Another Dire Warning - 1881

Give women rights and this is what will happen in a hundred years time! Mark my words! No job will be safe! Men will face unemployment! You will no longer be master in your own house!

Amongst the many treasures at the Museum of German History was a Schnupftuch(handkerchief - don't you just love German - so onomatopoeic - I'll just blow my nase in this here schnupftuch) from England circa 1881. In cotton with printing on one side it is a satiric jab at the fight for women's rights. Unfortunately the lighting was not the best, the overhead glare intrusive but with a fabric that old I will not - nor should not - use my flash, so the images are not the best. I just thought it deserved a showing.

Three of the borders show what will happen in various bastions of male dominance and a fourth the decline of the modern male into base domesticity. The cartoonist - unknown at this point - has created a design much in the manner of the popular Punch magazine where the original of this may well have appeared. It is a dire prophesy of what will happen in a hundred years if those silly women are granted those rights they seem to feel they are entitled to. You will notice that those rights did not seem to rid them of those corsets I talked about last week. And many of the women seem to bear a strong resemblance to Music Hall chorus girls.

The arts and sciences - why even the science of motor car repair - will be taken over by the female of the species. None of the manly pursuits will be safe - not even sports!



Well, well those precision routines from the Music Hall may just stand them in good stead when they have to practice maneuvers. And I'm sure that there is nothing salacious meant in furling a sail! They are only able bodied women doing their job.

The high courts will be the centres of high fashion and Aunt Liza will be running for office along with Mrs Dubblechin. And talk - there will be no stopping those politicians now!


O the shame! Washing clothes, scrubbing the floors, cleaning the windows, tending to the babies, tatting.. no please anything but tatting!

And of course there will be men put out of work and who will end up spending their time loafing and in idleness. What other choice will they have?

And you may have noticed all those women are wearing pants! Pants I tell you! What will be next? Men in dresses and lace berthas?

This can all lead to no good! Heed the warning!

24 novembre - Sant'Andrea Dũng Lạc e suoi 116 compagni