(no subject)

Happy birthday, gwyneira and ironymaiden!

Closing more tabs

I find the work this project is doing on matrimonial law very exciting, and also how they are digging way beyond the big scandalous divorce cases to the quotidien: The Most Radical Legislation of the Nineteenth Century: ‘Wherefore She Prays for an Order for the Protection of her Earnings and Property’ (though I'm now wondering what happened in 1893, perhaps that is an episode Still to Come).

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This is almost a reverse case: a woman scientist who was forced to conceal that she was married in order to keep on working: The secret life of Miss Ruby Payne-Scott:

Until the amendment of the Public Service Act in November 1966, women employed in the Australian Public Service were required to resign upon marriage. Married women were obliged to accept temporary positions with poor career prospects and no entitlements. Like countless other women, the scientist hid her marriage. When her six-year secret was finally exposed in 1950, she was forced to retire as a permanent staffer and was reinstated on a temporary basis. Never one to mince words, Ruby told the CSIRO:

Personally I feel no legal or moral obligation to have taken any other action than I have in making my marriage known… the present procedure with regard to married women… seems to go far beyond the simple statement in the Act … [it] is ridiculous and can lead to ridiculous results.

I wonder a bit if the suspicions over her Communist and feminist affiliations were in the mix.

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A different perspective on declining population and who it is who are not having children (wo wo deth of civ etc etc): Recent research has found that it’s more likely to be men who aren’t able to have children even if they want them: 'Men’s role in declining birth rates is often overlooked, says Vincent Straub, who studies men’s health and fertility at the University of Oxford'.

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Some recent offerings from the Cambridge Population History People: To the manor bound: Serfdom in Europe; What kept the rich and the poor apart in industrial Manchester?

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This one should probably have featured in my post earlier this week: ‘An Absurd Rage for Public Speaking’: An Abolitionist Fair Orator in the London Debating Societies, 1788–1791

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Actually, duckie, I think the term here would be 'kept woman', and your friends actually pick up on that: I’m a ‘trad wife’ in a happy marriage. How can I get my friends to accept me for who I am?. Is this spooky or what?

One night I ended up at a party with people I didn’t know and someone slipped something in my drink and I lost all memory until the next morning when I woke up on the sofa in a strange man’s apartment. He had rescued me and taken me to his place. I didn’t leave his flat for three months, except to be taken out to dinner and sent off to a gym to get back in shape.

And what exactly does she do apart from having lovely holidays that could form topics of conversation, hmmmm?