Special issue: Crime Stories

The events of the Pace case occurred within the context of inter-war British crime, media and police history, the study of which has been rapidly expanding in recent years.

I am very pleased to be able to announce that a special issue of Media History edited by myself and Paul Knepper -- "Criminality, Policing and the Press in Inter-war European and Transatlantic Perspectives" -- has now left the printers (which I can confirm since I received my copy today).

The four main articles (access to which will require an institutional subscription, probably through a university) consider a variety of topics:

In "Rogues of the Racecourse: Racing Men and the Press in Interwar Britain", Heather Shore (Leeds Metropolitan) considers the often dramatic (and sometimes violent) world of racecourse gangs and their presentation in both the serious and sensationalist newspaper press. (Among those gangs considered in the article are then then-infamous Sabinis, who have featured recently in fictional form in the hit British television show Peaky Blinders.)

In "Two Suspicious Persons: Norwegian Narratives and Images of a Police Murder Case, 1926-1950", Per Jørgen Ystehede (University of Oslo) takes a cross-media look at a case of police murder that, although legendary within Norway, has yet to be given the attention it deserves outside of that national context. Featuring stills from the 1949 feature film based on the case (which was banned in 1952 and not shown again until 2007), the article locates the Norwegian discourse around the case both within national and broader European trends involving perceptions of crime.

My own article, "The Constables and the 'Garage Girl': The Police, the Press, and the Case of Helene Adele", considers the controversy that arose when two London Metropolitan Police constables arrested a young woman for alleged disorder in the summer of 1928. She accused the constables of attempting to sexually assault her and use false charges to discredit her story, leading to a trial (and the eventual conviction) of the two men. Placed within the context of the period's sensationalist press and a long series of police scandals, the case has much to say about the complexities of "human interest" journalism in the 1920s.

Paul Knepper (University of Sheffield), in "International Criminals: The League of Nations, the Traffic in Women and the Press", explores one of the lesser known aspects of the League's activities in the inter-war period: the campaign against the traffic in women (previously known as "white slavery"). An important stage in the evolution of the modern language of "human trafficking", the League's investigations and reports were not only given widespread coverage but served as an important justification for the international organisation's existence.

In addition, Paul and I present an introductory essay (access to this is FREE) that explores some European and transatlantic contexts of recent crime-and-media historiography, which has--certainly for the inter-war period--become a very active field in recent years.

The special issue had its origins in a session of the 2012 European Social Science History Conference in Glasgow that I organised, though there have been a few twists and turns since then.

It has been a great experience to work with such talented colleagues who are, truly, not only engaged in some fascinating research but also capable of framing their work in clear and vivid language.

Furthermore, it was a very positive experience working with Media History, and we are all quite happy with the result.

Should anyone be interested in a copy of these essays but not have access to them through their institution, please do contact me. (Drafts of the introductory essay and my own article are available via my academia.edu page).

[Cross-posted at Obscene Desserts]

Glimpses of the Pace case: 3 July 1928

An image of the crowds gathered in Gloucester on 3 July 1928 to witness the Pace murder trial.

The photo in context:

I find the advertising slogan 'Where dirt is a crime' to be a nice coincidental juxtaposition.... 

(Daily Herald, 4 July 1928)

"A sort of excessive domestic brawl with not more than a couple of paragraphs in it."

This is something I happened to run across this week while reading through the Spectator in 1926 looking for something else altogether. 

The discussion of what makes for an interesting murder (as opposed to a 'dull murder') -- at least as far as the press was concerned -- seems relevant to the cultural context in which the Pace case would soon cause a sensation.

Though the Pace Case, of course, took place far away from the north side of the Thames.

The Topography of Crime

One day, when I was in prison, the chaplain talked to me on the topography of crime. He said: “It is a strange fact that nearly all the murders in London are committed north of the Thames.” I recalled as many murders as I could, and was astonished to discover that all those I remembered had been committed, as the chaplain asserted, above and not below the Thames. I hastily resolved to remove myself to the Surrey side of the river.

“When a murder is committed south of the Thames,” the chaplain continued, “it is nearly always a dull murder.”

I interrupted him with a literary allusion: “What Pegeen Mike in The Play-Boy of the Western World calls ‘a sneaky kind of murder.’”

“I don’t know the piece, he replied, “but the description is good, though it would be more accurate to say accidental than sneaky! What I mean is, that there is nothing sensational about murders committed south of the Thames. There isn’t an editor in London who would say “Thank you” for the murders we get. They have no news value. I mean, a husband hits his wife harder than he meant to and kills her. That’s the kind of murder that is committed south of the Thames.”

“A sort of excessive domestic brawl,” I suggested, “with not more than a couple of paragraphs in it.”

“Yes!”

“How do you explain the fact?” I asked.

“I don’t,” he replied. “I merely state it. One can account for the fact that nearly all the sensational company-promoting crimes are committed north of the Thames. If a financier starts to go wrong he has to do it in the City, and the City is north of the river. But no one can account for the fact that the more imaginative and sensational murderers commit their crimes above the Thames. Interesting financial criminals are sent first to Wormwood Scrubs from the Old Bailey.” 

“I remember being told by an officer at the Scrubs that three of the most accomplished scoundrels in the world of high finance were in the prison at one time! Three of them at once! Most interesting! I should say that the level of crooked intelligence at Wormwood Scrubs is very high, but south of the river, at Wandsworth, say, the general level of crooked intelligence is low. North of the Thames you get good poisoning cases or crimes of passion—all guaranteed to fill columns of the newspapers for days at a time; but south of the Thames you seldom get any but mean, uninteresting felonies: wife-beating, house-breaking, unpremeditated murder that is really manslaughter or aggravated assault, and any amount of petty larceny. The Bywaters and Mrs. Thompsons, the Seddons, the Crippens, all of them either inhabit the northern suburbs or commit their crimes there.”

I thought the chaplain spoke with some feeling, as if he resented the habit sensational murderers had of working outside, so to speak, his jurisdiction. There he was, incessantly toiling for long hours every day, among prisoners, not one of whom could provide him with an interesting passage for his reminiscences of prison life. His colleagues on the north of the Thames had all the luck.

By St. John Ervine, Spectator, 13 November 1926, p. 851.

The scene outside the courtroom: 3 July 1928

A scene from the opening of the Pace trial, Gloucester, 3 July 1928:

Daily Sketch, 3 July 1928, p. 1

Glimpses of the Pace trial: 2 July 1928

Excerpts from the coverage of the first day of the trial of Beatrice Pace for the alleged murder of her husband Harry from the Daily Mirror.


Inside the courtroom:

As the clerk read the charge to the jury Mrs. Pace began to weep softly, and the Judge gave permission for her to be seated. Thus began the final act in the drama that commenced last January with the death of Harry Pace, who was a Forest of Dean sheep farmer, and the stopping of the funeral by the coroner.

The most poignant incident yesterday was the giving of evidence by Mrs. Pace’s nine-year-old son Leslie. The boy smiled brightly at his mother, who burst into tears. “Do you love your mum?” asked Mr. Birkett, the leading counsel for Mrs. Pace. “Yes,” answered the boy emphatically. “Has she looked after you well?”—“Yes.” 

Outside the courtroom:

When the police attempted to smuggle Mrs. Pace out of a back exit she was surrounded by hundreds of cheering people, and it was with difficulty that her taxi was able to move off.

Later an hotel to which the Pace children had been taken was besieged, and the crowd would not disperse till the children had shown themselves. An attempt to mob the car was foiled by the mounted police. 

(‘Pace Children Besieged in Gloucester Hotel’, Daily Mirror, 3 July 1928, p. 3)

'My Dollies and Me'

One of the stranger newspaper stories published on the Pace case was the one shown below: written 'by' Doris Pace, Beatrice's eleven-year-old daughter, it considers the large number of dolls received by Doris from well-meaning strangers. (Click for a larger view.)

The People, 17 June 1928, p. 4.

The press and the 'tragic widow'

A typical page from the World's Pictorial News (which was among the more sensationalist newspapers of the time) with coverage of the Pace case, featuring pictures of Beatrice, Dorothy, Doris and Jean Pace (and an unnamed lamb):

World's Pictorial News, 13 May 1928, p. 10

Beatrice was, by the way, widely referred to as 'the tragic widow'.

This image comes from the period of the coroner's inquest, before Beatrice was charged with her husband's murder.

Innocent until proven guilty

This is a commentary on some of the legal issues that the Pace case raised that I recently ran across, published eighty-four years ago today:

The comfortable British belief that in this country every accused person is treated as innocent until proved guilty has been upset by the finding in the matter of Mrs. Pace and her late husband. The Coroner’s jury, on the evidence before them, formed the opinion that the man did not lose his life through natural causes or by his own act. But they could not leave the matter there. By the Coroners Act of 1887 they were required to fasten guilt on some particular person or persons.

Thus Mrs. Pace, who has yet to be tried, was by them declared to have administered poison to the dead man. On a strict legal view, such a declaration is no more than a charge, but people in general lump all verdicts together, and until the wording, or the procedure, is changed there must be risks of the jury at the trial being prejudiced by the finding at the inquest. Why should not the Coroner’s jury be content to find simply that death was apparently the result of action by some party other than the deceased?

It is not only with reference to Coroners’ procedure that there is a case for enquiry. The time has come, it seems to us, when there might usefully be an investigation into the whole question of what we may call trials before true trials. The legal mind and the mind of the instructed layman may be depended upon to distinguish between preliminary proceedings, which result only in a charge, and true verdicts; but as regards the general public there is no small amount of confusion and prejudice.

Press publicity brings the results in Magistrates’ courts and Coroners’ inquests before a huge body of readers, and whatever the eventual fate of an accused person there does cling to him or her some of the discredit or criminality imputed by the preliminary finding. The motives with which the existing system was established are not in question, but a thorough investigation of its workings would be beneficial.

(‘Notes of the Week’, Saturday Review, 2 June 1928, p. 686. Some paragraph breaks added.)

Both of these matters--the role of the coroner and the press--became the subject of intense debate around the case and are discussed in depth in the book.

A 'pathetic place in the pageant of the innocent'

One of the things that has made writing about this case so interesting is the way that new aspects of, sources for and references to it kept turning up.

I have to admit, though, that it's a bit frustrating to keep finding new things after the book is finished.

Appropriately enough -- given that today is the eighty-fourth anniversary of Beatrice Pace being charged with her husband Harry's murder -- I ran across a comment on the case from the Hull Daily Mail (which is now available through the British Newspaper Archive) about the case.

The article was titled 'The Year's Crime', which looked back at the major criminal cases of 1928. And this is what it said about the Pace case:

Mrs Pace’s Ordeal

Perhaps there is just one drama of the courts that alone will be remembered out of the crime annals of the present year. The whole nation followed Mrs Beatrice Annie Pace through the terribly long, drawn-out ordeal of the Coroner’s inquest into the death of her husband, Harry Pace, from arsenical poisoning, and her subsequent trial for murder. The drama was almost without parallel in its development. At the conclusion of the inquest the jury found that the man had died from arsenic, but not self-administered, and the Coroner insisted that some person must be named. Then it came about that 'the tragic widow of Coleford' was arrested and placed on trial. But the hearing came to a dramatic end, for Mr Justice Horridge stopped the case and ordered the jury to find a verdict of 'Not Guilty.' So Mrs Pace takes her pathetic place in the pageant of the innocent.

Daily Mail (Hull), 31 December 1928, p. 6

Young Beatrice Pace

Nearly all the photos of Beatrice Pace that appeared in the press in 1928 were contemporary with the events of the case.

The one exception I found was this photo, which appeared on the front page of Thomson's Weekly News and purports to show Beatrice as a young woman 'in service'. (She had spent three years in London as a teenager during the Edwardian years as a domestic servant.)

Click for larger version.

It's an interesting picture. But I have to say the cat is a rather weird touch.

I'm still trying to work out whether it's real or not.

As I have noted, it's important to consider the context in which such images appeared. Thomson's Weekly News was at the more sensationalist end of the press spectrum at this period, and it specialised in 'tragic' stories, especially those featuring women.

Here's the front page as a whole:

Click for larger version.

In the story on the left, Mrs Cissie Nellie Reene tells of the travails she had suffered due to her husband's bigamy.

As I describe in the book, the image of Beatrice as a 'tragic widow' played a significant role in defining her public persona, a role that was enabled by a popular press that focused on sensational, melodramatic and sometimes simply prurient stories of women's suffering.

One thing you'll probably never see on Top Gear

Something not case-related, but part of the atmosphere of late 1920s newspaper advertising.

Daily Herald, 8 April 1927, p. 5.

I think it's rather a shame that the concept of 'motoring chocolate' seems to have declined.

Perhaps it's time for a revival?

Girls these days

Something not especially relevant to the Pace case but which is certainly part of the broader context of press narratives about women in the 1920s, which is an important aspect of the book.

It's also just very interesting....

Devil-May-Care Girls 

“All the riskiest things are done by girls nowadays,” a traffic policeman told me the other day, as a girl motorist sailed through an apparently impassable block on two wheels without slackening speed. “And yet they have the fewest accidents. They have the nerve, that’s what it is.... All nerve, they are.”

It is no use inviting one of them to a quiet dinner to be followed by conversation. They will talk—also dangerously—only at lunch. There must be something with risks in it to be done afterwards. If there is nothing else, the motor-car must come out and be raced through a hundred miles or so in the darkness, with perhaps a river bathe, at the imminent risk of cramp, in the middle.

These girls find a private dance dull unless it is decked out with all kinds of extravagances. There is more “fun” to be found in a round of the night clubs with a chosen small party, particularly if any night club is forbidden ground.

The tragic part of it all—since the Empire needs risks to be taken—is that their dangerous living is of such an unproductive kind.

There is one consolation. These devil-may-care girls who must live dangerously, even if they have to manufacture the danger, will certainly be the mothers of no generation of mollycoddles. I think we may look forward with some confidence to great things to be accomplished by their sons. 

Daily Express, 13 August 1926, p. 8

'A strange new creature called woman'

One of the most important aspects of the context in which the Pace case was discussed was the debate around women's roles.

As Adrian Bingham, in his excellent book Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain, notes:

‘Flapper’ has often been described as ‘one of the defining words of the Twenties; equally pervasive was the visual image of modern femininity, slim, short-skirted with cropped hair. ... ‘In the old days,’ [an article from Newspaper World in August 1927] claimed, ‘a two-page account of a murder...was the great attraction; now it seems to be what some well-known man or woman thinks of the modern girl.’ ... ‘If a future chronicler were to study the files of our newspapers,’ speculated the novelist Rose Macaulay in 1925..., ‘he would get the impression that there had appeared at this time a strange new creature called woman who was receiving great attention from the public.’ (pp. 48-49)

Mrs. Pace, who was 38 at the time of her trial and idealised as a traditional wife and doting mother, hardly fit the image of the 'flapper': nonetheless, her presentation in the press was influenced by the discussions around the 'modern woman'.

That's a long story (to which I devote a whole chapter in the book).

However, as is well known, 1928 was the year in which women's voting rights were equalised with those of men.

There was a lot of discussion around the 'flapper vote', but I think my favourite contribution to it was the following advert, which appeared shortly before the 1929 general election, the first in which women could vote on equal terms as men:

Daily Herald, 20 May 1929, p. 3

Period feel: advertising

In researching The Most Remarkable Woman in England, I spent a lot of time reading newspapers from the late 1920s.

There are many things that I enjoyed about that experience, but one of them relates to something that had nothing to do with the main topic of my book: advertising. Not all newspaper adverts were interesting, clever, amusing or silly. But many of them were. And, in looking through my records on the case, I have run across several that are, I think, worth sharing.

So, based on the argument that they might provide a little late 20s atmosphere (and on the fact that I just like them), I thought I'd start a new occasional series here on adverts.

The first one is, at least thematically, somehow related to the Pace case: it features the police.

(Daily Herald, 7 April 1927, p. 8)

Of course, I do not advocate the purchase or use of any of the products advertised....

Relief and joy

These are actually a couple of my favourite photos from the case; unfortunately, I was only able to find them on microfilm, hence the relatively poor quality.

Still, I think the combination of emotions is very striking, and shines through.

They were taken in the wake of Beatrice Pace's acquittal, and the joy and the relief is quite plain. (Click for larger version.)

Sunday Pictorial, 8 July 1928, p. 26.

Left, we see Beatrice Pace herself; right, Doris and Leslie Pace, two of her five children.

Fame, Fleet Street and the tragic widow

Along with being a book about crime and justice history, The Most Remarkable Woman in England explores aspects of the 1920s version of what today is known as 'celebrity culture'.

In many ways, clearly, the last couple of decades have seen a dramatic expansion in the ways for people to become 'celebrities', even if only briefly: 'reality' TV, casting shows and the Internet.

But while there is much that has changed in how unknown people now become well-known 'celebrities' overnight, the phenomenon itself is far from new. For example, the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of a 'new journalism' which focused on dramatic, emotionally reported 'human interest' stories. This style was pioneered by the Daily Telegraph (founded in 1855) and the later growth of tabloids such as the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Mirror. Here lay the origins of Britain's sensationalist (and prurient) press culture that has often gone under the shorthand term of 'Fleet Street'.* 

The 1920s and 30s were in some sense a 'golden age' of press reporting: newspaper circulations were growing rapidly (especially among women readers) and the press did not as yet face competition from radio and television news. By this time photography had become a common feature in the papers, which may have helped to establish a more immediate (though imagined) connection between readers and those reported upon. Crime -- the more sensational the better -- was a favourite topic, and probably the main vehicle whereby 'ordinary' people became nationally-known figures. This is, of course, something that remains true.

Whether the subjects of these stories became popular or merely notorious depended a great deal on the specific circumstances of the case as well as the ways that journalists decided to spin the case. Beatrice Pace was fortunate in that, although suspected of (and then charged with) murder, she was consistently depicted as a sympathetic figure, even before her eventual acquittal and the sale of her life story to the Sunday Express.

Why and how that was so is a rather long tale and a major focus of my book.

But this is a good example of how the case was presented to the public at the more sensationalist end of the press spectrum, in the World's Pictorial News. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

To give some context: this article appeared in the midst of the lengthy coroner's inquest into Harry Pace's death: Beatrice at this point was (officially) not a suspect in the case. As was often true, the papers didn't get everything right: for example, the caption referring to the lad feeding the lamb refers to 'Kenneth' Pace when his name was actually Selwyn (often called 'Teddy'). This sort of error recurred often across the year or so that the case was in the news. The story about the 'suddenly' interrupted funeral is also not entirely accurate (as I explain).

I aim to present further such images in the future, but I thought this time around I'd also give some background.

My research into the newspaper reporting on the case was one of the most enjoyable parts of writing the book, and it led me to other projects that I've been working on in recent years, such as a study of police powers, civil liberties and the term 'the third degree' in the 1920s: a couple of these articles can be seen here and here.

---
*Interesting overviews of this history can be found in Kevin Williams, Get me a murder a day! A history of mass communication in Britain (London, 1998) and Adrian Bingham, Family newspapers?: Sex, private life, and the British popular press 1918-1978 (Oxford, 2009)

Mid-week trio: Mystery writers, Major Armstrong and arsenic eating

In a recent post at her interesting blog on the science of poisoning, Deborah Blum mentioned a few things that caught my eye, as they were also relevant to the Pace case.

First, she comments on the use of poisoning in the crime fiction of the inter-war period, particularly that by Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. I refer to that background in The Most Remarkable Woman in England, as the case was often styled by the press as something on a par with the murder mysteries of the age.

My own use of one of the books Blum cites -- Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) -- is however to highlight the sensationalist (and often intrusive) role of the press in reporting crime in this period. (The recent follies involving The News of the World et al. would not have surprised the crime reporters of the 1920s: if they could have hacked phones, many of them would have.) 

The narrator in Styles captures the mood: ‘The papers, of course, had been full of the tragedy. Glaring headlines, sandwiched biographies of every member of the household, subtle innuendoes, the usual familiar tag about the police having a clue’. ‘Screaming headlines in every paper in the country’, one character complains: ‘damn all journalists, I say! Sort of Madame Tussaud’s chamber of horrors business that can be seen for nothing’.[1]

(Interestingly enough, Christie's fellow mystery writer from the period, Dorothy Sayers, is one of the things that connects my work hitherto on crime history with my developing research interests in Christian social thinking in Britain in the inter-war period. Along with murder mysteries, she wrote articles and books like this.)

Second, Blum refers to what was probably the most famous poisoning trial of the early 1920s, that of Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong for the murder of his wife and the attempted murder of a fellow solicitor. (Armstrong remains, I believe, the only solicitor hanged for murder in British history. Which actually strikes me as rather surprising.)

Major Armstrong

The Armstrong case was raised many times during the Pace case in a variety of contexts both inside and outside the courtroom. One of the more striking connections was that William Willcox -- a pioneering forensic expert -- testified in both cases. (Willcox had also testified in the famous Crippen trial.)

Willcox's testimony had been crucial in convicting Armstrong, and, as the main expert witness appearing for the Crown in the Pace case, he did his best to put the case that Beatrice Pace had poisoned her husband Harry. In that case, though, he was unsuccessful.

(The account of the Pace case given in a biography of Willcox gives a rather one-sided version of the trial: Willcox apparently remained convinced of her guilt until his death.)

The ghost of the Armstrong case definitely haunted the proceedings in Gloucester; happily for Mrs. Pace, however, her own trial turned out quite differently.

Third, Blum makes a brief reference to 'arsenic eating'. Arsenic, though highly poisonous, has a long history of being associated with various positive, healthful properties; one of them was its allegedly aphrodisiacal nature.

In a book written in the early 1930s on the history of poisoning, there is a short section on the Pace matter (which would have then still been recent and well remembered). It raises the curious issue of 'arsenic eating' in the region where the Paces lived, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.

A suggestion was made after the trial, that Pace might have been in the habit of taking arsenic and a lady living at Newport wrote to the Home Secretary, stating that she know of people living in the Forest of Dean who were addicted to the habit of eating arsenic.

She stated, that she knew that the dangerous habit prevailed in the neighbourhood of Coleford and around Tintern. “People get fascinated with the idea that arsenic taken in small quantities at regular intervals will benefit them. They become known as arsenic eaters, and knowing that the habit is condemned by doctors, they try to keep it as quiet as possible.”

Another person living in the district corroborated this statement and stated that arsenic eating was a habit well-known in the Forest of Dean. Her aunt, she declared, used to make up a secret preparation of herbs and poison. “In the district arsenic is believed to have wonderful powers and people get gripped with the idea of its potency.”

There was, however, no evidence to show that Pace had been addicted to arsenic so the suggestion that he met his death through taking an over-dose can hardly be entertained.[2]

On this latter point, my own research on the case is in agreement.

Nonetheless, speculations were rife at the time about what 'really' happened in the case, so this kind of notion was anything other than unusual.

Sadly, though, I never did find the alleged letter to the Home Office from 'a lady living at Newport'....

**

[1] A. Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (London: HarperCollins, 1994 [1920]), pp. 120-1, 135.

[2] C. J. S. Thompson, Poisons and Poisoners: With Historical Accounts of Some Famous Mysteries in Ancient and Modern Times (London: Harold Shaylor, [1931]), p. 350

A family in the spotlight

One of the many photos of the Pace family that featured in the press coverage on the case. (There were dozens more, some of which will be making their appearance here in the months to come.)

This would have appeared even before the inquest into Harry Pace's mysterious death properly began.

From left: Leslie, Dorothy, Selwyn, Beatrice and Doris Pace.

(World's Pictorial News, 5 February 1928.)

"Hustling Horridge" and the "Ladies"

One of the things I’ve tried to do in this book is to trace some of the key figures beyond their roles in the 1928 murder trial of Beatrice Pace.

A number of them were figures of some public renown both before and after the trial.

For instance, the Daily Mirror mentioned the Pace case in its report on the death of High Court Judge Sir Thomas Horridge in July 1938, almost exactly ten years after he presided over Beatrice’s trial in Gloucester.

Judge Told Jury “Free Mrs. Pace” 

High Court Judge twenty-seven years, Sir Thomas Gardner Horridge died at Hove yesterday, aged eighty.

Sir Thomas figured in the trial of Mrs. Pace, tragic widow of Coleford, Glos, acquitted on his direction on the charge of murdering her husband. He was also one of the Judges who tried Roger Casement.

In the Divorce Court he was known as “Hustling Horridge,” because of his speed in dealing with cases.

On one occasion he remarked: “If women cannot get their lunch in three-quarters of an hour, they are not fit to be jurors.”

Here are other [sic] of his views on women: --“The word ‘woman’ is disappearing from the English language. A charwoman is no longer a charwoman, but a ‘charlady.’ There are lady typists, lady hairdressers, lady shop assistants and lady everything else.”
Daily Mirror, 25 July 1938, p. 18

Images of the Past

One of the things that I'm glad about with this book as opposed to my first one is that this time around I'll have images in it.

One of the sources I used was the company Mirrorpix, which found a great photo of Mrs. Pace and the family's sheepdog (inevitably named...I kid you not...'Rover') in their collection.

Mirrorpix had a blog going for a while, but it then went dormant (which I noted before on my other blog).

So I'm pleased to see that they've gotten active again, via Twitter. There are some gems in there, such as this picture of the Ministry of Information...well, informing people about something in late 1940.

Lots more to be discovered there.