"There were women on the London County Council: T remember attend-{ing one meeting, in the public gallery, and thinking how odd and out-of-place they looked. The days of Nancy Astor, Thelma Cazalet and Margaret Bondfeld—actually a woman member, oF rather now ex-member, of the Cabinet and a Privy Councillor: then seemed very far off. The war did more for women than the suffragettes would ever have achieved, for the country was turning mulish under their excesses. Now we all have the vote: and I wonder how: much ninety-nine of every hundred of us really value it, \Pre-War Salaries 'The now almost universal principle that every girl, even of well-to-do families, should' be trained to some calling.' was unthought of. 'There were wirl typists, of course, but drawn wholly from the humbler classes and they had not begun to oust the men from this work as they' nearly have now. Their pay was wretched: 283 a week was thought quite good: many girls were glad to take 15s, and worked six full days, for it. Money, of course, went further then, but even by the values "f 1010, 286 a week was very inferior to the '£2 which is now the average, Professions had hardly opened their doors to women. There were some Indy-doctors, a few artists, one or two great memes in the educational World. That about covered the field The notion of lady barristers, inst ance brokers and _garage-keepers, would have caused a million hands to '€0 up in horror. than ankles in any wind, sitting up very straight. Again one wonders what would have happened if such a feminine figure as one saw by the hundred last summer hed appeared—bent double over the handles of a man's machine, shorts, bare legs, open-necked shirt, bare head. It is recorded that when the first top-hat appeared in London streets, there was a riot and many women fainted. So it would certainly have been in 1910.
Social taboo. were still plenteous and rigid, Divorce was not talked about, and divorcees, however much they might be the. innocent party, were not known, Chaperons: were still the normal furniture of dances, Uke dance programmes, Cocktails were familiar but not for girls, who generally were supposed to prefer lemonade or, at most, that sickly decoction, claret cup. There were night clubs, but they would scarcely be mentioned in the presence of ladies. For @ young man to ring up girl of dinner-time and carry her off for an evening's dancing at a road-house would have been unthink-fable. But there were no road-houses, partly or the taboos mentioned, partly because motor-cars, which have helped to create them, were still the privilege of the rich instead of the plaything of the million, Elegant Fashions Fashions, 1 think, were decidedly pretty, particularly' the tailor-made coats and skirts, which were practical while still "preserving a certain feminine softness; and the large hats, which were not only large but enormous. But there can be no question that dressing all round has immensely improved in recent years. As halt, skirts have grown short-for, everyone has become smarter. London girls, in the main, used to be deplorably careless about their hair, and their shoes and stockings were a disgrace. Now the only complaint s that their smartness is, perhaps, too defiant. But they have come out to fend for themselves, and what would you?
In the house the mistress was still mistress. Excellent, cooks could be got for £25 a year, parloyrmalds for £20, and lower wages were paid without apparent dissatisfaction on either side, But then maidservants had to give, not to expect, satisfac tion: they were easily dismissed and readily replaced, and an alternate Sunday afternoon and evening out and one day a month were supposed to be ull the air and recreation they needed. Surely the sins of the past fare visited upon the children, and, with so many openings for women outside domestic work, servants have the whip hand.
Housekeepers' Budgets Comparatively few girls went to a university. Those who did. imme diately ranked as. "blue-stockings' and were eyed mistrustfully especially by men. But, though Girton and Newnham " had great names (one heard less in those days of the Oxford colleges for women) the old universities did not really welcome girl students. Now Oxford at least, if not Cambridge, confers degrees on them and allows them to take morning coffee and afternoon tea in the Union.
The fact is that in 1910 the pro fession for a girl was still to come home from her finishing school, and sit down and wait for seme one to.
arry her.
By the way, for a girl to wear glasses was then considered a hideous disfigurement. "Big noses are very: difficult to marry," says Lady Brack-nell in "The Importance of Being Earnest". So were spectacles. Now they seem to rank as an attraction, and the thicker the frames, the greater the adornment.
In 1910 T-personally had nothing to do with housekeeping, but I believe that for the food of an ordinarily comfortable upper-middle-class household 10s a week per head was considered ample, It would be at Toast 15s now, and we ha and variety of cheap 1910 never knew—not to mention all sorts of labour-saving contrivance ike the famous Smith's Crisps (i.e. potato chips), breaderumbs sold. in bags, sponge-cake mixtures that merely have to be whipped up and put in the oven, vegetables in tins only needing to be heated, and every kind of fruit from all the world, at all seasons. None of these wore known in 1610.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.