Times Archive Blog

Panic in the streets: topless dresses hit London

Sorry, you weren't expecting a picture of one were you? This isn't Comment Central.

1964 was the year Paris designers invited women to bare all, or at least half. Whatever Frenchwomen thought of the idea, some hardy Brits were, needless to say, totally up for it.

First sightings were on the beaches:

After two girls had been seen wearing topless bathing suits at Bexhill, Sussex, on Sunday, town hall officials decided yesterday that this practice contravened a 60-year-old by-law and that women wearing such suits in public should be reported for prosecution. Mr. R. Lockwood, the entertainments manager said: "I was instructed to inform the beach inspector and the manager of the open-air swimming bath that wearers of topless dresses will be prosecuted.

We take this step with regret because in 1903 we were the first seaside resort in Britain to allow men and women to bathe on the same beach: but we think that topless dresses are an affront to decent society."

The craze soon spread to the capital. First to have her (metaphorical) collar felt was Mrs Diana Gorton, "a housewife", who had attracted considerable attention while posing in a topless dress on Westminster Bridge. In what was a new area of the law, the court had to prove that she had caused "actual disgust".

Ten ways to cut costs in the home

In August 1914, a Times correspondent sat down with his lady wife to work out some household economies that would help them, and the country, survive the war.
This is the list they came up with (warning - you may find some of their cost-cutting efforts more useful than others):

War Programme
1. The servants must take 25 per cent less wages.
2. We must have no guests to stay in the house.
3. No casual entertaining; no theatres; no outings for pleasure costing over 2s 6d each; no taxis; only third-class travelling.
4. No wines, spirits, or cigars.
5. Neither of us must have one single new article of dress for at least a year.
6. No newspapers except The Times and one feminine weekly.
7. If any golf, no caddies; and only on the home course.
8. No Christmas, birthday, or wedding presents.
9. Rigid economy in food; no soups, entrees, sweets (ie, crystallized fruits, etc), or fruit, beyond what is thought necessary for the boy's health, except from our own garden; only joints, plain puddings, and simplest food.
10. Strict economy in coal, gas, and electric light.

And how did they get on? Click on this link to read their report back, two years into the programme: A Lesson from Life, from The Times, February 3, 1916

Bullingdon toffs innocent of rioting, OK

Oxford’s Bullingdon Club has landed in the news as the alma mater of New Torydom, but its reputation as the home of hard-drinking hoorays was made on the night of May 11, 1894, when 468 windows were broken in the Peckwater Quad of Christ Church in the space of 15 minutes.

The Dean, Francis Paget, rusticated 12 Bullingdon members and, a few days later, two pranksters who were caught posting “To Let” signs in the windows of their rooms.

But it seems that, for once, the Bullingdons were not the main culprits.

Poems on the death of Nelson

October 21 is the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson - not a nice round-number anniversary, but never mind. You can't revisit this stuff often enough, in my view.

Here's Nelson's obituary. The tone is quite restrained and factual, but this was more than made up for as the nation was moved to express its grief and rapture in a wonderful series of odes.

On November 12, 1805, W. T. Fitzgerald asked:

Is there a Briton's breast that does not beat,
At Nelson's triumph and the Foe's defeat?
... May I not say, and say it with a tear,
That with his Death, the Triumph's bought too dear?

Percival Stockdale followed up, on the 21st, with some historical comparisons:

Nelson, with all the Patriot's ardour fired,
Like our great Wolfe, in Vict'ry's arms expired.

Then, two days later, this anonymous offering, to be sung to the tune of "the Anacreontic Song":

Aloft on the deck stood the world's naval wonder
Whilst alarms for his life all around him express'd;
'Midst smoke, fire and flame, and the loud cannon's thumder,
Serene was his aspect, and fearless his breast.

And finally, on December 7, another anon:

When Passion's slave, and Fortune's minion,
Panting to spread usurp'd dominion,
To Egypt flew on vulture pinion;
Lo! There, immortal Nelson.

Click on the links to read them in full. And as a bonus, here's the report of Nelson's last moments -  "Don't let me be thrown overboard" - and the larky story of the legs that stood up by themselves:

A man was so completely cut in two by a double-beaded shot, that the whole of his body, with the exception of his legs up to the knees, was blown some yards into the water; but, strange to tell, his legs were left-standing upon the deck with all the firmness and animation of life!

The horse that could spell Victoria and Albert

Great pictures of the surfing rats. I've been turning up some clever animals in the Archive. My favourite is the horse belonging to Mr King of Ipswich, which charmed the assembled nobs at Windsor Castle in 1840. I love the image of Queen Victoria, who had only planned to stay for a minute, summoning a chair so that she could sit and watch it for longer.

Another act I'd have loved to see was at the newly opened Hippodrome. The horse comes on stage fully clothed, undresses and puts itself to bed. No pyjamas apparently.

Dreadful Accident: the great London beer flood of 1814

One of the more bizarre mishaps in London's history happened at the south end of Tottenham Court Road, roughly where the Dominion Theatre is currently showing the Queen musical, We Will Rock You.

In 1814, the whole neighbourhood rocked when a massive vat of beer on the roof of the Meux brewery exploded, deluging the surrounding streets and killing nine people.

There seems to have been some sort of competition between breweries to build the most spectacular vats, and the Meux brewery's was 22ft high, with room for 3,600 barrels.

My uncle killed Rasputin

Absolutely vintage obituary this week, of Michael Andreevich Romanoff, nephew of the murdered Tsar and Sydney painter-decorator.

Just about everyone in Romanoff's family was a prince, a grand duke or an empress but, as his obituary put it, "princes are a rare species in the Antipodes" and when he settled in Australia his workmates simply called him Mike.

Prince Felix Yussupov, one of the party who murdered Rasputin, was his uncle. Asked recently if the prince ever talked about his involvement, Romanoff replied: “My boy, that’s all he ever talked about.”

You can read what The Times thought about Rasputin, and the original reports of his murder in our special Archive topic, The death of Rasputin

Leo Tolstoy: another premature obituary

I've just looked up Wikipedia's list of premature death announcements and they haven't got Leo Tolstoy. Does that make this a scoop?

The Times had been speculating for some days about Tolstoy's decision to get himself to a monastery [click on the links to read the original Times pages]. Peter Kropotkin wrote to the paper from Muswell Hill to clarify that the Count was unlikely to be having a religious crisis: "Let me say that 'retiring to a monastery' does not mean becoming a monk. In several Russian monasteries a log-hut, built on the monastery's lands, in its woods, may be hired or a new log-hut may be built, by someone who intends to retire from the worldly life".

Should the grave of Cardinal Newman have been disturbed?

Ruth Gledhill reported a couple of days ago that Church officials were hoping to move the mortal remains of Cardinal John Henry Newman from his modest grave in Rednal, Worcestershire, to a much grander tomb in Birmingham Oratory before his expected beatification in December.

The Cardinal, who died in 1890, expressly stipulated that he wanted to be laid to rest in the grave of his friend, Father Ambrose St John, who had died 15 years earlier. Luckily for him, the damp conditions of the cemetery at Rednal appear to have turned his bones to dust; there was simply nothing left of him to move, and the grave has been filled back in. As Libby Purves said, "You would need a heart of stone not to laugh."

Going back to the original reports of the Cardinal's death and funeral, the decision to move him seems even more wrong.

Fashions for the 1920s lady of leisure

Slideshow: A Fashion of the Day

Between 1919 and 1922, The Times employed a fashion artist, Miss Bessie Ascough, to provide drawings of the latest styles, which were planted prominently in the middle of the domestic situations page under the heading, A Fashion of Today.

The Great War having removed such a huge slice of The Times's readership, its proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, realised that he was going to have to make his newspaper more attractive to women if he was to stay afloat. There were few people on the staff who were equipped to help, and he set about recruiting from outside, particularly from the Daily Mail, which he also owned.

Bessie Ascough had been a fashion artist on the Mail since 1913, and is thought to have graduated to fashion editor. While her drawings appeared regularly in The Times, she continued to contribute to the Daily Mail, principally with designs for dress patterns, which were either sold or given away with the paper.

The Times drawings seem mostly to have been her own designs although occasionally the captions suggest they might be something she'd spotted in Paris. Colour and fabric are described in such detail that one assumes the garments did, in fact, exist, although there's no suggestion that readers could go out and buy them and, unlike the Mail, The Times didn't do anything as useful as dish out paper patterns.

It's all a bit mysterious to the modern reader, until you look at the rest of the page. Among the advertisements for governesses, third housemaids and single-handed cooks is a section headed Drapery, Dressmaking and Millinery. On March 30, 1920, "Miss Renee (of Renee Soeurs)" announces that she has returned from Paris and is available to make up ladies' own materials. On August 24, 1921, there is an advertisement from a "Court Dressmaker; reduced terms; day or evening,gowns; town or country". And of course the ladies' maids: "Can any lady recommend Maid for two ladies? Wanted immediately; must be very good dressmaker and willing to go abroad; wages £40."

It looks as if Miss Bessie Ascough's gorgeous designs were simply intended to be ripped out of the paper by its new lady readers and handed to the nearest seamstress: "Just run me up this one, would you"?

The shapes and styles in the slideshow look wonderfully wearable, especially the spring suits and "walking toilettes". Despite the drawings being in black and white, the descriptions of the fabrics and colours are so seductive - banana-coloured silk trimmed with coney, string-coloured crepe de chine of heavy make, embroidered in chinese laquer red and blue silks - I want them all. Oh for a lady's maid. Where's Miss Renee now when you want her.

How Times readers saved the Elephant Man

It's well known that Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man made famous in John Hurt's 1980 film, spent his last years in the relative security and comfort of the London Hospital after a desperate life in freak shows. What I didn't know was that his redemption was funded by the generosity of Times readers.

In December, 1886, the Chairman of the London Hospital, F. C. Carr Gomm, wrote to The Times:   

There is now in a little room off one our attic wards a man named Joseph Merrick, aged about 27, so dreadful a sight that he is unable even to come out by daylight to the garden.