Category: Ephemera
Surely nothing can go wrong with cigarettes that come recommended by a doctor? I think you can be quietly reassured by Kensitas, the Mild cigarette.
Not that impressive a claim really – 84% of doctors who smoked anyway said they preferred a mild cigarette. Somehow this has been spun to be presented as the healthy option, although only against stronger cigarettes instead, of course.
That’s not a picture of a doctor, by the way. It’s the actor Mr Stanley Lupino, who, well, died of cancer aged 48.
(I mean, it might have had nothing to do with the cigs, but still.)
Remember the commotion about “video nasties” in the early 1980s and the debate about whether films could affect behaviour? Well, there’s nothing new under the sun, and all that.
In this article from a 1937 copy of The Mirror, a young Gosport lad was so affected by romantic thoughts after watching Romeo and Juliet that, after leaving the cinema, he immediately broke into the bedroom of what he claimed was “the first person that came into his mind”. This person being a rather startled Mrs Ivy Maud Bishop. The understanding Judge handed down a quite amusing punishment for this crime – “He was put on probation for twelve months on condition that he does not go to the pictures more than once a week.”
I’ve got this rather interesting little thing – an Oxford Probate Registry document for a Mrs Elizabeth Robinson who died on 25th March 1919 without leaving a will. I find it fascinating for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, she lived in Buckingham, which is where my family lived until a few years ago, and where I went to school. She lived at 20 Church Street, to be precise, and that house is there still.
But the second point is something that dates this to a very specific time – wartime conditions attached to the probate document. Her estate was duly passed to her husband, Charles Robinson, but with a little note inside stating that:
“This grant is made on the condition that no portion of the assets shall be distributed or paid during the War to any beneficiary or creditor who is a German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish or Bulgarian subject, wherever resident, or to anyone on his behalf, or to or on behalf of any person resident in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey or Bulgaria, of whatever nationality, without the express sanction of the Crown, acting through the Treasury; and if any distribution or payment is made contrary to this condition the Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration will be forthwith revoked.
Upon an application to the Solicitor to the Treasury there will be no difficulty in proper cases in obtaining the sanction of the Treasury to the payment of a moderate sum out of assets to beneficiaries or creditors who are German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish or Bulgarian subjects resident in this country at the commencement of the War and during the War.”
I thought it was a bit odd to include these conditions of wartime in 1919, but, then again, the Treaty of Versailles was only signed on 28th June 1919. At this point hostilities between Germany and the Allied Powers were finally formally ended (only to begin again, in a different way, in reaction to such a draconian settlement).
A quirk of dates is that this document is dated 2nd July 1919, after the Treaty was signed, and so maybe it was one of the last to contain these conditions of war?
Categories
A 20-Hour Joy-day, 1937
Hooray Hooray, it’s a happy holiday! It’s a 20-hour joy-day! To be more precise, it’s May 1937, the week before George VI’s coronation, and The Mirror couldn’t be more excited. I have the overseas edition of The Mirror, which was a week’s worth of newspapers bundled up into one edition (the overseas edition was out a week later, so the dates are actually those of Coronation Week itself). We moaned about the coverage of the last Royal Wedding, but this was something else. Nearly everyone was trying to get in on the act. (By the way, I’ve not been able to scan everything in the paper, it’s quite delicate in places, so the not so good bits are photos that might not be quite as clear.)
Firstly, the reason for George being King at all – Edward and Mrs Simpson. 12th May 1937 was originally Edward’s coronation date and, when he officially abdicated, the same date was kept for his brother. There’s lots of sweet, romantic pictures of the couple, and seemingly no disapproval at all, in this paper at least.
Here’s the schedule:
There are many ways to celebrate the day, as the Very Reverend Edgar Rogers rather tolerantly points out. He might be singing hymns, but he doesn’t mind if you’re getting completely blotto instead. In fact, is it just me, or is there a bit of a homoerotic vibe going on here? I’m imagining he has a secret passion for a “bit of rough” neighbour of his who likes a drink – all that talk of “he-manness” and everything.
And, along those lines….
It seemed like all the nations of the world wanted part of it. Nazi Germany was no exception, with Hitler giving George a special honour and sending a present.
Generous Ovaltine gave its workers an extra week’s wages to celebrate the occasion:
The Mirror had a special song commissioned, with a tune by Ivor Novello, no less.
Planning to get a good spot for the procession? Hyde Park was specially open all night on 11th May for overnight sleepers – here’s some tips:
But don’t bring your car:
Working underground? There’s still no excuse to miss the event!
You’re not patriotic enough unless you’re eating the correct food for the occasion.
Eat Nestle’s chocolate (in the days when everyone called it “Nessles”):
Or perhaps you fancy a Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp? I know I do. It’s a Kit Kat now, by the way.
Drink beer! I love how this isn’t an advert for a particular company, it’s just that YOU’RE BRITISH SO DRINK BEER. From 1429 (that was Henry VI’s coronation) to 1937, beer has been going strong. I don’t know what they had before 1429, though.
Stuck in a crowd waiting for the King to go past? Eat some specially shaped cheese triangles:
And smoke some special coronation fags while you’re at it:
And here’s the film to use to take your pictures:
And finally, the new King pardons a murderer to mark the occasion, for some reason (welease Woderick). Well, he only stabbed his 20 year old fiancee to death, poor lamb. At least his “grey-haired” mother gets to see him again:
Ping Pong – what a great name for a sport. Although I should properly be calling it Table Tennis, as I’ve recently (and unexpectedly) ended up wading deep through Table Tennis England’s online archives.
Now, this isn’t a sport I know anything about. In fact, there’s only one sport I do know anything about (if you don’t count maypole dancing, and why would you?), and that’s tennis of the non-table variety.
But I’m a sucker for a mystery to solve – and I’ve been pretty successful of late as well (just call me Scooby Doo). Look at this! Today’s puzzle came in the shape of this little medal, tucked inside the box of my Grandad’s wartime memorabilia.
Engraved on the back is R.B.S.C. Lord Cup Runner Up 1937. And that’s all the information I have. I love having a starting point for some history-surfing, though, so I was off to investigate. I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out about whatever the Lord Cup was, and what R.B.S.C. stood for, but it took quite a lot of searching to find anything.
The only place that currently has those initials is the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, and as it was founded before 1937, I thought I was onto something. That is, until I actually thought about it for a second. I realised that Grandad wasn’t a jet setter, he lived in Lancashire, and this was 1937 – so pre-war and any wartime related travelling hadn’t yet happened. Not that he was in Asia anyway, as far as I know.
But “Sports Club” is probably right for the last two initials, as it sounds like a sporty kind of thing. More searching on “Lord Cup” was rather hampered by the fact that it’s so similar to “Lord’s” and therefore lots of cricket stuff comes up. I’d assumed that the medal was something to do with cricket anyway, just because of the name, even though there was no reason to think so.
Eventually, I found one tiny reference, buried in the aforementioned Table Tennis England site. It turns out that they have an absolute joy of an archive – all their monthly magazines from 1935 to 2000 are beautifully scanned and available to view (although it looks like it was out on hold from 1939-1947 for war time reasons. I guess there wasn’t much table tennis going on during those years.)
Here they are, and very lovely they are too, especially from a design point of view, seeing how aesthetics changed over the years – TTE Archive
In issue 23, from April 1938, there’s a little nugget of information in a piece about events in North East Lancashire. All it says is:
“…while the closing rounds of The Lord Cup are arousing widespread interest.”
No issue of 1937 mentions The Lord Cup, however – I read them all, and now I feel quite au fait with the personalities and issues of 1930s table tennis. But it’s the right name, and the right place (Ribblesdale and Burnley Sports Club? Rawtenstall and Blackburn Sports Club?) and, importantly, it’s ever so slightly more plausible than my Grandad flying off to Thailand to take part in a tournament. Only slightly though – Mum says he never mentioned table tennis ever, and he wasn’t a sporty man. So, it’s all still a bit of a mystery.
Never mind. It’s a little bit of information, at least, and that makes the medal more interesting to me. BUT! Brilliantly, I also discovered that the England Table Tennis Association magazine was an unlikely arena for satire. Issue 24, May 1938, is rather in a huff with Mr Hitler. The recent Anschluss, the official joining of Germany and Austria, had an extra bonus – Germany could now claim that the women’s world table tennis champion, the Austrian Trudi Pritzi, was, in fact, officially German. Was this cricket? No, it bloody well was not! (In a number of ways.)
They jokingly suggest that England should follow suit, here:
“Perhaps the E.T.T.A. Selection committee should look around and select a promising country. We could get a few world champions. Say, Hungary. Or, perhaps, take over U.S.A. After all, that was once British territory.”
They are not happy at all that the correct procedure was not followed – surely the obvious next step after notifying the League of Nations about the forthcoming Anschluss was to make sure the tennis table situation was all agreed happily? And, more seriously, I presume that the last paragraph references Jewish Austrian players:
“The matter has not been regulated with proper courtesy to the International Federation. No doubt at all that, as in the case last year of Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, the Federation will willingly recognise the desire of two associations for joint representation, when application is made.
Meantime the high-handed attitude is a slight on the I.T.T.F. (International Table Tennis Federation). Even in the matter of the Anschluss of the two states. The German Government notified the League of Nations of what had taken place. In taking over the Austrian T.T.A., however, as far as we know the German T.T.A. has not yet thought it necessary to inform anyone.
When it does the question will probably be raised of the position under Article 2 of many Austrian table tennis players who are well known and are popular in this country and who were expelled from their association within a few hours of its annexation.”
Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp launched in 1935, and is now better known as the Kit Kat. Here’s some adverts for it from 1937.
It was marketed in these early years as a kind of quick meal substitute, “The biggest little meal”. A busy tailor for example, could scarf one down quickly if he didn’t have time for a lunch break. Although, frankly, he’s leaving it a bit late if he can’t get lunch before 3pm anyway.
And it’s just the job if you’ve been waiting for hours for George VI’s coronation procession and you’ve forgotten to bring any food for the day:
I must say, these adverts are working on me. It sounds absolutely delicious – crisp wafers, milk-cream chocolate and a lacing of finest butter. And it’s nourishing too! In fact, I’ve gone out and bought a Kit Kat, and am eating it right now. An advert from nearly 80 years ago has influenced me, so it must be a good one. I so wish I could try the “finest butter” 1937 version though.
OK, what? A peculiar and devastatingly under-explained little article from The Mirror, 1937.
This article reminded me of Tod Browning’s Freaks, the controversial 1932 cult horror film, which depicted the dying days of the freakshow. On account of its cast being real sideshow performers and its shocking plot, it was banned in the UK for 30 years. My favourite member of the cast is the “Half Woman-Half Man” played by the very cool Josephine Joseph, who claimed to be exactly split down the middle, gender-wise. The split-in-two depiction of a hermaphrodite was one of more popular types of sideshow “freak”, and was apparently mostly performed by males, who would exercise one half of their body and leave the other “female” side to go flabby and “moob up”. After ensuring you had two different hairstyles on either side of your head, you were away.
Now, this is where I get a bit excited. While writing this post I was suddenly overcome with curiosity about Josephine Joseph’s life. But….well, there’s hardly anything online at all. All I really found was that on Wikipedia, it’s claimed that she/he was 19 in Freaks, born in Austria, and was 5’6. That’s it! No one seems to know anything more – her/his real name, death or even if she/he were really a man or woman. Although some online commenters are pretty sure that J.J. was a man, in line with the tradition of such performers.
Me, I’m 100% convinced she’s a woman, and a pretty foxy one at that. I’m also rather sceptical of the claim to be 19 years old in Freaks. She looks a fair bit older than that to my eyes. And that was before I dug up something quite interesting in the British Newspaper Archive. Even more excitingly, it’s local to my part of the country too, the North West of the UK.
Now, the British Newspaper Archive doesn’t show up on Google searches as it’s a subscription service. And seeing as I’m newly armed with a month’s unlimited browsing, I decided to have a peek.
I found a rather intriguing article about a “Half Woman-Half Man” sideshow act called Josephine Joseph, who was the defendant in what sounds like a quite sensational, yet obscure, case in 1930. J.J. and her husband George Waas were an American couple who had been running a show at a “Coney Island” attraction in Blackpool. Their poster read:
“Josephine Joseph. Half Woman. Half Man. The most sensation freak of nature. Brother and sister in one body.”
J.J.’s name is given officially as Josephine Waas in the newspaper articles. They appeared before Blackpool Magistrates on August 22nd, 1930, charged with false pretences and conspiracy in order to “protect the gullible public” who paid to see their show. Brilliantly, the headline wearily calls this “Another Half Man-Half Woman Case”. You can’t move for them.
Before I get into the nitty gritty of that case, just for fun, let’s have a quick detour around the world of August 22nd 1930, as seen by the Lancashire Evening Post. It was in this issue that Princess Margaret’s birth was announced. It also reported on the birthday of Mrs Tackley, a 96-year-old woman who thought modern women’s dresses that showed their knees were “disgusting” and that there was “too much electricity about.”
There was the death of William Henry Townsend, the would-be assassin of Victorian Prime Minister Gladstone – who couldn’t go through with it because Gladstone smiled at him. He was still banged up in Broadmoor for the rest of his life though.
Vimto is marketed as an energy drink for boxers:
And cottage cheese is advertised as a way to keep policemen “nobby”:
Right, so back to Josephine Joseph. I think I know why this is piece of information has been left uncovered so far. The story was covered in two, local, newspapers – The Lancashire Daily Post and The Yorkshire Post – and it wasn’t a big trial that might have attracted national interest. Although the British Newspaper Archive is largely local newspapers so I’m not sure what national coverage this got, if any. George and Josephine complain about being summonsed only the day before and having no time to prepare a defence. They also apparently left the country immediately afterwards. Plus, J.J.’s big claim to fame in the movies was scuppered recognition-wise as Freaks was banned for so long.
Here’s the full article in the Lancashire Daily Post, and also a shorter version from the Yorkshire Post:
And here’s some close ups of the first article so it’s easier to read (although a bit awkward because of the columns):
It sounds quite riotous. They refuse to submit Josephine to a court doctor’s examination to prove hermaphroditism, but offer to provide X-rays to the court instead, given an adjournment. The adjournment was refused and the X-rays rejected as evidence without even being seen. A shame; I would have loved these, possibly doctored, items to still be available somewhere.
“Josephine Joseph” sounds a lot like a pure stage name, and there’s no photographs attached to the articles. But what makes me absolutely sure this is the same woman in Freaks are the descriptions of her in court. She is said to be a man on the right side, and a woman on the left, with her right arm longer than her left. Her eyebrows were different on either side. The Yorkshire Post article describes her stage costume as a bare right leg with a sandal, and a black-stockinged left leg with a woman’s shoe. Finally, her hair was brushed from the right side to the left, giving the impression of short hair on the right hand side. Now look at this picture of J.J. as she appears in Freaks two years later. Every point is the same:
Ultimately both pleaded guilty, the conspiracy charge was dropped and the show was ordered to be stopped immediately. Interestingly, only George was fined £25, while Josephine was discharged despite also pleading guilty. That seems quite unusual, but maybe she cast a bit of a spell on the courtroom. She sounds like a cool customer – it’s noted that she was smiling broadly when the verdict discharging her was announced, to some surprised murmuring in court. And there’s this exchange with Superintendent Hannan as he announced what he thought of Josephine’s physical attributes:
Superintendent: “I have no idea what the medical testimony may be, but I do say this, that the woman so far as I know does show to the public certain muscles on one side of her body which are more developed than those on the other side. She also has a male voice and a female voice. She may be without breast on one side, but this does not make her half man and half woman, as it can be brought about by operation or by physical exercises. Muscles can be developed on one side of the body and not on the other.
Turning to the woman defendant, the Superintendent remarked, “I see she is smiling.”
The Woman, “Can you stretch bones, Superintendent?”
There was laughter in the court and the Superintendent did not answer the question.
In the end, rather than submit to trial by jury in Preston, George Waas states:
“I want to plead guilty and get it over with. You are not going to crucify me entirely, are you? We both plead guilty.”
Asked if he anything to say to the magistrates, Waas replied, “I am sorry. I will give up this show and leave the country.”
As a postscript, I might have uncovered a bit more information on her life, but it’s not conclusive. Searching ancestry sites for George and Josephine Waas comes up with nothing that seems to be of a relevant time period for a Josephine. But there’s something very promising for George, and, after all, Josephine was probably a convenient stage name anyway. These are the details from the 1930 US Census. A George Waas was married to Betty Waas, and they later ended up in Los Angeles. Betty Waas was born in 1897 in Romania, and if this is our Josephine, that would make her 35 in 1932, a more realistic age for the performer in Freaks, in my opinion.
So there it is. A little light hopefully shed on a largely unknown life. I believe that Josephine Joseph definitely was a woman – or possibly of intersex gender, but not a man anyway, if she was indeed married to a man. And quite possibly she was really called Betty Waas, Romanian, and aged 16 years older than Wikipedia thinks. And this is where I came in – the title of the unrelated little article at the start of this post now seems to fit my findings pretty well, in the end.
I’m off to fiddle with Wikipedia and think about what a great film this could make. I can’t imagine anyone but Reece Shearsmith as the lead role. Wouldn’t he be amazing in it?
And, lastly, here’s Josephine herself, as she is in Freaks. Well, any excuse to post this – always and forever one of my favourite things on the Web, Ricardo Autobahn’s The Golden Age of Video:
Happiness (for me) is a browse through what is probably my favourite online resource – the British Newspaper Archive. It’s here.
I thought I’d mention it now because it’s a subscription-based site, and there’s a discount code valid until the end of January 2015 – enter “news01” and you get a month’s unlimited browsing for just £1.
Here’s a little article I found, local to me as it’s from The Liverpool Post in 1937 (and I am all about 1937 right now). It’s what initially seems to be a fairly modern scenario, in a way. A pupil from Rock Ferry, Birkenhead, sued his teacher for caning him, and he won his case. Then everyone remembered they were still in 1937, his teacher appealed, and she was successful in getting the conviction overturned.
You’re left in no doubt as to what general opinion might be, reading the language of the article:
“On the afternoon of January 12th, she warned him several times. When she went to cane him in the ordinary way, he turned away and she hit him with the cane three times on his pants. She did not lose her temper. The boy went back to his desk and sat down, doing his work much better afterwards.
Mr Roland Thomas, K.C., for the teacher, commented, “Teachers will go in terror of punishing children, if bruising of the ordinary kind is going to be taken as excessive.”
I have a feeling things are going to get a bit 1937-y around here for a while as my latest Ebay ephemera purchase is an edition of the Mirror from May 1937. It’s not the usual daily newspaper, though, but the overseas weekly edition compiled from a week’s worth of newspapers. The date is quite portentous as it’s the week before George VI’s coronation, and there’s a huge sense of build up and excitement, with special adverts recommending food to eat whole you’re waiting for the procession to pass, endless details about visitors from other parts of the world arriving to take part in all the pageantry, and romantic asides with pictures of the recently abdicated Edward and Wallace Simpson smiling at each other.
And that’s apart from the amazing news stories and general adverts, which are reliably fascinating. One thing I have learned from the adverts I have from the 1930s and 40s – you’re never far away from a laxative ad. Not sure why this was such a huge deal at this time – I imagined everyone was eating quite a lot of vegetable matter at this point. In fact, I’ve previously written about my favourite advert ever, a laxative advert in my Grandad’s 1940 copy of the Radio Times (he was on the cover) – https://skittishlibrary.co.uk/remembrance-week-the-radio-times-1940/
So, how to capitalise on this apparent fear of constipation if you didn’t actually manufacture laxatives? Wright’s Coal Tar Soap decided to basically invent a new problem -“Skin constipation”, a kind of poisoning from your blocked pores. Luckily, this terrible affliction could be avoided with their soap, of course.
