WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 255, 5 January 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Conducted by "Eileen"). SUFFRAGETTES AT WESTMINSTER. MARCHING TO THE TUNE OF THE MARSEILLAISE. London, November 22. Tho suffragettes yesterday resumed their agitation. They crowded the Caxton Hall, and prolonged cheers greeted Miss Christabel Pankhurst when she arrived to take Hie chair. Referring to what she described as '•'the triumph of Friday," she said the deputation were animated by the spirit of Joan of Arc, Boadicea, aiid tho warrior women of other day. Never in the history of the movement, she said, had the policy of militancy been so completely and fully vindicated as it. had been by the action of the Government on Saturday.

It was decided to send a deputation with a memorial protesting against the policy of "shuffling and delay," and they were instructed to proceed to Westminster and there be in readiness to present the memorial to the Premier.

Led 'by Mrs. Pankhurst, the deputation of twelve then left the hall, the audience meanwhile standing upon chairs and singing a song to the tune of "The Marseillaise." Mrs. Pethic Lawrence afterwards said that if the women were not satisfied with the Government's statement to-day they would give them another little lesson. When the "12 apostles" arrived in taxicabs at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament thousands of the public were there, anticipating lively scenes, but the police kept order and formed the crowd up a considerable distance from where the suffragettes stood. | Relief deputations were sent from Caxton Hall every two hours until the House! rose. I

JEWS AND DIVORCE. MORALITY OF THE EACE DECLAReYj TO HAVE DETERIORATED. London, November 22. The Jewish attitude towards divorce was explained yesterday to the Divorce Commission by Mr. Israel Abrahams, Reader in Rabbinic Literature at Cambridge 'University. Jewish sentiment, he said, was strongly opposed to the divorce of the wife of a man's youth, and men almost invariably married young. The facilities for divorce seemed mostly to have been applied or taken advantage of in the case of a widower's second marriage. The formalities of marriage were not less the result of human imperfections than was the need of divorce. Perfect human nature could do without either, for Adam and Eve went through no marriage ceremony. Mr. Abrahams went on to speak of the old Jewish law by which a man who misconducted himself was scourged, but was not compelled to divorce his wife unless she dnsisted. ~

Lord Guthrie ashed witness for his view of the morality of the Jews under modern conditions, as compared with the i'den days, and he replied that there had been a deterioration. The Jews had abandoned many of their old distinctive safeguards of morality, which kept them straight and pure. The Rev. W. Inge, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, said that those members of the English Church who maintained that, since by Christian law marriage was indissoluble, no divorce should be granted under any circumstances, were making a claim which was historically untenable, and which the practice of all Christian churches in all ages had proved to bo unworkable. AVitness recommended that misconduct by either husband or wife should be punished by imprisonment. That, he thought, would have a, beneficial effect on public morality. THE FURNISHING PROBLEM

Every man or woman who sets about furnishing a house lias to face different conditions. To equip a hotel is quite a different problem from that of furnishing a cottage, and a suburban villa requires a different attitude of mind from that which is necessary in dealing with the problems of a town mansion. It is far too commonly thought that certain wellknown principles will apply in all cases. A moment's reflection will entirely dissipate this idea. For instance, a hotel must 'be furnished, not to satisfy one opinion or even one set of opinions, but must be so catholic in its equipments as to we a reasonble chance of satisfying everybody. Not at all an easy undertaking this. Many hotels in the West End of London have within their walls examples of pretty nearly every well-known period of furnishing. Contrast this with the furnishing of a cottage.

PASSING OF THE BARMAID West Australian means to abolish the barmaid. Many of them are coming to Sydney and Melbourne (says a Sydney paper)*. In several Sydney hotels there are girls behind the bar, strange faces, who have joined the exodus from Perth and Fremantle and Kalgoorlie. Legislators in West Australia are passing an enactment which will mean that after March, 1911, the employment of bari maids will be prohibited unless such barmaids have been engaged for at least [ three months in the year before the passt ing of the Act. So the ladies are migrating to Sydney. One of them, discovered ■in a metropolitan hotel, told a Sun reporter that life for the barmaid was becoming unbearable on the other side. "We used to make good wages over there, too," she said, "as much as £2 a week up in Kalgoorlie. But they arei going to stamp barmaids out altogether, in that State if they can, so we packed! our trunks and tripped. Why they can't leave us alone I don't know. If we are content to be barmaids, why should people who don't drink—they're usually what you call wowsers, you know—interfere with us? Why can't they abolish the poor milliner girl, who is sweated for 10s a week, or the tailoress, who ruins her eyesight making buttonholes?! Our hours are good, there's plenty of I variety in the business, and I don't think! you would find a happier set of girls, I taking them all round, than barmaids." j At a hotel employment agency the story I was confirmed. "Dozens of girls are com-j ing to Sydney from Perth and Adelaide." 1 said the manageress, "but there's always!

a demand for smart workers here and up country, and we' can accommodate them all."

VICTIMS OF ENTERIC

The December number of the Australasian Nurses' Journal deplores the list of nurses who are the victims of enteric fever. In spite of all the precautions taken by the hospital authorities—and no expense or trouble is spared—there is an increasing number of nurses who contract the disease from the patients, ni>/! too often with the nurse the illness proves fatal. "The explanation," savs the journal, "seems to be that in the rush of work of varying character in the general m-vlical wards, nurses forget their ; instructions a;nl overlook some w-n-siai-y link in their disinfection, and thus the chain is broken and exposure to direct infection present. The junior nurses, through ignorance, fail to realise sufficiently the risk they expose themselves to should not every detail in the recognised method of disinfection be carried "out. The admost elaborate precautions insisted upon seem to them almost a fetish of the sisters, not to be taken too seriously. The chances of infection would, without doubt, be reduced if special wards were set apart for the nursing only of patients suffering from enteric fever, and senior nurses, responsible and with a full knowledge of the danger of infection, alone employed in sufficient numbers. This, \vc believe, one of our large metropolitan hospitals has already decided to carry out. It is to be hoped that, the immunity which the anti-typhoid vaccine confers will not be overlooked by the authorities, and that nurses engaged in the active nursing of enteric patients will appreciate this certain safeguard."

A NEW NOVELIST H A new novelist of great talent has been revealed to the French public. This is a dressmaker, Mme. Marguerite Audoux. i who is living in a very humble room on the sixth door of a house in the Montparnasse quarter, and who recently published her first novel, "Marie Claire," which is the story of her life. The Chronicle's Paris correspondent reports that the Goncourt Academy, a body which is composed of the best French literateurs, is going to award her for the publication its annual prize, which is offered for the "most original and most important book of the year.'" In "Marie Claire," Mme. Audoux tells how. ot the age of 13, she was rna'd at a farm; then she arrived in Paris, when she was 18, with three halfpence in her pocket, and began life as a dressmaker in a shop, where she was paid If 50c a dav. The story of her struggle for life and her work is most finely described. It took her six years to write the book, which she wrote six times. It was only recently, on the eve of starvation, thai she found a friend who showed it to M. Octave Mi'-beau, the writer, w| t got it published.