A Meeting on the Rhine

An intriguing studio portrait of a group of serious minded young women, on the reverse is a pencilled date of January 1894.  They are soberly dressed with padded shoulders and smocking to the fore and have the appearance of educated middle class women but there are no obvious clues as to the reason for their gathering. Some  look out of the photo with impressive self-assurance, others look more diffident or apprehensive. Perhaps it was a social event - a reunion of a sort - but there’s no evidence of frivolity. The studio responsible was located in Neuwied, a small town on the banks of the Rhine near Koblenz.  Germany in 1894 was a rapidly expanding industrial and military power and it may be no more than a coincidence but the nation’s first major group to campaign for the rights of women, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) was founded in March of 1894. Needless to say, it ceased to exist in 1933.

 

School Bullies at Work

A series of 6 postcards sent over about 10 days in May 1907 from a mother in Witheridge, Devon to her schoolboy son who was staying away from home with his grandmother in Twickenham.  The cards form a sequence and mother’s messages display an unusual preoccupation with playground violence.  She has inscribed some odd captions on the illustrations but she really gets stuck-in on the reverse declaring  to young Master Maunder (known as Vennie):

When you come home you will feel so strong that you will want to fight all the boys at school …

Will you tell the other boys to scram?

The bobby has got one of the boys - how would you like to be one of them …

In other news from home:

Percy went up to Mrs. Cheyney’s and brought home 2 little birds in a nest - Annie took them back again because the poor little things would die without the mother to feed them …

Daddy is very busy making a meat-safe for me today in the play room - he cannot make out why you’re not homesick …

It has rained all day …

Witheridge is a North Devon village where  a chain of West Country butchers (Lloyd Maunder) was founded  in the 1870s - the business was later managed by Percy (who brought home a bird’s nest) and Venn Maunder (recipient of the postcards).  It continues to trade in the present day.

Wrestling and fisticuffs were generally regarded as character-forming rituals and it wasn’t unusual for boys’ schools to organise formal boxing contests.  An unspoken acceptance of the playground as war zone meant that hierarchies of status were determined by shows of aggression and brute force.  Today’s high-functioning school bullies are equally adept in the dark arts of psychological violence - their repertoire of dirty tricks vastly extended by the arrival of social media. At some future date, they and their colleagues will be serving in the Cabinet, replacing the present incumbents whose vindictive incompetence may be regarded as trivial compared with their successors.