Web Page No 2584

25th May 2019

1st Picture. Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset being crowned the 'Queen of Beauty'

2nd Picture. 1922 Beauty Contest

3rd Picture. Eric Morley

4th Picture. The girl from Poole being crowned Miss World, Ann Sidney

Beauty Contests

For many years’ beauty competitions were very popular in the holiday camps and seaside resorts and even the Miss World competition was Saturday night prime time viewing. The contests traditionally focused ranking the physical attributes of the contestants, although most contests evolved to incorporate personality traits, intelligence, talent, and answers to judges' questions.

The organizers of each contest could determine their own rules, including the age range of contestants. Some required the contestants to be unmarried, and be "virtuous", "amateur", and available for promotions, and also set the clothing standards in which contestants will be judged, including the type of swimsuit.

Beauty competitions were multi-tiered, with local competitions feeding into the larger competitions. The possible awards of beauty contests included titles, tiaras or crowns, sashes, , savings bonds and cash prizes.

But what is the history of these contests?  Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset was crowned the 'Queen of Beauty' at the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, the first known beauty pageant.

Entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum staged the first American pageant in 1854, but his beauty contest was closed down after public protest.

Beauty contests became more popular in the 1880s. In 1888, the title of 'beauty queen' was awarded to an 18-year-old Creole contestant at a pageant in Spa, Belgium. All participants had to supply a photograph and a short description of themselves to be eligible to enter and a final selection of 21 was judged by a formal panel. Such events were not regarded as respectable. Beauty contests came to be considered more respectable with the first modern "Miss America" contest held in 1921.

The oldest pageant still in operation today is the Miss America pageant, which was organized in 1921 by a local businessman as a means to entice tourists to Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Sixteen-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C. was crowned Miss America 1921, having won both the popularity and beauty contests, and was awarded $100.

The popularity of the Miss America pageant prompted other organizations to establish similar contests in the 1950s and beyond. Some were significant while others were trivial, such as the National Donut Queen contest. The Miss World contest started in 1951, Miss Universe started in 1952 as did Miss USA. Miss International started in 1960. Miss Asia Pacific International started in 1968. The Miss Black America contest started in 1968 in response to the exclusion of African American women from the Miss America pageant. The Miss Universe Organization started the Miss Teen USA in 1983 for the 14-19 age group. Miss Earth started in 2001, which channels the beauty pageant entertainment industry as an effective tool to actively promote the preservation of the environment. These contests continue to this day.

The requirement for contestants to wear a swimsuit was a controversial aspect of the various competitions. The controversy was heightened with the increasing popularity of the bikini after its introduction in 1946. The bikini was banned for the Miss America contest in 1947 because of Roman Catholic protesters. When the Miss World contest started in 1951, there was an outcry when the winner was crowned in a bikini. Pope Pius XII condemned the crowning as sinful and countries with religious traditions threatened to withdraw delegates. The bikini was banned for future and other contests. It was not until the late 1990s that they became permitted again, but still generated controversy when finals were held in countries where bikinis (or swimsuits in general) were socially disapproved. For example, in 2003, Vida Samadzai from Afghanistan caused an uproar in her native country when she participated in the Miss Earth contest in a bikini. In 2013, the swimsuit round of the Miss World contest was dropped because of Islamist protests in Bali (Indonesia), where the contest took place. In 2014, the Miss World contest eliminated the swimsuit competition from its pageant.

In 2017, Carousel Productions was criticized of objectifying women during the Miss Earth 2017 competition. For the first time in the history of international pageants, delegates wore swimsuits during the event with their faces concealed by a veil in the Beauty of Figure and Form, a segment first introduced in the Miss Philippines Earth 2017 pageant. It was one of the three preliminary judging segments of the pageant that include Poise and Beauty of Face and Environmental and Intelligence Competition. The organizers defended the "beauty of figure and form" segment and released a statement that the said round was intended to promote strict impartiality during pre-judging by focusing on the contestants' curves and not beautiful face.

In England the Beauty contest was always associated with Eric and later Julie Morley. Eric Morley had already bought Come Dancing to the TV screens when he took on the beauty world. In 1968, his wife, Julia, took over the day-to-day running of Miss World and became chairman of the pageant.

On 9^th November 2000, the day after the contestants first paraded at the Millennium Dome in preparation for the 2000 Miss World finals, Eric Morley had a heart attack and died in the Princess Grace Hospital, West London. A service of thanksgiving was held in the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, (he was an ex-officer) with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh being represented. He left an estate valued at £10.6 million, and is buried in West Norwood Cemetery, London.

Peter

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On this day 25^th May 1960-1965

On 25/05/1960 the number one single was Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/05/1961 the number one single was You're Driving Me Crazy - The Temperance Seven and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/05/1962 the number one single was Good Luck Charm - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Panic on Wall Street.

On 25/05/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Conservative Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/05/1964 the number one single was Juliet - Four Pennies and the number one album was Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/05/1965 the number one single was Where Are You Now (My Love) - Jackie Trent and the number one album was Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page No 2582

18th May 2019

1st Picture. A typical School Desk

2nd Picture. Hospital Rounds in a Portsmouth Hospital in the 1950’s

3rd Picture. Southern Television outside broadcast unit

4th Picture. Measles warning poster

When we were born!

How different the ordinary things of life were when we were born and also during the time when we were growing up. Here are a just a few points that you may have missed or forgotten about.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, two million women were still employed in domestic service and the average wages was still only 25p a week.

In the late Forties, the typical male manual labourer in Britain was entitled to just one week's paid holiday a year plus the usual Bank Holidays.

In the decade following the end of the Second World War, more than 70% of British workers were employed in manual labour and at that then the average UK annual salary for a man was just over £100.

In the 1950s, there were estimated to be 1.5million women in Britain working as either secretaries, typists or some other form of office work.

It took several years after the peace that it became the norm in Britain to work a five day week rather than six; and the low average rates of unemployment (around 3%) did not include the majority of women, who were considered "economically inactive".

The numbers of mothers in full time employment has tripled since 1951.

Memories of childhood have a tendency to become dappled. Across the years, the coldest of washing arrangements are injected with the warm tickle of nostalgia. Then, one in 20 babies were born out of wedlock, compared with four in 10 today. There was a single BBC TV channel until ITV began broadcasting in 1955 and sugar was still rationed, while only one in six households had regular use of a car.

In 1952, a report found that 89% of teachers agreed that corporal punishment should be retained. Schools retained a tradition of localism, setting their own agenda, their own standards and own curriculum. Now a days the national curriculum and testing are laid down centrally. What is taught now is far more tightly prescribed.

An increased awareness of equal opportunities has ceased girls' exclusion from sciences and boys from cookery. Educational technology in the 1950’s meant listening to a special schools radio broadcast. The proportion of children staying on in full-time education has also doubled. In the 1950’s, the majority of pupils left school at 15; now they stay until 18.

Modern children are taller but also fatter than their 1950’s counterparts, despite the fact that they eat 20% less. Today at least half of all children fail to achieve the recommended one hour's exercise a day, 40% of children travel to school by car, while games and team sports are slipping off the curriculum in many schools.

Infant mortality has fallen by a remarkable 79% in the past 50 years. In the 1950’s it would have been exceptionally rare for a premature baby to survive whilst nowadays 7% of babies are born premature, the majority of whom flourish. But by far the greatest advance in reducing deaths and serious illnesses in children has been the development of vaccination, Polio was a terror every summer for parents, now they have hardly heard of it. Measles and whooping cough, too, have been practically wiped out."

In the 50s, inpatient care for children was at the bare minimum. It was normal practice for children to be nursed on adult wards, parents were allowed to visit once a week, and patients were expected to remain in bed for a long period of convalescence. Nowadays, children benefit from play and educational facilities, and the average length of stay for a child patient is two days.

There has been a huge extension in restrictions on children's behaviour since the 50s, resulting in fewer children being killed on the roads. But children are no longer allowed the opportunity to learn from their own experiences as we did. Meeting up with their friends, and engaging in what is a very important part of childhood - getting into mischief and making mistakes for us were the normal way of life.

With minimal access to television, no computers and no mobile phones, children of the 50s were reduced to actually talking to one another and using their imaginations.

In 1951 people were still reeling from the war. Parents were older because they had deferred marriage or children during the war. They were less affluent and even if they had money there weren't the products to spend it on. But by 1959, the mood had changed, as more investment was made in industry and manufacturers began to target children specifically, making cheap, mass market plastic toys.

There was a huge emphasis on reassurance during the 50s as adults attempted to convince children - and themselves - that war wouldn't come again.

So were they the good old days? All I can say is that I might not have been so aware of the world around me in the 1960’s but I really enjoyed growing up in that decade.

Peter

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On this day 18^th May 1960-1965

On 18/05/1960 the number one single was Cathys Clown by the Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth 13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/05/1961 the number one single was Blue Moon - The Marcels and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth 13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/05/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth 12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/05/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Liberal Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth 12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/05/1964 the number one single was Don't Throw Your Love Away - Searchers and the number one album was Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Conservative Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth 12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 On 18/05/1965 the number one single was King of the Road - Roger Miller and the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth 11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page No 2580

11th May 2019

Prince Monolulu

1st Picture. Prince Monolulu cigarette card

2nd Picture. In later life

3rd Picture. Even a pub named after him!

 4th Picture. A good whist hand

Betting

My family were never into betting, in fact I don’t think my father ever entered a betting shop, if it comes to that neither have I. The nearest my family came to betting was that two afternoons a week my mother and grandmother would march off to the scout hut or the Drayton Institute to play whist.

All this and we lived next door to a Bookmaker.

The one racing memory I have is hearing about and seeing Prince Monolulu, the racing tipster. at race courses on the television. He became quite a cult figure, although his life story was very different from the tales he told.

He claimed to be a chief of the Falasha tribe of Abyssinia, but the reality is that he was born on 26^th October 1881 in St Croix, Danish West Indies (now part of the United States Virgin Islands). His baptism (as Peter Carl McKay) has been traced in the records of the English Episcopal Church of the Danish West Indies. His father, whose name is not shown in the register, was William Henry McKay and his mother was Catherine Heyliger. His father and brothers were horse breeders, raisers and racers on St Croix.

According to his own account, he made his way from his birthplace to the African coast, where he was shanghaied on board a British ship: he styled himself as a prince in the hope of receiving better treatment. His ship was subsequently shipwrecked on the Portuguese coast, from where he made his way to New York. More plausibly he travelled to New York via Puerto Rico. He had various jobs, on shore and at sea, and eventually reached London in 1902.

He first went to The Derby in 1903, and soon began to establish himself as a tipster. He adopted colourful robes, a plumed headdress, and the slogan "I've gotta horse!", sometimes alternating with "Black man for luck!". However, he also continued to travel around Britain, and around Europe, for example visiting Saint Petersburg with an American "negro show". He was in Königsberg when World War I broke out, and was held in Ruhleben internment camp, near Berlin, for the duration of the war. He returned to London in 1919. He rose to prominence after picking out the horse Spion Kop in the 1920 Derby, which came in at the long odds of 100–6, and from which he personally made some £8,000, a vast amount of money at the time.

However there is much doubt about his personal life. Monolulu claimed to have been married six times, though only five marriages are documented and reliable evidence exists for only three. He claimed to have been married first in a Jewish ceremony in Moscow in 1902, to a girl who was afterwards taken away by the police; and second in a Catholic ceremony in 1903 to a German girl who was killed in a car accident. More certain were his marriages to another German, Elizabeth Arnold, who accompanied him to England and whom he married in 1908, but who died in 1911; to Rhoda Carley in 1922, the marriage being dissolved in 1929; and finally to Nellie Adkins in 1931, a marriage which also broke down. In the 1950s he was romantically linked to an Austrian governess in London.

His death was a bizarre as his life A friend, Jeffrey Bernard, a horse-racing journalist visited Monolulu in the Middlesex Hospital to interview him. Jeffrey Bernard had brought with him a box of Black Magic chocolates and offered Monolulu a 'strawberry cream', which he accepted and subsequently choked to death on it this was on Valentine’s Day 1965.

Prince Monolulu frequently featured in newsreel broadcasts, and as a consequence was probably the best-known black man in Britain of the time. He appeared in a clip in the 1939 propaganda film by Alexander Korda, The Lion has Wings, Korda used him as an example of what Britain was, a nation at play and at ease with himself. He also appeared briefly in the 1952 film Derby Day, which is set around The Derby, the 1954 film Aunt Clara with Margaret Rutherford and Sid James, and also in the 1959 film Make Mine a Million.

In March 1957 he appeared on the You Bet Your Life TV quiz show, hosted by Groucho Marx. Even in the 1974 pilot show for Rising Damp Rigsby compares his new tenant, Philip, to the Prince as he had stated he was the son of a chief.

Peter

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On this day 11^h May 1960-1965

On 11/05/1960 the number one single was Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions

On 11/05/1961 the number one single was Blue Moon - The Marcels and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/05/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/05/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Liberal Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/05/1964 the number one single was Don't Throw Your Love Away - Searchers and the number one album was Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Conservative Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/05/1965 the number one single was King of the Road - Roger Miller and the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.