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:
Going to school in the 1980s, the year 2000 was a popular subject for homework on predictions about the state of the world by the turn of the new millennium. It was just far enough away to be an effective exercise, but soon enough in our lifetimes to guess at where things were heading.
I remember going on a school trip to Hastings when I was about 10, in the mid-80s, where we visited what I remember to be some kind of cave. In one of the walls there was an arrow half-buried in the stone, point-first, Excalibur-like. The guide told us that the arrow pointed to a chamber where a copy of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that described the death of King Harold was buried, and that this time capsule was due to be opened in the year 2000. Of course, it would have to be opened very carefully, as the delicate paper of the document could likely crumble to dust. This I found to be extremely frustrating – just open it now, while I’m here, I thought, not at some point in the distant future, when I’m the grand old age of 26! I can’t imagine that far ahead!
I’ve always remembered this trip and the desire to see exactly what was buried in the wall, and I’ve tried a number of times to search on the internet to see if it was indeed opened in 2000. Oddly, I can’t find any reference to it at all, and now I wonder if it was real at all, or just some kind of faux-tourist attraction.
Later, in 1990, my class were asked to write an essay about “The World in Ten Years Time”. I found it in an old schoolbook a few years ago and I was left slightly thunderstruck on reading it again. Alongside my predictions about the Queen Mother having died (I thought, wrongly, that was a certainty) and stamps having been abolished for some reason, I had written that Princess Diana had died in a car crash in 1997, with a mysterious unidentified car being involved in some way. Funnily enough, I remember writing the bits about the Queen Mother and the stamps, but had no memory of writing about Princess Di at all. Extremely peculiar. And now, after my parents moved house, I don’t know where that book is, so I can prove exactly nothing.
Still – predictions of the year 2000 have been going on for a long time. Here’s a handful, as they appeared in the local press over the last couple of hundred years.
I wonder when the first year 2000 prediction happened? I certainly haven’t seen one earlier than this, from the 1833 Taunton Courier, although I bet there’s loads of Age of Enlightenment philosophers that considered it.
“An Author of Romance, foreshadowing the events of the year 2000, among other wonders, predicts that pens will write of themselves; and the Patentee of the Hydraulic Pen may be said to have all but accomplished the anticipated miracle. The invention will be invaluable to book-keepers, authors, and reporters; to all, especially, who wish to keep a clean hand either in court or counting house.”
I think they mean a non-dipping pen, an alternative to the quill and inky fingers, so a successful prediction there, what with ink cartridges and biros.
The Taunton Courier, 17th July 1833
The Hull Daily Mail in 1901 told a joke about the battle of the sexes in the year 2000, and the shocking notion of women wearing trousers, inspired by the Suffragette movement.
“Here,” said the husband of the New Woman, entering a tailor shop and laying a bundle on the counter, “you will have to alter these trousers. I can’t wear them as they are.”
“Really,” replied the tailor, as he opened the bundle, “you must excuse me, my dear sir, those are your wife’s.”
Women now wear trousers – correct.
Hull Daily Mail, 6th June 1901
The Yorkshire Evening Post of 1936 had a surprising article on predicted population growth by 2000. Instead of overcrowding and spiralling numbers, Dr S.K. Young of Durham thought that the birth rate would fall on account of women joining the workplace (if this is what he means by “amazons”) and what’s more, being needed in the workplace.
His calculations figured that the population of the whole of the UK in 2000 would be no more than that of 1936 London (which was around 4.3 million). This wasn’t a crazy thought – the population of London had indeed been decreasing since the turn of the century and the birth rate of the UK was about as low as it has ever been in 1936. 1920 still holds the record for the highest birth rate and it had tumbled dramatically over the next decade so it was a justifiable, if incorrect prediction – the population of London alone is now 8.5 million. Some interesting information on the ups and downs of the UK birth rate and baby booms is here.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 4th December 1936
Still in The Yorkshire Evening Post, the paper published a quite detailed consideration of what 2000 might look like. It was December 1949 and the imminent new year bringing the second half of the twentieth century with it, provoked a look ahead at what this half-century would bring.
Yorkshire Post, 30th December 1949
Here it is in more detail. It predicts “Extensive use of helicopters to take business men almost from doorstep to doorstep; The disappearance of trams from city roads; Segregation of different forms of traffic; A tendency for housing and industry to be concentrated in more compact areas to conserve agricultural land; In the home, television, refrigerators, washing machines and labour-saving devices as commonplace as radios; Open fireplaces replaced by cleaner and more economic forms of heating.”
Apart from the helicopters, this is pretty astute predicting. Although the death knell of most of the trams was pretty evident by then.
Yorkshire Post, 30th December 1949
Yorkshire Post, 30th December 1949
Yorkshire Post, 30th December 1949
And finally, still from The Yorkshire Evening Post, comes a prediction from 1955. The British Newspaper Archive only goes up to the mid-50s, and I expect as the century went on, there were many more such articles.
Here, an exhibition at Olympia which envisioned a 2000-era Soho is described. It’s a very futuristic vision, “a city clothed in glass“, edging towards the kind of dystopian future seen in 1960s and 70s sci-fi. Soho is encased in a glass dome, on top of which (on top!) are 24-storey blocks of flats, made of glass in the shape of stars. Helicopters land on the roof of those flats, and there is no traffic, people getting around by gondola on a system of canals.
“A rather soulful commentary….added a hope that man, in this new Soho environment, “might be no longer vile”. The paper concludes that while “Soho at rooftop height looked uncomfortably like Aldous Huxley’s vision in “Brave New World”, it was more interesting than some of the features seen in “the bad old one”. Although this didn’t come to pass, it was successful if boiled down to the essential fact that glass was probably the most important feature of architecture in the second half of the century.
The Yorkshire Post, 17th November 1955
In short – I think the transport systems of today might come as a bit of a disappointment to the people of the past. Not too many personal helicopters and gondolas.
This is an area I could research for years, really. I’m endlessly fascinated by future predictions – and I’m especially amused by the not-entirely-serious 100 years of fashion I found in an old Strand magazine here, and one of my favourite childhood books on what life would be like in 2010 here.
I’ve got a rather strange prediction for the year 2000 in a book of inventions from 1949 too, now I come to think of it. I’ll need to dig that out…..
Until I saw this advert, I didn’t realise that eggs used to be a vital component of Ovaltine. They even had their own egg farm next to their original factory in the UK, based in Kings Langley, and which they used in the advertisements. “Malt, milk and eggs, flavoured with cocoa,” was how they described it. Today Ovaltine is owned by Twinings and has ditched the egg, apart from the “may contain traces of egg” disclaimer. As all food adverts were apparently compelled to do from around 1850-1950, the claimed nutritional value was paramount.
Western Gazette, 24th October 1930
Eggs, and the associated implication of nutritional value, were indicated in its original name of Ovomaltine which references “ovo” for egg, and malt. It was invented in Switzerland in 1904 and is still called that there – amusingly, the reason for its name change to Ovaltine in the UK in 1909 was apparently because of a spelling mistake on the trademark application.
It was a household name of a brand thanks especially to the “The Ovaltineys” radio programme. It ran from 1935 until 1952 on Radio Luxembourg, with a break while the station closed for the duration of the Second World War. It might have ended over 20 years before I was born, but even I know the “Ovaltineys” jingle as sung by The Beverley Sisters.
In 1953, the brand got more positive publicity for its nutritional value when Sir Edmund Hilary took Ovaltine with him on his expedition to climb Mount Everest. Now, I associate it more with a soothing, warm-milk-to-help-you-sleep, kind of effect, rather than climbing mountains.
I’m always a fan of Art Deco buildings, and the Kings Langley factory is a beautiful example. It closed in 2002, and now it’s been converted into flats, but with the same listed façade. And where the The Ovaltine Egg Farm was based is now the site of Renewable Energy Systems Ltd.
Ovaltine Factory, Kings Langley
The company doesn’t make it very clear where it’s manufactured for the UK now. But it does have some more vintage Ovaltine ads available on their website, which are worth a look.
Some “Every-day Rules” from a Dr West in the Gloucestershire Echo from 1924.
Dr West is in favour of calmness and consideration, kindness and fairness. I can’t argue with him really. His “Never dispute with a man who is more then seventy years of age, nor with an enthusiast,” is invaluable.
And, it’s funny, but “Do not jest so as to wound the feelings of another,” would be described as “Political correctness gone mad” these days, by certain types with less consideration for others.
The Gloucestershire Echo, 11th January 1924
Every-day Rules
Never ridicule sacred things, or what others may esteem as such, however absurd they may appear to you.
Never resent a supposed injury till you know the views and motives of the author of it. On no occasion relate it.
Always take the part of an absent person who is censured in company, so far as truth and propriety will allow.
Never think worse of another on account of his differing in political and religious subjects.
Never dispute with a man who is more than seventy years of age, nor with an enthusiast.
Do not jest so as to wound the feelings of another.
Say as little as possible of yourself and of those who are near to you.
Never court the favour of the rich by flattering either their vanities or their vices.
Speak with calmness and deliberation, especially in circumstances which tend to irritate. – Dr West.
An article highlighting the effects of the smoggy atmosphere in the towns prior to the Clean Air Act of 1956, which was brought in following London’s “Great Smog” over 4 days in December 1952, and which is estimated to have caused the deaths of 4000 people initially, with 8000 more dying in the months following.
However, a lesser-known effect of air pollution, apparently, was greying, smoke-tinted skin. This article from The Portsmouth Evening News in 1935 aimed to help the problem. By bleaching your skin.
Portsmouth Evening News, 23rd March 1935
Beauty Tips
Winter smoke and fog have imperceptibly darkened our complexions by several tones, even through the protective film of vanishing cream and powder we have used.
To restore ourselves to our original dazzling charm, we need an intensive course of bleaching treatment.
Intensive, yes, but very gentle. A good bleaching mask is made by mixing a tablespoonful of honey, a tablespoonful of almond meal, and a teaspoonful of peroxide of hydrogen.
Spread the cream thickly on face and throat, leave for at least a quarter of an hour and wash off with warm milk.
The treatment, given twice a week, will restore smoke-tinted skins.
Beauty hints from 1914. I might try the “drying your face upwards” one, my creases could do with being smoothed out.
Rinsing your hair in cold water is still said to help promote shininess, but I haven’t heard the rainwater tip. I suppose I could go and fill a bucket from the rain butt to wash my hair but it’s a bit too much like doing a regular ice bucket challenge, especially at the time of year. Also, when my hair gets rained on it turns into a frizzball although maybe the soap would prevent that?
The Portsmouth Evening News, 14th November, 1914
Beauty Hints
It is not generally known that washing the hair in rainwater and soft soap, and rinsing in cold water, makes the hair soft and silky.
Finger nails should always be cut the last thing at night. By the morning the cut portion will have hardened, and be unlikely to break or split.
When drying the face after washing, always rub upwards towards the nose. This helps to smooth out those creases on each side below the nose, and also prevents wrinkles. The eyes should be rubbed from the side of the face towards the nose.
Natural teeth, even when filled and preserved, are much better than artificial ones. Therefore visit your dentist once or twice yearly, and let him fill up any cavity that exists, and so arrest decay. When choosing a tooth-powder avoid any that contains gritty, acid or irritating substances. These not only act injudiciously on the enamel of the teeth, but are also bad for the gums.
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.
I read something once that said that “the good old days” have always been regarded as being around 50 years ago. That’s 50 years ago from the vantage point of whatever the current year is. I suppose for the older generation, it was the time of their rose-tinted youth, and for everyone younger, it was a semi-legendary time just out of reach – near enough to feel like we’re almost part of it, but long enough ago to feel definitely of a different age.
Of course, now the 1960s are an unbelievable 50 years ago and are officially “the good old days”. I wasn’t there, but that is absolutely my sentiment now. Ever since I was a teenager I wished I was somehow, magically in the 1960s. I thought if I thought about it hard enough, I might wake up in 1967. But it never happened (obviously).
One of my favourite books in 1987 was “It was twenty years ago today” by Derek Taylor, telling the story of the Beatles, Sergeant Pepper, and the exciting times of 1967. As I was 13 at the time, 20 years ago was an unimaginably long length of time to me. That was 28 years ago now, and the thought I was then closer in time to Sergeant Pepper than I am now to the time I read the book almost doesn’t compute in my mind. The march of time is a strange and wondrous thing.
Lord Malmesbury in 1926 was certainly of the opinion that the youth of today didn’t know they were born. As pretty much every generation thinks about the next one, or the one after, at some point. And the younger generation in turn are baffled and dismiss the oldies as not knowing what the hell they’re talking about.
As Zygon Clara wisely said in Doctor Who the other week, “You’re just middle-aged. No offence, but everybody middle-aged always thinks the world’s about to come to an end. It never does.”
Malmesbury comes to the frankly startling conclusion that womens place is in the wrong, them and their damned emancipation, and “the wage-earning classes” leave much to be desired. Upper class males were absolutely unreproachable though, no problem there. Hang on though – what exactly does he mean by “the gradual weakening of the individualism which had hitherto characterised our race”? Is he talking about mixed race relationships?
Portsmouth Evening News, 24th February 1926
LORD MALMESBURY’S
WARNING ______________
Abnormality of Youth ______________
“There is something wrong with the youth of to-day – something not quite normal,” said the Earl of Malmesbury, speaking on “Modern Youth” at the 1912 Club in London last night.
The value of youth, he said, could not be estimated, but lately we had been indulging in an actual worship of youth, which was wrong. We must have ideals, but we had been disposed to make youth an idol, rather than an ideal.
The worship, and too great freedom of youth, was largely due to the emancipation of women.
The children, seeing their mothers bent upon amusing themselves, thought they could do the same, and a child always took the cue from the mother, and not from the father.
Young men of what was formerly called the “leisured classes” had greatly improved in tone and character, although the girls of the same classes still showed room for improvement.
In the great mass of the young people of the wage-earning classes, the most deplorable feature was the gradual weakening of the individualism which had hitherto characterised our race.”
Some advice for would-be writers from 82 years ago that still holds true, for the most part. It’s careful not to be particularly encouraging, which is needed even more now, what with writers often not being paid for their work at all if their “employers”, if you can still call them that, can manage it. Instead of actual money there’s now the magic beans of “exposure”.
Hull Daily Mail, 25th July 1923
Advice to would-be writers
Lots of young girls who think that they can write wish to take up writing as a profession. It is, however, a very precarious means of livelihood, unless the young writer is possessed of an uncommon genius; and even then she may not get the M.S.S. accepted if she does not write the kind of stuff which appeals to the public.
The first thing to remember is that the writing must not be dull or prosy. It must be bright and “snappy”, or it will never sell. An article should be quite up-to-date, which th no old-fashioned words or hackneyed phrases. It is really better to use slang than such words as “swain” or “maiden”; but slang should also be avoided.
Lots of people imagine that all that is required to make a successful journalist is an extensive vocabulary; but no editor would for a moment consider an article which is nothing but a jumble of long words. Simple language is really much better – call a spade a spade and not “an agricultural implement”, and the reading public will be grateful.
Do not think that because your friends think a thing is exceptionally good an editor is sure to think the same. “Exceptionally good” things may daily pass through his hands, yet he does not make use of them because they are not suitable for his paper. Do not despair, however, if you yourself are sure the M.S. has merit. Send it round to other editors before giving up in despair.
When you send an M.S. to a newspaper or magazine a stamped addressed envelope should always be enclosed if you wish its return in case of unsuitability. If you can possibly get it typewritten it will stand more chance of being accepted – indeed some papers will only consider typewritten matter.
Do not expect to get it back by return of post. Editors have been known to keep an article for a few months and finally to accept it. It is [a] disheartening waiting game, and I should advise you to take up other employment, and only write to as a hobby. Later when your name becomes fairly well-known, you will not have so much difficulty in placing your writing; and someday you may be offered a position upon a newspaper by some editor who has seen and admired your writing.
Mark Twain was the greatest ever American writer, as far as I’m concerned. Not only a genius-level author, he was a thinker, and a very funny man to boot. His mind was as independent of its time as far as that is possible – just read the incredible ending to The Mysterious Stranger, an attack on the hypocrisy of organised religion.
His mind was always on the go, and here, in the 1889 Manchester Courier, is the report of his latest invention, a self-pasting scrapbook. I have suddenly realised this is exactly what I need for my recipe scrapbook – a copy of River Song’s diary from Doctor Who that I used to paste in recipes I find from newspapers and magazines. I certainly identify with the “barrels and barrels of profanity” when finding my Pritt stick is “so hard it is only fit to eat.”
Here he is, in typically amusing fashion.
Manchester Courier 18th May 1889
[blockquote align=center]
MARK TWAIN’S LATEST INVENTION
Not long ago, Mark Twain took the public into his confidence as to the achievements of a marvellous type-setting arrangement which he had devised. He now offers another boon to mankind in the shape of a scrap-book for newspaper cuttings, in which it is only necessary to wet the gummed columns in order to affix the cutting. The inventor modestly speaks of his achievement as follows: – “I hereby certify that during many years I was afflicted with cramps in my limbs, indigestion, salt rheum, enlargement of the liver, and periodic attacks of inflammatory rheumatism complicated with St Vitas’ dance, my sufferings being so great that for months at a time I was unable to stand upon my feet without assistance or speak the truth with it. But as soon as I had invented my self-pasting scrap-book and begun to use it in my own family, all these infirmities disappeared. In disseminating this universal healer among the world’s afflicted you are doing a noble work, and I sincerely hope you will get your reward – partly in the sweet consciousness of doing good, but the bulk of it in cash.” The following remarks are extracted from a letter to the publishers of the “notion”: – You know that when the average man wants to put something in his scrap-book he can’t find his paste – then he swears; or if he finds it, it is dried so hard it is only fit to eat – then he swears; if he uses mucilage, it mingles with the ink, and next year he can’t read his scrap – the result is barrels and barrels of profanity. If you still wish to publish this scrap-book of mine, I shall be willing. It is a sound moral work, and this will commend it to editors and clergymen, and, in fact, to all right-feeling people. If you want testimonials, I can get them, and of the best sort and from the best people. One of the most refined and cultivated young ladies in Hartford (daughter of a clergyman) told me herself, with grateful tears standing in her eyes, that since she began using my scrap-book she has not sworn a single oath. Truly yours, MARK TWAIN
