Lizzy Lind af Hageby and the talking dogs of Weimar
While researching the life of this well-known and influential Edwardian anti-vivisectionist, I discovered that even educated and serious people can get carried away. Lizzy believed in the new science of evolution, and saw all animals as kin to one another. As this extract from The Manchester Guardian shows, she was convinced by demonstrations of their ‘thinking minds’:
From The Manchester Guardian,15 April 1937
Miss Lind af Hageby, the well-known anti-vivisectionist, lecturing at Animal Defence House today on “The Thinking, Speaking, and Counting Dogs of Weimar”, said that these powers were “a new discovery”.
One of the dogs she mentioned, Rolf, came from a home for lost dogs to a family of children. One day, said the lecturer, his mistress, having scolded a child for not being able to add 2 and 122, said she believed that Rolf could do that sum, whereupon Rolf went up to her and with his paw tapped out 124. … When one of Rolf’s ten puppies, the one “he had named Roland”, was killed by a motor-car, Miss Lind af Hageby continued, Rolf said, “I will try to find the man who killed my son and bite him.”
Like some of the other dogs mentioned, she said, he had an alphabet of barks and he learned to bark in French and English as well as German.
… Miss Lind af Hageby has published a list of 62 “speaking” animals. Most of them are educated dogs, seventeen are educated horses, but since Fips of Stuttgart died Daisy of Mannheim is the only educated cat on her list.
7th May 2012
Bucks Mill Cabin
Judith Ackland (1892—1971) and Mary Stella Edwards (1898—1989) met in the 1920s while studying art in London. They became partners for life, retreating each spring and autumn from their home in Staines to the Cabin at Bucks Mill, a hamlet between Clovelly and Westward Ho! in Devon.
The Cabin is as it was left forty years ago when Judith died. Mary was never able to face returning without Judith.
Now in the care of the National Trust, the Cabin is unchanged, except by lack of use. Damp and dusty, it still retains its magic, perched in mid-air on a slope above a ruined lime kiln, looking out over a rocky beach. Big enough for two, but only if they were in tune with one another, as Judith and Mary clearly were.
A raincoat hangs behind the door that opens on to the stairs from the tiny living room. China on a dresser, sewing needs in drawers, home-made potholders hanging on nails above the stove. Upstairs, a spartan bedroom, painting paraphernalia in wicker hampers under the bed, binoculars on the mantlepiece and a stunning view.
I won a guided tour of the Cabin in a competition organized by the National Trust by writing a poem inspired by these two remarkable women. On a wet day in April 2012 we met Justin Seedhouse, the Head Ranger, who showed us round. Justin has a real affection for the place. My thanks to him for a memorable visit.
Painting on the beach
after a painting by Judith Ackland
You do not see my painter’s eye upon you
where you sit, cloche hat rammed down hard
against the sea-fret, intent on your art.
My brush has made the mudstone into pillows,
a soft lap among the angled folds created
when tectonic plates collided in an ecstasy.
Your comfort is my pleasure.
I shall go back to our Cabin before you,
take down china cups, the ones with cherries.
You will hear the kettle whistle you in to me,
cheeks whipped red, and cold to touch.
A spire of steam will rise in greeting
from the fragrance of tea.
© Nina Boyd, 2011
Ladies of Means and Beasts of Burden
I am researching a group of women who committed their lives to animal welfare. They lived and worked together from the beginning of the twentieth century until the last of them died in the 1960s.
Margaret Damer Dawson, Nora Logan, Nina Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, Lizzie Lind af Hageby, Leisa Schartau and Berthe Delius were all talented women, wealthy enough to be able to remain single (only the Duchess of Hamilton married) and pursue their passion for an end to vivisection and other forms of animal cruelty.
Their public activities are reasonably well documented. Any information about the personal lives of these six women would be welcomed.
14th April 2012
Nora Logan
Nora Logan was one of a group of wealthy antivivisectionists who grew old together in a mansion flat overlooking Regents Park Zoo. Nora and her eldest sister, Isobel, were militant suffragettes, and both were imprisoned for refusing to pay a fine for smashing windows. Nora was involved in a small way in the 1911 Census Protest, in which many women defaced their census forms, or hid from the census (camping out in caravans on the moors, or sleeping overnight in derelict houses.) On the night of the census, Nora is staying as a guest with Dorothy F. Bracewell at College Farm, Tempsford near Sandy in Bedfordshire. The details given are sketchy: their ages are ‘about 45′ and ‘about 30′, their places of birth ‘N/K’, and their occupations given as ‘Suffragette’. They were clearly not willing to cooperate with the census enumerator. Dorothy has written a signed message which consists of the single word ‘Voteless’. It was a small protest, but it shows how committed Nora Logan was to the suffragist cause.
Thanks to Jonathan Calder for information about Nora. We would both appreciate any further news. Jonathan’s blog is at http://liberalengland.blogspot.co.uk/
24th March 2012
Reflections on a classical crime writer
Reading Margery Allingham
… takes me back to the Thirties
when gowns were backless crêpe de Chine
and women smoked Balkan Sobranies
and travel was first class on P & O liners
and steam trains whistled through the Shires
and speech was clipped and highly pitched
and hats were hets and girls were gels
and everyone loved the dear King
and everything was frightfully amusing
and a Norton Nanny took care of the children
and amateur detectives earned novelists a living
and motor cars were sit-up-and-beg
and country roads were lanes with grass down the middle
and war was over
and there wouldn’t be another,
not in our lifetime.
Mary Sophia Allen: her biographer’s tale
Ripon in 
North Yorkshire is a holy city, and I was out of place. I did my best to fit in, joined the Film Club and the Writers’ Circle and they were kind. But I knew I was on the outside.
That was in 2000, just before I met the man I would eventually marry and be happy with. Just before our first encounter, I spent my free time walking round Ripon (which doesn’t take long), buying fish and nuts and cheap jewellery in the Thursday market, occasionally having tea and crumpets upstairs in a shoe shop called Ladies’ World.
One dismal Wednesday, between the cathedral and the Fire Station, I was caught in a sudden downpour. I took refuge in the nearby Police and Prison Museum. In a room full of police whistles, notebooks, handcuffs and helmets, all guarded by a dusty wax desk sergeant, the only really interesting item was a policewoman with enormous feet glaring at me from behind the bars of a postcard-rack, and I had to know who she was.
I took my postcard home and made a quick Internet search. Mary Sophia Allen was a mystery, an unsung hero of early women’s policing who transformed herself into a political virago. She was difficult to research, having been unmarried and childless; but descendants of her siblings in South Africa, Argentina and Ireland had their own memories of her, and were willing to share.
Mary got under my skin. I threw myself into researching her life, bought her a shiny black filing cabinet, scoured libraries and old newspapers, made a nuisance of myself wherever I thought there might be a nugget of information about her. She took over my life, and my husband accepted her as a third party in our marriage without a murmur.
I cannot hope to rescue the reputation that Mary lost by her own wilfulness. She was a vain woman and a bad lot. But she was loved by her family and friends, and I do believe this opinionated infuriating woman, a trailblazer, should not be forgotten. I’ve written her biography. I did it all for Mary, who would undoubtedly have said it was no more than she deserved.
13th March 2012