Incoming Leamington vicar, the Rev. George Goode, left his St Helens congregation with these words of advice to husbands and wives in 1948. Despite the startling initial use of the word “slut” (in it’s older meaning of “slovenly housekeeper”), I can’t really disagree, especially with the rather refreshing advice of “don’t nag” given to the husband instead of the wife. And the cup of tea and washing up thing, too.
Leamington Spa Courier, 16th January 1948
Vicar’s Advice to Husbands and Wives
TO WIVES – Don’t become sluts – it’s tragic. Do make meals inviting, and your home a place of welcome and warmth.
TO HUSBANDS – Don’t forget her cup of tea in bed, or take too much pocket money, or nag. Do wash-up.
Some advice for wives from Mrs M. A. Dobbin Crawford who was, in 1930, the Honorary Assistant Surgeon at the Liverpool and Samaritan Hospitals for Women and the Liverpool Maternity Hospital. Full marks for her for marrying someone with “Dobbin” in their surname, and for her valuable work as a surgeon specialising in women’s health. But I’m not crazy about the marital advice.
Bath Chronicle, 27th December 1930
Advice to Wives
“Never Criticise Your Husband to Anybody”
As given to a meeting of business girls in Liverpool on Wednesday by Mrs Dobbin Crawford, a Liverpool surgeon:
Never criticise your husband to anybody, not even to your own mother.
Be sympathetic and understanding.
Nothing destroys the happiness of married life more than the lazy, slovenly wife.
Encourage your husband to keep his friends. Don’t be jealous of them.
A marriage that is childless by arrangement is generally a disappointment.
I like this Advice to Husbands, as published in the Manchester Courier in 1877. It seems to me to be hiding its essential compassion and wisdom underneath a veneer of curmudgeonly Mark Twain-style humour.
The Manchester Courier, 2nd July 1877
ADVICE TO HUSBANDS
Never talk in your sleep unless you are sure what you are going to say.
Don’t be discontented. It is much easier to make your wife feel that way.
Never tell your wife she is a charming singer unless you happen to be deaf.
Don’t flatter yourself that you know more than your wife until you have got home from her funeral.
Don’t be too friendly with your prospective son-in-law. He may think you intend to live with him after he is married.
Don’t try and fool your wife about drinking unless you happen to marry an idiot. Then it isn’t worth while to do so.
Never tell your wife how much better some other woman dresses unless you have more money than you know what to do with.
Never boast to your wife about the value of your past experiences. Your mother-in-law may settle herself down on you next week.
Never find fault with the quality of your wife’s cooking. You may possibly drive her to join some cooking club, which would be much worse.
What would you imagine a Judge’s marital advice, which takes the topic of women’s emancipation into consideration, in 1925, to consist of?
Probably much the same as I imagined when I found this article and read the headline. And yet, all credit to Judge Joseph Sabath, his advice is far ahead of its time. In fact, it’s probably a bit too forward-thinking for a few judges even now.
Dundee Courier, 5th January 1925
Judge’s Advice to Wives and Husbands
The increase in divorce is viewed as a sign of progress by Judge Joseph Sabath, of Chicago, who has presided over the hearing of 10,000 divorce cases, but who refuses to grant a legal separation unless all efforts at conciliation have failed.
“The large number of divorces is rather a manifestation of progress than of retrogression,” he declares.
“It is one of the natural incidents attending the emancipation of womanhood. The wife no longer is a chattel, but a free human being, living and acting on terms of equality with her husband.
“It is natural and right that she should seek relief by dissolution when the equal partnership becomes impossible.”
Judge Sabath’s advice to husbands draws from his experience in the Divorce Courts, is as follows:-
“Make your wife a real partner, and discuss business problems with her. Give her your confidence. Avoid the interference of relatives. Supply your wife with enough money to maintain the household without skimping. Have children or adopt some. Work together, play together, and grow up together.”
His advice to wives is this:-
“Assert enough independence to make your husband notice it. Do not be afraid to soil your hands. Make your husband assume more responsibility for the home life than merely financing it.
“Never flirt even to tease your husband, he wants to be the one man in your life more than anything else, and to flirt is to stir a fire that may consume both of you.”
I used to work in a hippy-ish shop which sold all manner of things and Christmas time was a nightmare. Especially Christmas Eve, when the shop would suddenly have more male customers than we’d maybe had for the previous six months, grabbing anything that looked like a candle off the shelves, buying oil burners (this was the late 90s – they’re not so popular these days, are they?) and essential oils, and then asking as an afterthought, “What exactly is this?”
So, there obviously was always a bit of a market for Christmas shopping advice for men, and in 1933 “a London Store” catered to this by opening a “Husband’s Advisory Bureau” for the purpose, as seen below. That’s assuming they hadn’t adopted the “methodical system” recommended in the article, keeping a notebook updated all year with gift ideas for the whole family, “employing a special secretary for the purpose” if they’re rich, and then buying the cheapest thing in there when Christmas comes round. Of course they haven’t done this, no one ever has.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 6th December 1933
Advice to Husbands
A London store has just opened a Husband’s Advisory Bureau to help in the buying of Christmas gifts. It should be a welcome institution. If there is one thing which more than another puzzles the average man, it is the selection of a suitable present for Christmas or a birthday, whether the recipient is a woman or a man. In the family, of course, it is easy if done in one way. The methodical system is to start a notebook on the first of January and write down under the names of various members of the household all the things they sigh for in the course of the year. Wealthy heads of families may employ a special secretary for the purpose; they are likely to require one. The in December, assuming that the list has not been tattered by much use in the interval, all that is necessary is to consult it. It may be that the desires of wife and daughters and sons has been so numerous that choice remains difficult, but this can easily be overcome by purchasing the least expensive item in each case, or, in a crisis, losing the list and falling back (as is customary) on the advice of the lady of the house. There might also be an Advisory Bureau for Wives with two stringent mottoes – “Husbands don’t want ties” and “Husbands don’t like your taste in cigars.”
Of course, there’s always Bill Murray’s system in Scrooged – divide your gift list into “towels” and “video recorders”, depending on how much you like/want to impress the recipient:
Mary Pickford was a mega-success story – one of the biggest stars of early cinema, she co-founded the United Artists film studio, was one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Pictures and won the second ever Best Actress Oscar given by them. She was described by a silent film journalist at the time as “the best known woman who has ever lived, the woman who was known to more people and loved by more people than any other woman that has been in all history.” Quite a claim.
One of the original career women, this is the advice she had for wives in 1934. “Be selfish.”
Sunderland Daily Echo, 19th January 1934
ADVICE TO WIVES
“BE SELFISH,” SAYS MARY PICKFORD
Wives should learn to be selfish.
This is the advice of Miss Mary Pickford.
She thinks wives ought to have schools where selfishness would be one of the subjects of the curriculum.
“Women,” she said, “ought to learn that kindness is sometimes the most devastating and weakening influence.
“Wives, especially, make this mistake. It is the unselfish ones who ruin themselves and everyone depending on them.
Mary Pickford confessed that she had made a New Year resolution to treat herself as well as she treats the people she likes best, says a Reuter Chicago cable.
It’s another entry for my series of historical marital advice articles today.
This time – advice from an Austrian newspaper, as reprinted in The Berwickshire News in 1939, a few months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. It’s almost the counter advice to a previous post of mine – a policeman’s advice to wives from 1912. There, the policeman counsels a wife to “Have your own way by letting him think he is having his.” Here, it says that the husband should let his wife think she is in control of his life, without actually being so.
The phrase – “A woman’s happiness always wears the face of a man,” stands out for me here. What I have deduced so far from all this marital advice is that the wife wants to be in charge and the husband wants his ego boosted, and that each should act in such a manner as to let the other think they are getting what they want, without really letting them have it. Exhausting, this battle of the sexes.
Berwickshire News, 2nd May 1939
If your wife is unbearable, take it with a smile and remember that the woman who never nags you or reproaches you for anything most certainly does not love you any more. If your wife is pretty don’t tell her so, because she knows it. But if she isn’t – and this is often the case – insist that she is and she will think; “He has the soul of an artist.”
If you are on a little holiday with your men friends and you have a good time, don’t admit it in your letters. On the contrary, say that you think of her all the time, that you miss her and are bored without her. Women do not believe that men have the right to be happy with something because they can only be happy with somebody. A woman’s happiness always wears the face of a man.
Let a woman think she regulates and directs your life, but do not let her do it.
A husband should not compare his wife’s looks with those of slimmer and richer women – for that matter not even with her own in the dear days of their engagement.
Nor should he neglect using the hair tonic she’s bought at great expense to prevent a threatening baldness on her darling’s head. And he must never say “I won’t have to shave to-day. It’s going to be just the two of us so I guess it’s all right.”
Never forget the fundamental truth: you will only be happy if your wife is happy.
When Mrs Quan of St Louis put in a divorce petition against her husband in 1912, the Judge made a rather unusual decision. In what sounds like an idea for a reality show, he appointed a policeman, Patrick J. Egan, “to supervise the domestic affairs of the couple, and to visit their home daily for thirty days.” Mr Egan’s qualifications in this regard apparently being that “I have had a long talk with my wife. She and I have been married sixteen years, and we have never had a quarrel. This one qualification I have brought to this job of peacemaker.”
Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 17th September 1912
Mr Egan visited, he supervised and he talked with Mrs Quan “on her attitude towards her husband and his treatment of her”. He then came up with a list of precepts, and it didn’t take him long to do it – at the time of this article, he’d only completed 15 of the designated 30 visits.
This was his advice. Don’t remonstrate with your husband when he has been drinking. Wait until next morning. Then give him a cup of coffee for his headache. Afterwards lead him into the parlour, put your arms about him and give him a lecture. It will have more weight with him than any number of quarrels.
If he has to drink, let him have it at home.
Avoid mothers-in-law. Don’t let them live with you or interfere in your affairs.
If you must have your own way, do not let your husband know you are trying to boss him. Have your own way by letting him think he is having his.
Dress to suit your husband’s taste and income. Husbands usually don’t like their wives to wear tight dresses. Consult him on these matters.
Don’t be jealous or give your husband cause for jealousy.
When your husband is in a bad humour be in a good humour. It may be difficult but it will pay.
Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 17th September 1912
What did the Quans do with this advice? They had it printed, framed and placed in the sitting room. They were reportedly delighted with the “policeman-philosopher” and “presented the saviour of their marital bliss with a handsome token of their gratitude in the form of a gold watch.”
Now. I don’t want to be the pourer of cold water all over this marital bliss, but come on.
For one thing, Mrs Quan was the instigator of the divorce, which rather implies some kind of unreasonable conduct on the part of her husband. And yet, she’s the only one to be talked to, and the only one given advice on how to alter her behaviour. Plus, Mr Egan has only visited 15 times so far and so he came up with his advice pretty quickly. Assuming the list was drawn up after the first week, then this has given the Quans eight whole days to put this advice into action, including alerting the media on their state of bliss, commissioning a printer and framer to display the advice, and going gold watch shopping to boot. Well, I hope it worked out for them, but it seems a bit too soon to declare everything was fixed, don’t you think?
Here’s a 1930s example of what became known as “shockvertising“. It still works as an attention-grabbing technique – it made me gasp when I found it.
The Hawick News, 25th November, 1932
It’s a rather strong method of advertising from Brown of Myreslawgreen, an economical clothes shop. You need to read the small print to see what it’s really saying, and I expect everyone did read it – I can’t imagine many people blithely turning the page without investigating further.
“Every husband worthy of the name likes to see his wife and children well-dressed. It is a difficult problem these hard times, and our advice is – don’t KILL YOUR WIFE with worry trying to make ends meet….”
