1910

Last week I received a chain letter from a second cousin:

This is  too true to be funny.

The  next time you hear a politician use the
Word 'billion' in a casual  manner, think about
Whether you want the 'politicians'  spending
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to  comprehend,
But one advertising agency did a good job of
Putting  that figure into some perspective in
One of it's [sic] releases.

A. A  billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A  billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A  billion hours ago our ancestors were
Living in the Stone  Age.

D. A  billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A  billion Pounds ago was only
13 hours and 12 minutes,
At  the rate our government
Is spending it.

OK, so far so good.  An interesting way to express the concept of a billion.  The letter became a rant:

Stamp Duty
Tobacco Tax
Corporate  Income Tax
Income Tax
Council Tax
Unemployment Tax
Fishing License  Tax
Petrol/Diesel  Tax
Inheritance Tax
(tax on top of tax)
Alcohol Tax
V.A.T.
Marriage  License Tax
Property Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales  Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL  THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not  one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... [wrong, but hey, let's not let the facts interrupt your ranting]
And our nation was one of the most  prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national  debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
And  Mum stayed home to raise the children.

What  happened?
Can you spell 'politicians!'

I  hope this goes around the UK
At least  100 times
What  the hell happened?????

By this point the author had lost my support completely.  In fact, I was downright angry, especially at the comment about Mum staying home to raise the children: of course she did, especially if she survived childbirth and if the children survived infancy.  I mean, it's not like she could vote for a different system.

So let's take a look at 1910, a time so idyllic that the writer of this post, and anyone who forwarded it, would love to see return.  All of my great-grandparents were still too young to be married, so I'm going to have to do a multi-generational look.

In Canada
Robert Sangster McKenzie: he was 43 and running a gentlemen's clothing store in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba and a general store in Rivers, Manitoba.  Although born in Scotland, he'd lived nearly his entire life in Canada.  At the start of 1910, he'd been a widower for 5 months.  He had five children at home, ranging in age from twenty-year-old James to eight-year-old Rosabelle.  OK, 1910 wasn't too bad for Robert, other than the recent loss of his wife, of course.

Ruth Tyler, his wife: she had died of chronic kidney stones in July 1909.  Modern medicine would have saved her, and medicine in Canada and the UK is freely available to all.  So this Mum wasn't staying home to look after the kids.

James Arthur Robert McKenzie, their son: still living at home with his parents.  He didn't go to university, but then it wasn't really an option.  Sure, the family were middle class, according to Marx's definition (as the author of the rant didn't define what exactly s/he considers middle class): they owned a business rather than earned a wage, but that didn't mean there was money available for higher education, nor were there grants for those with the ability but not the means.  Other than the recent death of his mother, 1910 was not too bad.  In fact, unlike many of his contemporaries, James was lucky: because he owned the only store in a small town, he was exempted from military service in the First World War.  His brother wasn't so lucky and was gassed in the trenches, but I guess that's just one of those unfortunate side effects which would shortly face most of those who were young men in 1910.

Robert James Hill: he'd only recently immigrated to Canada from the US to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway.  He had to leave his wife and children behind; there wasn't enough money to bring them and there wasn't anywhere for them to live while he was building the railway.  No social housing for families of lower-income workers.  They moved in with relatives in Michigan and waited for several years before joining him in Canada.  They couldn't move in with his parents: his mother had died of cancer when he was only 10, his father of a heart attack two years later, aged only 50.  Robert had been an orphan since he was 15.

Suzanne Bassett, Robert's wife.  She was still in Michigan, living with her sister and brother-in-law.  Money was tight and she took in laundry to make ends meet.  So not only was she staying at home to look after the kids, she was doing proper women's work, right?  She wouldn't see her husband for nearly five years.

Ruby May Hill, their daughter: she was fifteen, her formal education having ended three years earlier, as free schooling for girls wasn't seen as a necessity: after all, as soon as they found a husband, what need had they of an education?  Nevertheless, Ruby was good at mathematics (how unfeminine!), and upon coming to Canada, found employment as a bookkeeper at McKenzie's General Store.  Ruby kept her job even after she was married and became a mother: you know what?  Many women did and somehow the human race has survived!  Ruby didn't lose her brother in the First World War: he'd died thirteen years earlier, aged only one month, from meningitis, something which is now treatable thanks to advances in medical science and free health care.

Curtis William McLaughlin and Miriam Hall McClintock: 1910 didn't make much of an impact on them as they'd been dead for thirteen and twelve years, respectively.  Curtis died of a fever, Miriam of pneumonia.  He was 45, she was 41.  Both easily preventable.  They left four orphans.

William Harold McLaughlin, their son: he was only ten when he was orphaned, and had to leave Quebec to live with family in New Brunswick.  They arranged for him to attend a seminary school in New York State, but Mac chose a more secular life and joined the 8th US Cavalry.  By 1910 he had served three years in the Philippines keeping order after the Insurrection, and had returned to the US, settling in Wyoming, where the 8th was stationed.  He was Deputy Sheriff of Sweetwater County, but the job didn't last long and he spent most of the next decade as an itinerant labourer on farms in the US and Canada before joining the Royal North-West Mounted Police in 1919.

James Darcy: he was 40 and living in Wolseley, Saskatchewan, having gone west with his young family in 1898.  He'd come from a large Irish Catholic family: of his 11 siblings, 9 had survived infancy and were raising large families of their own, possibly why James had headed west since there wasn't much land left for him in Ontario and the Canadian government was making cheap land available on the Prairies.  Uh oh...government involvement.  Must be a bad thing, right?  I'm sure the author of the e-mail would think so, since it sounds as if anything the government does is bad in his/her books.

Annie Cecilia Neil, James' wife: 34 and a mother of four (and a surprise fifth several years later), none of whom would be old enough to fight in the First World War.  For James and Annie, 1910 probably was a happy time on their farm with their children.  James would die in a well-drilling accident; their youngest daughter of meningitis, but all that was still in the future.

Reta Eileen Darcy, their daughter: the only great-grandparent I really knew.  I never asked her what 1910 was like.  I only knew that she thought the world was so much better in the 1990s than it had been when she was growing up.  She would have been 14 in 1910; the 1911 census said that she was attending school ten months of the year.  By the 1916 census she was engaged in "household duties" and would marry before the year was out.  She spoke well of her years on the farm, but acknowledged that life was hard.  On her 90th birthday she said that the two greatest inventions in her lifetime had been Teflon and Scotch (Cello) tape: they might not have changed the world, but they certainly made her life easier.  By 1927, widowed suddenly with three children and a fourth on the way, she became a housekeeper for a family in a small rural Manitoba town; she had to send her youngest child back to the farm in Saskatchewan because she couldn't work and look after all the children, and he was not yet school age -- no widow's pension then, nor subsidies for childcare.

In England
Charles Newman Moore: he worked in the furniture industry in London's East End.  The 1911 census says that he and five members of his family lived in a four-room house.  Not four bedrooms: four rooms, including the kitchen.  Charles had tuberculosis.  It would claim him eventually.

Annie Elizabeth Clary, Charles' wife: the 1911 census says that she was the mother of eight, five of whom were then living.  One of her daughters had died of dentition -- teething -- at the age of one; a son had died of a fever aged eight months.  Housing conditions and lack of medical care could leave a child to die from common ailments.  Annie was not only staying home to look after her children, although she took in sewing work to earn some money, she also had to look after her widowed mother, who was described as "senile" -- to judge from some of her descendants, she probably had Alzheimers.

Wilfred Thomas Moore, their son: he worked in the railyards washing train carriages, his formal education having ended at 15.  It wasn't only girls who weren't able to stay in school until they were 18: poorer families needed the wages now rather than an education which might to better wages in the future.  Within three years he'd be married and, very shortly afterwards (six weeks), a father.  The following year he'd go to war.  He was at Gallipoli.  When the war ended, he returned to work in the railyards where he would be a sign painter and eventually the paint shop foreman.

Charles William Herriott Walker: a blacksmith, originally from Norfolk, he had followed the railways south to London and taken up his trade in the East End.  It's likely here that he met Wilfred Moore, his future son-in-law, as Charles was also working in the car shops.

Harriett Elizabeth Coe, his wife: also originally from Norfolk (in fact, she was Charles' second cousin once removed).  She was 50 in 1910, the mother of ten children, five of whom were still living.  Three had died in infancy, one at nineteen from typhoid and one at twenty-two from diabetes.  Diabetes has been carried down in our family, but it is understood and can be controlled.  Typhoid?  Tells you a lot about the housing conditions and neighbourhood sanitation.

Nellie Beatrice Walker, their daughter: she was 19, living at home and taking in laundry, as were her sisters.  School was over and the occupational choices facing a young woman were limited: she wasn't of the right social background to be a governess or a lady's companion, and hadn't had enough education to be a teacher, so all that remained was domestic work.

Jan Bootes alias Johannes Schmidt: he'd died on Christmas Eve 1904, so wasn't up to much by 1910.  He suffered from asthma and a particularly bad attack led to a heart attack and he collapsed at Liverpool Street Station, dying shortly afterwards at a nearby house to which he'd been carried by passers-by.

Maria Reineke, his widow: Maria was one of the few working women in this generation, employed as a translater in the London Courts, although by 1910 she was 65 and probably no longer working.  As I mentioned in a previous post, she had expected her youngest daughter to stay at home and look after her in her old age.  The 1911 census said that she was the mother of seven, four still living: her three eldest children had all died before the age of two, one of diarrhoea and two of hydrocephalus.

Louisa Bootes alias Schmidt: she was 27 in 1910, the oldest of my great-grandparents.  She had finished school aged 14 and had been working ever since, first as a laundress and later as a domestic servant.  I don't imagine she had any expectations of a different life as her family had all agreed that she would stay home to look after her mother.  Since she eloped four years later and was excluded from her family for doing so, it seems that she did want something for herself.

There are common themes running through all of this: lack of educational opportunities, lack of assistance for families suffering hardship, lack of access to medical services, lack of medical knowledge, lack of clean water or proper sewerage, lack of representation for women and poorer families.  Lack, lack, lack.  Families living in the UK and Canada today have such improved lives compared to their 1910 ancestors.  Women can vote.  Vaccination schemes have eradicated many diseases.  Education can lift one from a dead-end job to a career path.  The rigid social class system of the Edwardian era is mostly just history.  Britain might not be the wealthiest country on earth, but it's also not colonising other nations to exploit their natural resources at the expense of their inhabitants.  Does the author of the original e-mail propose that we revert to doing that, seeing other races as expendable in the process?  The social and economic conditions of 1910 led directly to the First World War, the outcomes of the First World War laid the groundwork for the Second: how could anyone see 1910 as 'the good old days'?

And what has funded so many of these improvements?  Taxes.  It's not pretty, it's not popular, but there you have it.  I might not always agree with the government's decisions and rarely with the way it goes about implementing things, but I sure as hell don't want to go back to 1910.  Politicians aren't perfect, but for every one who is exposed as corrupt and grasping, there are a dozen decent politicians and civil servants working hard to help improve society while receiving next to no recognition and little appreciation.  The UK and Canada are fantastic places to live: it's why so many people want to move here / there. 

So the next time you receive this kind of e-mail, think first before forwarding it.  What is it saying about you?  Do you want to return to 1910 and all the prejudice and poverty it brought?  Do you imagine that there's a better country to live in these days and if you can, why aren't you packing your bags -- and letting the rest of us know where it is?  If you can't think of one, think about what you are doing to make your country better.  Forwarding an ill-thought-out e-mail is hardly going to bring back the utopia you imagine 1910 to be -- and thank goodness for that.

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!