January 22 – William ‘Dixie’ Dean, England and Everton footballer.
Following the establishment of the first Garden City at Letchworth, the idea of affordable, attractive houses and gardens close to the workplace, first laid out in Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 book Tomorrow, spread to London.
Hampstead Garden Suburb was to lead the way in the development and design of London suburbs built thereafter. On news of a new underground station in this picturesque area, heiress turned social worker Dame Henrietta Barnett set up a group to save 80 acres from the ‘rows of ugly villas such as disfigure Willesden and most of the suburbs of London’. She also set up charitable trusts to buy a further 243 acres from Eton College.
She then joined forces with Letchworth’s planners, Sir Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker, to come up with a suburb where all classes of society could find a haven. Sir Raymond was keen ‘to do something to meet the housing problem by putting within the reach of the working people the opportunity of taking a cottage with a garden within a 2d. fare of Central London’.
In order to overcome strict by-laws, the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust promoted a private bill which was to become the cornerstone of town planning in the future. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Act, passed in 1906, stated that building was limited to eight properties per acre, 50 feet apart and the roads at least 40 feet wide. Green spaces, such as woods and heath-lands, were free to all residents and lower ground rents were to be paid on some properties so that workers on low wages could afford them.
Hampstead Garden Suburb was finally founded in 1907 and its designer, Sir Raymond Unwin, was to live there for the remainder of his life.
Eleanor Rathbone, secretary of the Women’s Industrial Council in Liverpool, embarked on a study of household expenditure among the city’s working-class families. In How the Casual Labourer Lives, she modestly claimed that her studies had ‘yielded no absolutely new fact of importance’, but the 40 households she studied did provide an insight into everyday life in a poor household.
As many of the accounts were long term, lasting up to 62 weeks, they showed the real cost of more expensive items, such as clothing, that were not bought each week.
In 40 per cent of households, the wives worked as well as their husbands, with many taking jobs cleaning, washing or sewing, and others took lodgers to make ends meet. They were also reliant on borrowing and using credit when a ‘lumpy’ expenditure, such as clothing and shoes, was necessary. Rent varied wildly from region to region, and was a huge consideration in how the rest of the household income could be spent.
The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies organised its first national protest in February, but failed to take the weather into account. Conditions were so poor for the open-air demonstration that it was dubbed ‘The Mud March’, but the suffragettes were undaunted as ever. Over 3,000 women from all over the country turned out, making it, at the time, the biggest ever open-air demonstration.
Christabel Pankhurst passed her law degree at the University of Manchester but, as a woman, was barred from seeking a career as a barrister. After a series of disagreements with her sister Sylvia, who favoured universal suffrage rather than votes for wealthy women only, Christabel moved to London where she took over the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Emmeline, Christabel’s mother and the founder of the movement, also moved to London to concentrate her increasingly militant activities there. However, the two women’s domination of the organisation upset many of the members, who believed they made too many decisions without consulting others. Teresa Billington-Grieg, Charlotte Despard and some 70 other members left to form the Women’s Freedom League. Although they were militant, they also believed in non-violent demonstration, such as refusing to pay taxes, rather than the campaign of vandalism that the WSPU would soon embark on.
Later in the year, Keir Hardie’s Women’s Enfranchisement Bill was defeated in Parliament but there was a small victory for the suffragettes when another bill, the Qualification of Women Act, meant that women could be voted onto borough and county councils and could even be elected as mayor.
WSPU supporters Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence launched the journal Votes for Women.
The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) was founded to provide first aid to the front line and in field hospitals. The voluntary organisation, re-christened The Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps in 1999, was an invaluable help during the First and Second World Wars, taking on roles as drivers, signallers and coders as well as manning hospitals.
Still going strong today, members provide assistance to civil and military authorities in times of emergency, such as the London bombings in 2007 and the Iraq war.
Nurse Florence Nightingale became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.
Guglielmo Marconi perfected his transatlantic wireless system, enabling him to set up a commercial service between Nova Scotia, Canada, and Clifden, Ireland.
Various forms of vacuum cleaners were on the market but it was James Spangler who invented the first practical, portable, electric version, which remains the basic model today.
Spangler, a janitor in a department store in Ohio, was an asthmatic who wanted to limit the amount of dust he inhaled. He started experimenting and eventually came up with a contraption that incorporated an old motor attached to a soap box which was stapled to a broom handle.
Using a pillow case as a dust collector, Spangler invented a portable, electric vacuum cleaner.
Spangler improved his basic model, the first to use both a cloth filter bag and cleaning attachments, and received a patent in 1908, forming the Electric Suction Sweeper Company.
One of his first buyers was a cousin, whose husband, William H. Hoover, owned the Hoover Harness and Leather Goods Factory. Spangler sold his idea to him and became a partner in the Hoover Electric Suction Sweeper Company.
The company’s first produced vacuum was the ‘Model O’. It was a great success and spawned many competitors, eager to capitalise on this wonderful new device which transformed cleaning for ever.