Wilfred Owen: Britain's key WW1 poet

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was born in Nth Shropshire, learning at Shrewsbury Technical School. He went to Birkenhead Institute Liverpool & Shrewsbury Technical College, then worked as a pupil-teacher in a poor rural parish. So he had to start teaching in Bordeaux to earn money, just as war broke out in mid-1914.

He enlisted in the British Army in 1915 and by Jan 1916 he saw active service in the trenches on the Western Front. Owen wrote poetry during this time, and his work was heavily influenced by his war experiences and the suffering he witnessed. His poetry was known for its stark realism, emotional  intensity and condemnation of war horrors. See, for example, Anthem for Doomed Youth,  1917.

Lt. Owen on cover of The Poems of Wilfred Owen

Penguin

While fighting in St Quentin on the Somme in Apr 1917, Wilfred suffered serious concussion and trench fever. A doctor diagnosed shellshock i.e the physical and/or psychological damage suffered by combat soldiers. Owen went to a French hospital and later returned home, where he was admitted into Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers in Edinburgh and recovered slowly. Owen’s time at Craiglockhart, a famous hospital treating victims of shellshock, coincided with that of his great friend and fellow poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon read his poetry, suggested ways to enhance it, becoming a major influence on Owen's work.

After their treatment, both men returned to active service in France, where Owen led his platoon through an artillery barrage to the German trenches; he discovered when they arrived that the enemy had withdrawn. Severely disoriented by the bombardment, Owen avoided being hit by an exploding shell but returned to base camp confused and speechless.

In France Lieut Owen won the Military Cross. But only Sassoon survived the war. Owen almost survived, but in Nov 1918, he was shot dead by a German machine-gun during an unsuccessful British attempt to German-held bridge Sambre Canal, near Ors village. This was a week before the Armistice was declared to end WWI and the Western Front was liberated but Winfred’s mother did not receive a telegraph re her son’s death until the war ended. He'd never married nor had children.

This English soldier was seen as one of the key literary figures of WWI, his most famous poems including Anthem for Doomed Youth and Strange Meeting.

Funerals for British soldiers were held along the Western Front in the war

BBC

His work was published after being killed in action in France Nov 1918, 1 week before the Armistice that ended the war. Today Owen's poetry is widely studied, admired for its powerful and moving depiction of war's realities, and he's remembered as a key voice in WW1 literature. His poetry owes its beauty to an ingrained sense of compassion coupled with grim realism.

WWI devastated the world, and that shift was reflected in literature, novels and poetry. Now celebrated as one of the greatest English C20th poets, Owen’s war poems were later popularised when Benjamin Britten included 9 of them in his War Requiem, dedicated to 4 mates who’d been killed in WW2. Anthem for Doomed Youth was a memorial to those who died in the Great War AND a classic representation of the tragic waste of war.

There are MANY memorials in Owen’s honour including a memorial window in Birkenhead Central Library by David Hillhouse, unveiled in 1995 by Peter Owen. Wilfred headstone in the British corner of Ors Communal Cemetery France. Napier University Edinburgh’s collection of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon’s works. A plaque at St Julian Church Shrewsbury. And Poets Corner for Great War poets in Westminster Abbey.

** Why come back to Wilfred Owen now? Long Lost Family is a great tv programme, this week focusing on teenage sweethearts who’d finally been reunited with their daughter 46 years after they were lost to adoption. Biological mother Inge was just 17 when she became pregnant by her boyfriend Jeremy Owen in 1968, when they were living in British colonial settlements in Africa. When Inge's own nasty mother discovered what had happened, she punished her pregnant teenage daughter. Jeremy, a caring educated man living in Australia, had not seen his daughter since her birth. 

Note that Jeremy was the proud nephew of celebrated WW1 poet Wilfred Owen who had never had children!

 

Wilfred's nephew Jeremy Owen, with his recently found daughter, 

Long Lost Family

Voltaire: writer living pre-Enlightenment

François Marie Arouet (1694-1778) was the son of a treas­ury of­ficial. In 1704, soon after his mother’s death, Arouet was sent to the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris for 7 years. He wrote poetry and performed in plays in Latin and French and when Arouet left Coll­ège at 17, the lad wanted to become a writer. Having already planned a law career for his son, dad forced Francois to be a lawyer’s assistant for two years, but the lad devoted his en­ergy to writing satirical poetry instead. So his father sent him to the country with marquis de Saint-Ange Louis de Caumartin, writing history.

When King Louis XIV died in 1715, Arouet went home. The king’s reign had been miserable, so things HAD to change for the bett­er, and he was welcomed into Paris’ literary society. In the Duchess of Maine's circle, Arouet again contributed to a libellous satirical poem ridic­ul­ing the Prince Regent Orleans. And as a result he was again exiled from Paris in May 1716! Was the young man truly reckless? Or just naïve?

Some "unacceptable" quotes by other writers were falsely ascribed to him, making him look worse. So soon he was back in Par­is’ infamous Bast­il­le prison. Inside he worked on a new play and this tragedy Oedipe was his 1st theatrical success. It was also in this prison that he began The Henr­iade, an ep­ic poem about Henry IV, and he adopted penname Voltaire. Voltaire was gaoled for a year for satirising politics & religion in La Henriade. Released in 1718, Oedipe was successfully perf­orm­ed in Paris, running for 45 nights estab­lish­ing Vol­taire’s fame as a great playwright at 23 and making money! And securing him a regent’s pension. In 1725 he conflicted with a powerful young nobleman, Chev­al­ier de Roh­an, who insulted Voltaire. Soon after, the writer was called outside while dining with a Duke and was beaten by Rohan’s thugs. Voltaire soon chall­enged Rohan to a duel, but was arrested that day and was thrown into the Bastil­le, again! 

copy of the pastel portrait of Voltaire, 1735

originally painted by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour

meisterdrucke

Af­ter prison Voltaire chose exile in Brit­ain for 3 years. New King George II was not a lit­erature fan, but Queen Caroline loved poetry and welcomed Voltaire into society. Quickly mastering English, he published The Henriade in English, dedicated to the Queen. And befriended a stimul­at­ing group eg Prime Min Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Boling­­broke, poet Alexander Pope & playwr­ight William Congreve. And he read the work of two of the great think­ers of the C17th: natural scient­ist Isaac New­ton and phil­os­oph­er John Locke.

In Britain Voltaire produced 2 works: Essay Upon Epic Poetry and Essay Upon the Civil Wars in France in 1727. He wrote that humans con­troll­ed their own des­t­iny, rejecting the idea that Divine Inter­vention guided history. After he'd been im­p­ressed by Britain’s free­dom of speech & religious tol­erance, Voltaire returned home in 1729 and saw the UK’s constitut­ional mon­archy as the more progressive. It was easy pub­lish­ing Lett­ers Concerning the Eng­lish Nation in Eng­lish (1733), but pub­lishing the Letters in French was not. The publ­isher was sent to prison and the book was burned publicly.

Voltaire met brilliant mathem­at­ician-scientist Emilie de Breteuil marquise du Châtelet in 1733 and at her invitation the wr­iter moved to Cirey in E France. There they began their 16-year affair. They were a perfect Enlighten­ment couple working together, stud­ying natural sciences, performing their own lab ex­periments, studying history and philosophy. They collected and studied 21,000+ books. Mme du Châtelet’s translation of Newton’s Principia and Volt­aire’s Elements of Newton’s Philosophy were key to in­tro­ducing the new natural philosophy ideas to the Continent
                                                       

Mahomet the Prophet, a five-act tragedy

by Voltaire, 1736.

Wiki

In 1740-9 Voltaire moved between Brussels, Cirey and Paris. His most successful play in the 1740s was Mahomet the Prophet, playing in Lille and then Paris. This study of religious fanaticism por­trayed Mohammed as a power-hungry intrig­ue but Cath­olic clergy saw it as a veiled attack on Christian fanat­ic­ism and burn­ed the book. So Vol­taire asked the Pope for his consent to dedicate Mohammed to him. By then many Frenchmen hailed Voltaire as the greatest writer; he was placed in Germany’s Hall of Fame and was elected a mem­ber of Britain’s Royal Society. But the Ac­ad­émie Fran­çaise rejec­t­ed him again. Only in 1746, with the King and the Pope behind him, was Voltaire fin­al­ly admitted.

Château de Voltaire à Ferney

Voltaire rebuilt the castle entirely from 1758.

Tiqets

Earlier Voltaire received a letter from Frederick Prince of Prussia, starting a long correspondence. In Sept 1749 Madame du Châtelet died in childbirth, devastating Voltaire. So eventually he accepted the invitation of the then-King Frederick to move. The move failed and after 2 years Voltaire was granted leave, leaving Potsdam 1753. Voltaire bought a stylish country house near Geneva in 1754. Having some weal­th then, he built a priv­ate thea­tre but Geneva had a law forbidding theatrical perf­orm­ances. In late 1758 he bought an extensive property on Lake Geneva at Ferney. There he spent his last 20 years, entertaining so­ciety and producing fine works.

The irr­ev­erent Cand­ide (1759) was a witty romance, but also a clear attack on France’s religious philosoph­y. 5 years after Candide, Voltaire published his greatest philosophical writings, Philosophical Dictionary in 1764 where the ideal religion taught morality & rej­ected dogma. Naturally his book was condemned in Paris, Amsterdam and Geneva!!

Candide

published in 1759

In 1778 after 20 years in Ferney, Voltaire longed to return to Paris. He had completed his last work, the tragedy Irene, its first per­formance being at Paris’ National Theatre. His niece-lover Madame Denis was also very keen to return home so they set out, arriving to a hero’s wel­come. The 83 year old man prepared for the opening of Irene, but became seriously ill and soon died. The Church refused to give Voltaire a Christian burial, so his body was taken secretly to an abbey in Champagne and buried.

Voltaire was the perfect Enlightenment man, spending much of his adult career in prison or exile. Alas Vol­taire's France was one in which the monarchy, nobility & clergy dominated. It was an era of book burning and imprison­ment by the ruling class. Ironically the time the French Re­volution began 11 years after Vol­taire died, ideas of universal humanity were popular and only then could Voltaire’s liter­at­ure and campaigning against injustice be truly valued.

Remember hopscotch from 1950s & 1960s?

Although I assumed my post-WW2 generation invented hopscotch, that seems highly unlikely. The earliest confirmed mention of the game actually comes from Britain in C17th; in fact a manuscript book of games from 1635-72 by Francis Willughby and an entry in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1677 contain the earliest references.

Hopscotch players on side of road

The grid was added in chalk

Te Ara New Zealand

Children all over the world play Hopscotch in much the same way, but the patterns they draw can be very different. Children in Scotland have a game where the pattern is like bananas lying next to each other. In Japan there is a pattern that looks like an old telephone with a rotary dial, and in France there is Escargot, a pattern that looks like a snail. In Vietnam there is a game called Build A House, which has floods, fires and the Mekong River, and in China there is a game with an animal’s head at the top of the pattern. There are clearly many different versions of the game.

In Australian schoolyards, the most common pattern was Aeroplane Hoppy with 8 squares. It was usually painted on the ground although some schools had/have chalk for children to use at lunch time, so they can draw their own patterns. This means that Hopscotch can be changing.

As I discovered in my Melbourne primary school, the boys had a full size football field while the girls were given a smaller area of paved ground for games. So small that only a small number of friends could play girls’ games. To play hoppy as we called it, the squares were marked out in chalk and therefore used primarily in summer (to avoid the winter rain). It was shaped as a grid of lined-up squares dispersed with blocks of 2 lateral squares, ending in a home base shaped as a semicircle. The squares are then numbered in the sequence in which they are to be hopped.

A game of hopscotch

Dept of Education, Sth Australia

Each player tossed a small flat marker called a taw in post-WW2 Melbourne (eg coin, large button, horizontal stone) into a numbered square, hopping through the court without stepping on lines or the marker, and picking it up on the way back. The player stopped in the square before the marker, reached down to retrieve the marker and continued the course as stated. This had to be without touching a line or stepping into a square with another player's marker.

I know that hopscotch is said to still be popular but I haven’t seen it played for decades. Then this week outside my coffee shop, I saw the chalk grid laid out on the concrete and some young girls playing as if 1958 was still here ! There have been different versions of this game recorded over the years and in different countries, but hopscotch was and still is an effective form of play that teaches children important skills: hand-eye coordination; balance; body control; social development; arithmetic skills; and leadership. Played in most outdoor places it encouraged physical activity because there were no competing activities: no tv, no mobile phones and no computer games back then. So are these skills still crucial in the modern world because they limit screen time?

Playing jacks, 1954

Facebook

Hula hoops, 

Coleham Primary

skippy on London streets in the 50s

Facebook

There were other memorable games in the 1950s and 60s eg yo-yos, jacks, hula hoops, Oranges and Lemons and Cat’s Cradle string game and skippy. But some of these games were played by children sitting on their bottoms and didn't encourage any physical activity. And there were some games that required the children to buy and bring their own games pieces to school. Unlike hopscotch which only required the teacher to lend a piece of chalk.

If you played hopscotch at school in the 1950s and 1960s, I would be delighted to hear from you. If you played hopscotch since then, let me know if your game differed from how I described it.

Gertrude Bell's great Middle Eastern legacy

The female scholar behind Iraq's independence

The Librarians

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was the grand­daughter of British nobility and the daughter of an monied industrialist. Instead of seeking a life of cocktail part­ies, her brain actually required a high-class education. In 1884 Bell went to Queen’s College and Oxford Univ­ers­ity, gaining 1st Class Honours in Modern History. She spent the next 15 years in cons­tant travel including Persia, Egypt and Algiers.

A “cause” arrived in 1899 when she met arch­aeol­ogist David Hogar­th and his world of Middle East ant­iquity. Already fluent in Persian, Fr­en­ch and German, Bell also studied Arabic and Hebrew, and in 1900 she completed the first of her desert travels through Pal­est­ine, Leb­an­on and Syria. She then began learning desert rul­es and the soc­ial prac­t­­ices of nomadic Bed­ouin, building val­uable friendships among sheiks, warr­iors and Mesopot­amian merchants. From 1900-12 her focus was on developing her skills as an arch­aeol­ogist, map-maker and ethnographer in a tough part of the world. Her 1907 trips with Sir William Ramsay in Anatolia became the basis for her book, The Thousand and One Churches (1909). She was becoming a specialist in Byzantine religious architecture, writ­ing mono­gr­aphs as she went.

1911 was when met the young archaeologist T.E Lawrence (1888–1935) aka Lawrence of Arabia. They shared a passion for Arab­ic cul­ture and antiquit­ies, becoming powerful forces in the next dec­ade prom­oting Arabic independence from the Otto­mans and from Eur­ope.

After a long trip along the Euph­rates River, Bell discovered and surveyed an C8th Abbas­id fortress at Ukhaidir. She wrote the account in her 1909/10 journal, and an arch­itectural mono­gr­aph, The Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir (1913).

In 1913 Bell travelled by camel through modern Saudi Arabia and Iraq, hoping to reach the famed White City of Hay­yil. She negotiat­ed her way thr­ough cont­ested territories, critical water short­ages, hostile tribes and the shift­ing sands. Then she went home with maps and knowledge of Arabia that were invaluable as Europe faced WW1.

With Turkey and Germany allied in WW1, the Middle East suddenly be­came an area of military importance remote from British intell­igen­ce. Who were the relevant powers there? Who did they support? So in 1915 Ger­trude Bell trav­el­led to Cairo, to work with Brit­ish Intell­ig­­­en­ce, com­pile inform­ation and form a strategy for org­anising Arab­ic res­is­tance to Turk­ish rule. However she did not participate in the Sykes-Picot Agree­ment in 1916 that eventually divided Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

                                     

Bell, Cox and Ibn Saud in Mesopotamia in 1916.

Feisal's two staunchest supporters re holding the new Mandate of Iraq together
Imperial War Museum

After the war, the Ottoman Empire was being dismantled and Bell sought to help the Arabs. She was asked to make her recommendations for Mesopotamia, as her 1920 report “Self-Determination in Mesopot­amia” made very clear. Bell was in the middle of the region’s politics, acting as mediator between the local Sunni, Shiite and Kurd leaders, the British government, and Winston Churchill.

Self-Determination in Mesopotamia was the paper that earned her a seat at the Paris Peace Conf­er­ences (1919-20), to honour the Al­l­ied promise of Arabic independence. She opp­osed French del­egates who were cr­eating their mandate in Syria. And she opposed the Brit­ish delegates who were creating a British mandate in Iraq and Palestine.
                                 

participants of the 1921 Cairo Conference. 
L to R: Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell and TE Lawrence.

Under the Sphinx of Giza.

Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies, called the 1921 Cairo Conference. While other British offic­ials argued for Iraq’s continued sub­servience to Brit­ain, Bell arg­ued hard for their indep­end­­­ence, and for the pro­m­ot­ion of a larg­er Arabic state from France. For a newly un­ified Iraqi state, Bell and Lawrence highly recommended Faisal bin Hussein, former command­er of the Arab forces that helped the Brit­ish in the war. And through his charis­matic leadership, a nation was forged! Bell became one of King Faisal’s most trusted advisors, beloved in Baghdad.

Yet Bell and her boss British high commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, laid down state policies in Iraq that were taken up by Sadd­am’s Arab Ba’ath socialist party. Iraq retained the Kurdish mount­ains as a buffer against Turkey and Russia, and promoted Sunni Mus­lims over the Shia majority. They expelled the Shia clergy to Iran, and depl­oyed air power as a form of political control. Why did the U.K care? Iraq enjoyed valuable oil resources AND acted as a buffer zone in the region to protect against Turkey, Iran and Syria.

Bell believed passionately in Arab independence and persuaded Lon­d­on that Iraq had enough able men at least to provide an administ­r­at­ive façade; and she contr­ib­uted importantly to the construction of the Iraqi state in 1921. But she had two difficulties. Firstly she always ov­er­estimated the popularity of Cox and herself. And secondly she underest­im­ated the force of religion in Iraqi affairs.

Bell and Sir Herbert Samuel, British High Commissioner in Palestine,
meets Jordanian pilot 1921. Highbrow.

Bell was never loved in London. And when Cox left Bag­h­dad in 1923, she lost her bureaucratic protector. Yet Bell still wanted help in preserving Baghdad’s heritage in a new Archaeological Museum and she was named as the Director of Antiquities by King Faisal. Later she helped draw up the borders of the new nation of Iraq.

She died in 1926 in Baghdad at 57, from ?lung can­cer. The citizens and British officials lined the streets to pay respect to this weal­thy British scholar who’d dedicated her life to Arab culture; the King of Iraq stood in a place of honour.

Bell’s greatest legacy was indeed the recovery and preservat­ion of an­cient artefacts and archaeological sites all over the Mid­dle East, as at the Gert­rude Bell Archive at Newcastle Uni. But in 1921, Churchill agreed that Mesopotamia should be a self-ruling state, and Bell was a central figure at the Cairo Conference. Her influence was essential to the establishment of modern-day Iraq.

Reducing injections for US children :(

I’ve cited Kat Lay’s “What effect will Donald Trump’s childhood vaccine recommendations have in the US and beyond?” Since appointed in 2025, Secretary Health & Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr sought to loosen vaccine regulations. Kennedy is a leading vaccination sceptic who has for years increa-sed dishonesty about vaccines. A study found he was the top super-spreader of Covid-19 vaccine deception on Twitter/X in 2021. He tried to reshape US vaccination schedules but his attempts were blocked by federal judges. So reporters were told that judges’ rulings were not the same as an Executive Order. In a CNN interview, Kennedy insisted he’d never questioned the MMR vaccine’s efficacy. The proposed changes were to give parents choice, not to limit access to vaccines.

Pres Trump signs order to reduce childhood vaccines & reduce autism 

and Sec of Health Kennedy is the witness

Aug 2026, WSJ

A new Executive Order from US Pres Donald Trump wants wide changes to childhood vaccine recom-mendations. His plans would result in fewer vaccines being recommended overall; the combined measles, mumps and rubella/MMR vaccine being replaced with 3 separate vaccines, and all childhood immunisations being administered during separate medical visits widely spread out. Is there any science behind the Order? And what are the likely implications?

The main outcome could be parental uncertainty, American Academy Paediatrics said, with conflicting messages delaying vaccinations. Noting measles cases are already at a 35-year high in US, the concern was that with any extra delay, more children could be harmed with deadly vaccine-preventable diseases. Clearly an executive order has no legal effect on the public, but it’s likely to pressure US states to change vaccination requirements before children can attend schools. And it prepares for legal challenges against states that implemented their own vaccine recommendations.

The Order won’t be copied in other countries, said Prof  of Global Health & Development, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. No country wants to deal with the costly outbreak responses that occur, but the short-term risk is that non-USA parents get the false impression that the vaccines offered aren't safe. The long-term risk is that poor information will lead to lower vaccination rates in the nation, and the world will see a resurgence of previously prevented diseases. Finally non-vaccinated U.S children might visit other countries and spread diseases abroad.

Why did Trump do this? He’d often claimed that vaccinations causes autism and made the same link when signing this Order. After the Order, World Health Organisation-WHO reiterated the science-based process used to set child immunisation schedules in many nations. WHO told a press conference that vaccine schedules must be made by science experts, free of political control.

Do MMR vaccines cause autism? Prof Child Public Health at Uni College London found no link in any scientific studies; in fact the vaccine has saved millions of lives. False claims linking the MMR vaccine and autism were made by British Dr Andrew Wakefield in 1998 in Lancet Medical Journal. His paper was retracted and Wakefield was struck off the UK’s medical register. But he’s been lauded by anti-vaxxers and he attended Trump’s 1st inauguration.

Is there any science supporting the breaking up of MMR vaccines into separate injections? The 3 vaccines have never been administered as separate doses to young children in U.S policy, so that policy’s safety statements are untrue; just by delaying protection it could be a serious step backwards for protecting children’s health. Giving them separately.. leads to risking children’s health.

Prof Paediatrics at Bristol Uni asked would these proposals affect vaccination rates? Studies of communities with low vaccination rates typically find that, while hesitancy can be an issue, accessibility also plays a role eg getting children to many health appointments. Spacing vaccines across separate visits increases the likelihood of delayed or missed doses, leaving children susceptible for longer.

ACRC trials poster

Protect yourself and your family from measles with vaccinations

Instagram

Trump signed an Executive Order to limit childhood MMR vaccines, claiming a link between vaccines and autism. Decades ago children got only a small fraction of the vaccines required today, he said. In those times, people were much healthier and of course the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. The President has long cast doubt on the safety of MMR vaccines, even though studies found no connection between MMR vaccines and autism.

Medical experts criticised Trump’s Order, saying it could reduce vaccination rates & expose children to disease. The Order recommends that the number of childhood vaccines drop to 11 from today's 18, given by American Academy of Paediatrics: measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, chicken pox etc. Trump's Order isn't as a mandate, since injections required for school attendance are set by the states, not by the federal government.

Trump stated the MMR vaccine could be quite lethal if given at once, comparing it to pouring a bottle of soda into a child's body. FDA noted a single dose of MMR is 0.5ml so when a reporter asked for evidence of the lethal claim, Trump said What I've heard is that there are some people that say it is that way. We're reducing the vaccines, and they’ll be done in a series of visits to the doctor.

Paediatrician prepares to administer a measles vaccination

during Washington's outbreak

Mother Jones

Centres for Disease Control and Prevention/CDC reported the MMR vaccine carries little risk of febrile seizures for todd-lers; those with health issues eg severe allergies should consult doctors beforehand. Getting the vaccine has proven much safer than getting measles/mumps/rubella. CDC found no published scientific evidence that shows any benefit in separating the mixed MMR vaccine into 3 individual shots. Experts say that allowing time between injections makes children more likely to contract diseases then or more likely to miss later appointments. (I’ve the best memory in this nation yet embarrassingly I forgot to return for my 6th Covid injection!!). Nashville’s Vanderbilt Uni School of Medicine reported the more future bookings made, the harder for doctors to track, plus it would add to expenses.

Trump officials have said the order means U.S children would receive fewer than the number recommended by the existing vaccine schedule. Pres of American Academy of Paediatrics Dr Racine said Trump's Order was not based on quality science. Delaying injections is risky; measles will spread once children go back to school.

A Danish 2002 MMR Study, in New England Journal Medicine, tracked 537,303 children born 1991-8. Another nationwide cohort study evaluated 657,461 children born 1999-2010, carefully looking at children with high-risk factors. The 2025 study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, analysed data from 1.2 million+ children born 1997–2018. The three Danish studies found no association, reaffirming that the MMR vaccine does not increase autism risk.

It's not my business what other nations do, but I have 3 first cousins in US & would be devastated if their babies died.

My favourite books 2006 Vs now

I can remember nearly every novel set by English teachers in high school (1960-65) . But when I recently found a 2006 newspaper article discussing my reading preferences, I couldn't remember the era when my children still lived at home. This newspaper article covered the books I most loved in the decades from 1975-2005.

  

Book column

Australian Jewish News

Melbourne March 2006

 

The Women's Room is the first novel

by American author Marilyn French,

published in 1977.

These days I read big, beautifully written and glossy books that I leave on the family room table to impress family and friends. And because they are too heavy and expensive to carry around. My three best current examples are: Palazzi of Rome, by Cresti and Rendina, published by Konemann, 1998; Patrons and Painters, Art and Society in Baroque Italy by Haskell, published by Yale UP 1980 and The Library, a World History, by Campbell and Pryce, Chicago UP, 2013. 

If any reader is interested in the book I would like for my next birthday, I suggest Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes by Le Corbusier, Mardges Bacon, Prof Barry Bergdoll (contribs) et al, Museum of Modern Art, 2013. Many thanks.

Captain Eric Ravilious, WW2 art

London-born Eric Ravilious (1903-42) spent his early years in Eastbourne E. Sussex and won a scholarship to attend the Eastbourne School of Art in 1919. Later he enrolled at Royal College of Art London where he studied under Paul Nash, a War Artist in WW1. Later Ravilious worked as a painter, book illustrator and Wedgwood pottery designer.

With war starting in 1939, he joined the Royal Observer Corps based in Castle Hedingham Essex. Ravilious was one of the first official War Artists to be appointed by War Artists Advisory Committee-WAAC in Dec 1939, and in 1940 as a Captain. Established by the Ministry of Information, WAAC was a government body commissioning artists to record WW2 events. From 1940-2, Ravilious produced dramatic water colours & drawings of ships, aircraft and coastal defences, 50 of them now in the Imperial War Museums/IWM. 

A warship in dock, 1940

In Feb 1940, Ravilious was posted to Chatham Dockyard Kent to document the naval barracks’ factories & buildings. In A Warship in Dock 1940, Ravilious showed the bow of a destroyer in a flooded dry dock, tied down with many ropes. A man on deck holds one of the ropes while three other men board the ship via a gang-way on the port side. Shown from ground level, the warship looks menacing with angular marine camouflage and intimidating colossal scale. In the background there were many structures eg a ship crane and a factory with a smoking chimney. Despite the scene’s calming water in the flooded dock and vivid blue of the sky overhead, they were preparing for a country at war.

After Germany invaded Norway in Ap 1940, seizing Oslo and the main ports, the Allied forces tried to counter-attack on land but were under-equipped and out-numbered. In May troop evacuation from the Narvik port, Operation Alphabet, was authorised. Aircraft carriers HMS Glorious and HMS Ark Royal left Scapa Flow in Scotland in late May to assist with the withdrawal, escorted by 5 destroyers.

Ravilious was aboard HMS Highlander where the carrier’s dazzling camouflage was mimicked in the sea under the Arctic light. RAF Hurricanes from 2 squadrons flew around, riskily preparing to land on the deck of HMS Glorious, evacuated from the Norwegian Air Station. Next day HMS Glorious returned to Scapa Flow but was attacked by German battleships and sunk. 1,500+ souls tragically died.

Coastal Defences, 1940

The artist travelled to E.Newhaven Sussex in late 1940, to paint coastal defences. The port was targeted in Operation Sea Lion, a planned invasion of Britain by German forces, and needed heavy fortific-ation. In this scene, he depicted the semi-circular curve of the Coastline Defences 1940 in dark greens and blues, colours repeated in the sea and sky. In contrast, the searchlight was stark white, cutting through the night sky looking for enemy aircraft. See a row of boats speeding out to sea at the centre of the scene, leaving a stream of white as they moved in the water. The constant threat to Newhaven from above and below was clear.

He showed the moment a 9.2” naval gun fired from Dover's front port, a portrayal of spectacle and awe. A group of 5 artillerymen were shown as ghost-like figures, compared to the luscious greens of the front landscape. Ravilious spent mid 1941 in Dover before moving to Dundee Scotland.

Ravilious arrived at the Royal Naval Air Station/RNAS in Dundee in autumn 1941 and was quickly interested in the Supermarine Walrus seaplane. In this scene, 3 Walrus aircraft were floating on the river outside the station’s sick bay. The artist showed the interior which was not overly comfortable; just for convalescence. But the blue and white bedding with anchor motif conveyed a sense of homeliness in this stark environment. During his time at the RNAS, the pilots allowed Ravilious to fly in the air craft. After he successfully transferred from the Admiralty to the RAF.

De-Icing Aircraft, 1942

In March 1942 Ravilious was based at RAF Clifton airfield in York. He enjoyed flying over the city, observing York Minster from above and spotting abbeys and ruins. In De-Icing Aircraft 1942, Ravilious showed the airfield under endless snow. Men were scraping the ice layers from the wing of a de Havilland Dragon Rapide, a twin-engine biplane used for training purposes. Each engine had a fitted cover, protecting against harsh temperatures. And see another plane’s tail also covered in ice & snow, waiting to be fixed by the crew.

5 Spitfires at Sawbridgeworth, 1942.

In Mar 1942, Eric Ravilious’ wife and fellow artist Tirzah Garwood developed serious health problems, returning towards home. He went to RAF Sawbridgeworth Airfield Herts which was relatively close to their family home. Despite his terrible living conditions, Ravilious enjoyed painting everyday life on the airfield in early 1942, including aircraft in flight, never using oil paints in the war. Ravilious depicted Five Spitfires at Sawbridgeworth, 1942 at the base, but Spitfires were not at the site then.

Operation Room, 1942

Operations Room 1942 was a key war painting, acquired by IWM decades later. The watercolour depicted the interior of the airfield’s mobile operations room. It is decorated with light yellows and blue-greens, synonymous with functional WW2 buildings. Relaxing colour palettes were selected to be easy for workers inside for long periods. Large windows enabled a panoramic view of the airfield and a sector clock hung on the wall helped track air craft movements. There was no human in The Operations Room but human activity was detected; pinned notices under the clock, writing pen and ink on one table, and a blue reference folder on the other. Interestingly while at Sawbridgeworth, Ravilious wrote to his wife Tirzah in May 1942 stating “the weather gets finer all the time but I’m bored of pictures of planes on the ground and want to go flying.”

Ravilious soon flew to Reykjavik, driving to the RAF Kaldadarnes Airfield in Sept. From there he & 4 airmen flew on a rescue mission in a Lockheed Hudson and were lost off the Icelandic coast. Because his body wasn’t recovered, he had no grave; instead he was honoured at Chatham Navel Memorial Kent (above). Ravilious was one of three War Artists who died when his plane crashed, at 39. 

Thank you to the Imperial War Museum for the artworks and to the BBC for history.

UK's C19th model village: Saltaire

Titus Salt (1803-76) was born near Leeds, educated in Wakefield and served an apprenticeship with a wool-stapler in Wakefield. He moved to Bradford in 1821 with his parents & siblings at 18. In his years in Bradford he worked with William Rouse & Son, learning textile manufacture.

Titus’s father, Daniel, founded a Bradford business as a wool-stapler. In 1824, Titus joined his dad’s business, Daniel Salt and Son, expanding with a spinning business in Thornton Rd in 1834. By then Bradford was a magnet for people seeking work or a business; the city experienced a 78% population growth in 30 years due to the raw-wool-cloth industry. Alas Bradford mills flooded untreated industrial waste. 

Mill, Tripadvisor

In 1835 Titus Salt established his own business. He’d already used Eastern European wool and had secretly experimented with alpaca wool. By 1837 he found that by using alpaca as the weft, and cotton as the warp, he could produce fairly priced, durable lustrous cloth. He was the first maker of the new cloth & greatly expanded his Bradford business.

But to escape the polluted, crowded Bradford slums for greener pastures, he decided to relocate his business and his employees. Local architects Henry Lockwood & Richard Mawson planned a new community where Salt’s work force would be healthier, happier and productive. Work began in 1851 and continued for decades. Salt planned for a wide range of public buildings and amenities, so work soon started on Saltaire’s industrial community. In Aug 1854 Lockwood & Mawson hired contractors in the local press to erect a large dining hall opposite the mill with offices & kitchen. The Dining Hall fed the mill’s workforce, who lived outside.

The vast efficient textile factory was the first building done. Moved by Bradford workers’ poor lives and his religion, Salt created an industrial town in rural surroundings, named from Salt and from the River Aire in the village.

Titus purchased land near Shipley and the Mill opened with fanfare Sept 1853, Salt’s 50th birthday. The mill took in raw materials, to scour, wash, comb, draw, spin and weave, design and finish them into high quality cloth. Its 3,000 workers could produce 30,000 yards of cloth daily.

Workers' cottages, Wiki

 
Then they designed the entire village in a classical style a la Italian Renaissance. The Salts Mill and the decent houses were built from 1851-71 to allow workers to live decently, locating a large textile mill near Leeds-Liverpool Canal & railway; thus his raw materials and finished goods could be easily moved. Salt planned his workers’ village with public buildings that looked impressive and well designed for purpose. Lockwood & Mawson planned a new community where Salt’s workforce would be healthier, happier & productive. Work began 1851, until 1876. A vast and modern textile factory, the Mill, was ready first - Lockwood & Mawson designed it all. The finest work was Congregational Church, set in a spacious landscaped garden. The new church was opened in Ap 1859, a precious Victorian gem. It boasts important architectural and historical features; now the United Reformed Church is set in landscaped gardens.

Congregational Church, and later United Reformed Church 

Real Yorkshire Blog

In 1886 Titus Salt Jr proposed an Arts Exhibition that could raise funds for a new building for Art-Science education & to honour dad. The Exhibition Building was completed in 1887. It housed 14 large class rooms, central hall and gallery:  Institute of Technology and now a site for Shipley College.

The Mausoleum built onto the church has Titus' remains. Although a committed Congregationalist, Titus was not restrictive about religious worship in his town. He didn't compel his workforce to attend a church. In Oct 1866, laying a stone for a new Wesleyan Chapel was celebrated. 

Factory School, opened 1868

now Shipley College Salts Building, x.com

The lofty hall gave space for the Factory School, church services, Sunday school, reading room & library. There was space for 500+ to attend social events, concerts, lectures on current issues & celebrations. The Factory Schools opened in 1868 on Victoria Rd, for 750 people. The classrooms had central heating, gas lighting and fitted cupboards.

Playgrounds behind the schools included covered areas for bad weather. Titus and his son Titus Jr were modern thinkers in establishing quality education, but the new school’s capacity was soon insufficient to meet children's needs. Space was made available for art and science education in the Saltaire Club and Institute opposite the schools.

Victoria Hall, Alarmy

Salt Schools on Victoria Rd, Institute and Victoria Hall were built by John Barry, opening 1871. The facilities were huge, containing a lecture hall seating 800, classrooms, 2 art rooms, chess rooms, laboratory, gym, library of 8,500 books, reading room and concert venue; their task was to provide a social club and an educational institute to supply the advantages of a public house without its evils. Its ornamental belltower is seen throughout the village. Titus was keen to see adults self-improving. Building the Factory Schools was followed by a grand project opposite the new school.

Salt Hospital, with hospital marker under top window

later converted to flats

2 storeyed Salt Hospital in Victoria Rd had an Infirmary and Dispensary, 6 beds and a surgery. As demand for its services grew, it began to provide treatment for the local community plus for mill workers, closing in 1979 to become flats.

The residential area covered 25+ acres, eventually consisting of 21 streets, 2 roads, 2 terraces & 4 places. 850 quality houses of varying sizes (2-7 bedrooms) were built in William Henry St, house occupancy dependant on ability to pay the graded rents. The houses ranged widely, all superior to working-class houses in nearby Bradford & Shipley. They had a proper drainage system; water & gas were supplied to each house, and each had a back yard and a private toilet. The streets were open-ended to let in sun and air. The shops included grocers, chemist, post office, butchers, hardware shops and retail facilities. Once complete, the village comprised 800+ high quality homes, two churches, school, park, adult education institute, hospital, baths, washhouse and 45 almshouses for the aged or infirmed, fronted by a peaceful trees and plants. Almhouse residents were selected by Salt in his lifetime and later by a board of trustees: these tenants lived rent free and received a weekly pension. 

Salt later improved conditions eg impressive Victoria Rd School site 1869. Rich outer architecture honoured educ-ation and the classes suited the 750 pupils. This big building was soon outgrown by Saltaire’s booming population. The Salt family lobbied for a new school and by 1878 it had been built. Not as charming, but big enough to cope with demand. This school is now part of Shipley College, Victoria Rd. Its Italianate richly carved architecture has columned loggias, round-topped windows, overhanging eaves, turret & school bell. The centre displays Salt’s coat of arms in a roundel surrounded by laurel leaves, scrolls and relief carvings. The school was for workers’ children, parks, boats and games. Leisure activities included a boys’ drum-&-fife band and brass band for village men. Titus Jr & wife strongly wanted education for the under-5s, leading to a separate pre-school.

With quality housing, employment, recreation, educational facilities and social services, the model town became an example of progressive C19th urban planning. The building was nearly done in 1871 when the census showed Saltaire had 755 houses and 45 alms houses, for 4,389 people.

Titus died in 1876 and was interred in the mausoleum beside the Congregational church. When his son Titus Salt Jr died in 1887, Saltaire was taken over by a partnership including Sir James Roberts from Haworth. Roberts had worked in wool mills since he was 11, had sizable business interests in Russia. Roberts came to own Saltaire, but chose to invest his money heavily in Russia, losing much money in the Russian Revolution. He endowed a chair of Russian at Leeds Uni and bought the Brontës' Haworth Parsonage for the nation. Roberts died in 1935 and was buried at Fairlight Sussex.

Saltaire Park, later Roberts Park

National Lottery Heritage Fund

Saltaire Park across the River Aire opened in C19th, designed and laid out by William Gay. The name changed in 1920 to Roberts Park when the second owner, Sir James Roberts, gifted the park to the local Council to honour his late son. The park, a key element of the model village, offered many leisure activities for the worker eg archery, croquet, cricket and pavilions. The northern portion has windy paths, landscaped gardens, pavilions, East Park lodge, promenade with shelters and Salt’s statue. And the original bandstand.

Saltaire retained ownership of the Mill until it was sold to Bradford Property Trust, 1933. The new owners arranged with Shipley Urban District Council for improvements eg new gas services, mains electricity, sewerage & sanitary services. It included a scheme to eliminate the waste-water toilets and the old type of coal store, and to erect new facilities, requiring the removal of 43 houses to open the village. In 2014 planning officers replaced front doors for historic ones.

Saltaire was selected for the World Heritage List in Dec 2001 and Europe’s Route of Industrial Heritage website as a fine example of a C19th model town demonstrating the social and economic impact of the textile industry. And it was recognised for its global influence on town planning. The model village’s buildings are individually listed with UNESCO, the highest honour going to Congregational church. UNESCO protects natural and cultural sites of global importance.

Salts Mill closed Feb 1986; Jonathan Silver bought it in 1987 to convert into a multi-functional site with an art gallery, cafes & technology company HQs. The art gallery had large rooms for Bradford-born artist David Hockney: paintings, drawings, photos, stagesets. Then book shops, art supplies, jewellery, sportswear, antiques, bicycles and housewares.

The Saltaire Collection in Shipley College has special books, documents, photos & historical objects. Note the research into residents/workers, the Salt & James Roberts families who built and sustained Salts Mill; photos & documents related to working in the mill and living in the village; legal and business documents; personal memoirs; maps; and crockery for Royal visits. The History Club has great lectures.

Saltaire, on the map of England

Credit: Salt & Light

In 2003 Saltaire Festival celebrated the city’s 150th anniversary, now held in Sept; Saltaire Arts Trail is a visual arts festival held in May. Credit to City of Bradford.

Triangle Shirt Fact­ory NY fire tragedy 1911.

Shirtwaist designs, The Modern Priscilla Needlework Magazine, 1906

5 Minute History

Russians Max Blanck and Isaac Harris immigrated to the U.S in the early 1890s and, like hundreds of thousands of other impoverish­ed Jew­ish im­migrants, they began working in the garment industry in sweat­shops. Har­ris became familiar with popular fashion designs while Blanck became a garment contractor. They made a partner­ship, founding the Triangle Waist Co in 1900. In time, The Triangle Shirt­waist Fact­ory was located in the top 3 floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan. They hired 500 work­ers, mostly female Jewish and Italian immigrants, half of them teens. It was a true sweat­shop; the immigrants worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines for 12 hours a day. These young women worked 6-7 days a week for tiny wages and little ventilation. The male owners gave male workers the higher-paid jobs, ass­uming women were less skilled.

In 1909, the USA was advancing towards greater mass production and in­creasingly dangerous working conditions. That year the Uprising of 20,000 Strike was organised mainly by Yiddish-speaking garment workers female due to their horrid conditions, long hours and low wages. Their primary motive was to get attention paid to the mist­r­eat­­ment of imm­igrant work­ers. While there were short term agreements to meet their dem­ands, the strike ultimately failed. How­ever it DID succeed some­what in exposing poor working conditions. Progressives and unionists cal­l­ed for different reforms, but Tammany Hall opposed them; the polit­ical machine stalled any legislation that might have benefitted the workers.

Fire danger in factories was common, but corruption in both the industry and city government generally ensured that few useful precautions were taken. The Triangle factory was burned in 1907 and in 1910, the owners appar­ently torching their own work­places before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not unknown practice in the early C20th. While this did not cause the 1911 fire, it contr­ibuted to the tragedy, as Blanck & Harris refused to install sprinkler systems.

Women workers pre-fire

Barbara's Bookstore

 

In 1911 Triangle Shirt­waist Fact­ory had 4 elevators accessing the fact­ory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to go along a narrow corridor to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but they were locked from the outside to prevent the workers steal­ing.

The fire escape was so narrow, it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even if it had not burned down.

In Mar 1911, there were 600 workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fact­ory when a fire began in a material bin. The manager tried using the fire hose to extin­guish it, but the hose was rotted and its valve rust­ed shut. The fire spread and panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it only held 12 people and the operator could only make four trips before it stopped in flames. Young women bec­ame trapped by bulky equipment as flames enveloped the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building. As people struggled to escape, sev­eral fell into the flames, their bodies piling by blocked exits. In a desper­ate at­tempt to escape, the girls still waiting for the elev­ator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells found the locked door at the bottom of the stairs, and were burned alive.

Fire­fighters arrived & saw their lad­ders reached only 7 floors high but the fire was on the 8th floor. So the girls who did not make it to the stairwells or elevator were trapped by the fire inside the fact­ory; they began jumping from the wind­ows to es­cape and died on the conc­rete below. Within 20 mins they found 49 workers burned to death, 36 died in the elevator shaft, 58 died from jumping from the 8th floor and 3 more died in hospital. 146 people were killed altogether.

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union had fought for better working con­dit­ions for all sweatshop workers. The union didn’t gain real attention until after the Triangle Waist Co owners were indicted for first degree manslaughter, but were found to be not guilty by the grand jury. To settle lawsuits against them, the owners DID pay $75 in compen­sat­ion to each victim’s family, a frac­t­ion of the $400 per death that they were paid by their insurer.

Nonetheless the tragedy led to the growth of a series of laws and regu­l­ations that better protected work-ers’ safety. The fire unified organised labour and reforming polit­icians like NY Gov Alfred Smith  and Sen Ro­b­­ert Wagner, a le­g­isl­ator in Pres Franklin D Roosevelt’s (1933–45) New Deal  agenda. And the Factory Investig­ating Comm­ission in N.Y was set up af­t­er the fire. The workers union set up a march on 5th Ave NY to prot­est the conditions that had led to the fire, attended by 80,000 people.

The huge death toll for which they were responsible DID finally compel the city to enact reform. The Fire Prevention Law passed, and N.Y Democrats took up the workers’ cause; both were crucial in lim­iting similar disasters in the future.

Desperate women threw themselves down from the 8th storey to death

New York Herald

March 1911

Conclusion 

In this era, progressive movements sought to red­uce the impacts of the deplorable working conditions brought by industr­ial­­is­ation and inequality between rich and poor. The 1911 day became the deadliest indust­rial disas­ter in Manhattan history, when 123 women and 23 men died. Workers, union leaders, progressive reformers and political lead­ers all begged for higher environmental standards fitting for US. The Triangle Factory fire DID help create laws for a better workplace to keep employ­ees safer, but at an unthinkable cost for the immigrant families.