick Road

In 1911, according to the Census, Charles Record at 19 was a 'Servant In Training For Teacher', living with his parents and 18-year-old sister Gladys, an 'Elementary [Primary School] Student Teacher' at 58 Borthwick Road, Stratford. His parents were east-enders, father a 'Decorative Japanner' from Bethnal Green, mother from Stepney. Charles and Gladys were born in Wanstead Slip. 

Leyton was a local government district in southwest Essex, England, from 1873 to 1965. It included the neighbourhoods of Leyton, Leytonstone and Cann Hall. It now forms the southernmost part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest [...] To the south, the parish of Wanstead formed a long protrusion known as the Wanstead Slip, which extended to the marshes of the River Lea and divided Leyton from West Ham.  

Five years later he was a science teacher in the Nicolson Institute, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, living at 28 Point Street in the town. By then the school was well established and prestigious, producing high-achievers who went on to successful careers in the wider world. In 1914 the school magazine, according to a recent historian, reported that since 1898 nearly 100 (99) former pupils had graduated from Scottish universities. Science, though, was a comparatively recent addition to the curriculum, which may explain why at least one of its teachers came from so far away. 

In January 1893, the then headmaster, Mr Forbes, was placed in charge of the new Secondary department which introduced the teaching of Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Geography, History, English, French, German, Music, Domestic Economy, Drawing and Needlework. 

In 1907, with a school roll of more than 800, a decision was made to erect a new building. The new building was opened in 1910 - built with the aid of a £7,000 grant from the Scottish Education department - and incorporated five classrooms, a science laboratory, technical workshop and art room. 

Point Street is towards the south-west, near 'Stornoway Port Authority'

What Charles did and had done to him in the war has already been looked at in some detail, along with a very few other COs from the island. One of those, Murdo Macleod, had his appeal hearing heard on the same day as Charles, and was later sent to the same regiment (the Seaforth Highlanders) and court-martialled in the same place (Ripon). It would be interesting to know how those two young men, united in their determination but widely divergent in their beliefs and background, got along together in their shared adversity.

  Charles Record, Stornoway, originally from Essex, is on the Pearce CO Register 

Became an Absentee (i.e. left his place of residence, probably when the appeal was refused). 

Was arrested 30.6.16

Drafted into the Seaforth Highlanders (having refused non-combatant service) 

Court Martial at Ripon,14.7.16 - sentenced to 1 year imprisonment

Served time in Northallerton (Civil Prison) and Durham (Civil Prison).

Came before the Central Tribunal at Wormwood Scrubs, 1.9.16 - found to be CO class A, genuine

Referred to Brace Committee for work under the  Home Office Scheme

In work centres at Wakefield, 12-10-16, and Dartmoor, 28.8.17 and 21.2.1918.

His motivation is said to be 'religious', but his own words in the Appeal Tribunal file make it clear that he also saw himself as an Iinternationalist. 

Appeal against Conscription, 1916 by Charles Record, Conscientious Objector

The file is prefaced by a handwritten 2-page dated 20^th May 1916 protesting against the decision of the Appeal tribunal.

Notice of Appeal. (Stamped, Stornoway, 20-3-16

(2) Grounds on which appeal made: My application was for total exemption on grounds of conscientious objection. By granting me exemption from combatant service the Local Tribunal apparently admitted my sincerity.

  I appeal for total exemption; so that I may not be compelled to assist in the taking of life.

  In particular I appeal for exemption from work involving the taking of the Military Oath. At present I can disobey laws which conflict with my conscience, if willing to suffer the penalties. By taking the oath I surrender that right, by solemnly promising to obey all commands of the military authorities; thereby handing over my conscience to them. This is quite impossible for me; especially since I object to the purpose for which the military organisation exists, & therefore to most of its requirements. Even though I might never receive a command which conflicted with my conscience, I cannot make the offer to discard my convictions.

Charles Record         

March 4^th 1916

Reasons for the decision of the Local (Stornoway) Tribunal

The Tribunal having heard the Applicant refused the Application, but recommended him for non-combatant service.    [2-3-16]

For Appeal Tribunal (Ross & Cromarty and Sutherland, Lewis Section)

            The Tribunal having heard the appellant refused the Appeal.

Leave to appeal [further, to Central Tribunal] was also refused, the appellant not having stated any grounds to justify persuasion.

Stornoway 31^st March 1916. 

Reasons in support of the [original] Application 

  As a Christian I cannot undertake the responsibility of inflicting death.

   My international ideals convince me that I ought not to take part in international disputes which involve the killing of my fellows.

   I believe all occupations designed to assist the military authorities to partake of the same nature as actual combatant service. 

[A written statement (in duplicate) [on file] accompanies the forms].

Charles Record         

Decision of the Tribunal: [against which the appeal was lodged]

Stornoway 2^nd March 1916

The Tribunal refused the Application and recommend that applicant be relieved from combatant service and enrolled at once in the R.A.M.C. [Royal Army Medical Corps].

John Mackenzie Chairman.     

The penalties Charles duly underwent in accordance with his conscience included some of the most rigorous prisons and Work Centres but unlike some.COs he survived and was evidently able to resume a normal life and exercise his profession. In early 1919 he married Ethel Betts near his old home and birthplace in Lonodn (West Ham registration district).  

1939

318 Almondbury Bank , Huddersfield C.B., Yorkshire (West Riding), England
Record Household of 6 people
Charles Physics Teacher, Tech.College  b.30-10-1891

Ethel b.1890 unpaid domestic duties

Another (record withheld)

Kathleen (Whiteley) Record b.1922 At schoool
(Kathleen Record m.Kenneth Whiteley, Huddersfield 1944)

Annie [m.s.Wood] Record  b.1865 Widowed unpaid domestic duties
Emily S. Record Waistcoat maker retired b.1860 

The 1939 Register of Electors finds him living in Huddersfield and employed as a Physics Teacher in the Technical College. Others in the household are his wife Ethel, their daughter Kathleen, born in 1922, his widowed mother Annie and (probably) an unmarried paternal aunt, and someone else whose details are not (yet) available. According to the most likely death record, Crewe 1967, he lived to the age of 75.