September 17th Letter

[The Grave Maurice]

I've a gig tonight and off out soon.. I'll be beating me own tom-tom..

Sorry, completely off topic, I know, but it calls to mind the old joke: What do you call people who always hang around with musicians? Drummers.

[White-Knight]

ha ha ha! lol..ooh..I seem to have wandered into Maurice's big funny clever boys' playground. Help!

yeah, very funny Maurice, you old sniper!

I ain't bothered about sitting under the apple tree whilst you poke around with yer big stick and topple off yer ladder!

So start singing, singer! let me count you in...I've read your posts..you're pretty well informed.. tell me what YOU make of this letter...

WK.

p.s.
'95 per cent of this job is hanging around'. Charlie Watts. Didn't do him any harm either!

[White-Knight]

AP..thanks...I will ,having left Maurice's music lesson, proceed to the real big lads' class, just as soon as I've worked out which apples Stuart prefers.

Ta.

WK

[The Grave Maurice]

Gee, W-K, don't get your knickers in a twist. In my youth, I myself played the drums. It was only a joke.

[White-Knight]

easy for you to say, i played 'em in my youth too and still play 'em..i'm a bit sensitive about drummer jokes ..imagine how many times I've heard that one..

plus..i thought it was a bit more than that...not just a drummer joke but a bit more of an attack on my hanging around these
boards, as a self confessed amateur, relative to the many serious researchers here..so i was countering in fashion...is all! but its all just banter..didn't realise i sounded much ruffled and you're entitled to say what you like G.M!

I'm the last one to want a public stand up here though, believe me..enough of that already...I see Chris and AP are at it again though, bless 'em!

as for knickers, I'm too sexy to wear 'em.

so, ahem...meanwhile....the letter?

WK.

[Cap'n Jack]

'What do you call people who always hang around with musicians? Drummers.'

I would just have loved to be around when the Grave Orifice said that to Keith Moon.

[caz]

Ah, WK, I've always been drawn to this missive from the 10th October 1888:

'Jack the Ripper
Sir
You had better be carefull how you send those Bloodhounds about the streets, because of the single females wearing stained napkins - women smell very strong when they are unwell.'

Note how the writer seems to be under the impression that 'single females' only might suffer from this delicate complaint. That speaks worlds to me...

But we've been through this before, AP. In 1888, married females tended to be permanently pregnant during their childbearing years, making it predominantly the single ones who would be wearing stained napkins for one week in every four. So it doesn't speak 'worlds' to me. It speaks of a letter writer who was simply aware of this contemporary fact of life.

Love,

Caz
X

PS When asked if he thought Ringo was the best drummer in the world, John Lennon is said to have replied that he wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles.

[Cap'n Jack]

Absolutely Caz
however I have dwelled since then on this topic.
You see my understanding is that between 1800 and 1900 there was an actual decline in the birth rate, from 7 children per family in 1800 to a much reduced 3.5 children in 1900, which sort of means you might have been right in 1800 but you are probably wrong by 1888.
So the monthly vagaries would have affected married women just as much as single women for the majority of their fertile life.
My conclusion?
We need to discuss this more.

[White-Knight]

lol! Moon would have shoved a stick up the Orifice's orifice.and the rest..

Ringo got seriously depressed after that remark from no1 Beatle!I hope you are suitably ashamed of yourself, Caz! lol! very unfair and inaccurate too, like Moon he had a unique and inestimable style!
quite wickedly funny though I laughed too when I first heard it..about a hundred years ago .sigh..and,inspite of Thomas The Tank ,I'm sure he's crying into his millions now, so I'll put the violin down.

I seem to have turned the thread into a repository for crap, old drummer jokes. But then I am a crap old drummer!

Anyhoo, apart from miscarriage adjustments , surely the point holds..though are these national figures AP? Wouldn't class and location specific stats paint yet another picture?

W.K.

[caz]

Yes, W.K. If AP means the live birth rate for the country as a whole, not including miscarriages, stillbirths and abortions, I'm still not sure there would be anything like as many fertile married women as single ones wandering around the East End at night wearing stained napkins.

My late father-in-law was born in 1921 in South East London and was the youngest of thirteen children who survived infancy. He always maintained that his mother had at least as many miscarriages as live births. Someone on my own father's side had twenty-one children by two wives in the LVP (and yes, his first wife died in childbirth), but several died very young.

In order to achieve AP's 3.5 children per family by 1900, I suspect the total number of pregnancies would have been considerably greater. A poor East End mother could have been pregnant more often than not, if several of those pregnancies were very shortlived or otherwise failed to produce a happy outcome.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

Not to mention the opinion of men surrounding women and reproduction would not necessarily keep pace with the facts of the times. So just because the birth rate declines doesn't mean that the perception of the married, barefoot and and continuously pregnant woman wouldn't have still been in the mindset when the comment was made even with all the other factors (like there would still have been higher birth rates among the lower class than the upper as Caz pointed out).

[White-Knight]

that is all as I suspected..especially the higher rates amongst the working class..my own family history too bears this out..it seems the ladies have it!?

just to squeeze some more drops from the lemon, however..though it might well represent a more commomplace mindset than AP would perhaps have us believe, its still a pretty unusual thing to set down in a letter, isn't it? I mean who would be of a mind to actually write that down, in that manner and style, and to what end? Most of the letters seem lurid and blood thirsty..but what kind of a detail and 'complaint' is this to start picking up on, and for why?

Stewart has kindly agreed to send me a copy of the original..when my cursed e-mail is fixed ..I want to check it out for itchy/scratchy calligrphy style and see what else it might suggest, visually.

WK.

[mac-the-kipper]

'What do you call people who always hang around with musicians? Drummers.'

I would just have loved to be around when the Grave Orifice said that to Keith Moon.

And me.

[mac-the-kipper]

Mac...
George and Laszlo Biro. Hungarian inventors... 1938.
your question in bold; to what end, exactly?
you miss my point(s) do you not? or am I missing yours?
I'm all sympathy for you and that letter.

AP- I thought that would be your answer, just checking. Many thanks. For what it's worth, I'm in agreement with you on all counts. Though to state as if fact, that the letter is another hoax from 1888, after all the hoo-hah on this thread,you do like trouble don't you? ..though I ain't the one to give you any!

thankings muchly,

WK.

Poor soul. You don't know me at all do you?

[White-Knight]

obviously not.
I had taken you at face value for what you said on this thread.
but if that ain't good enough ,cheerio!

another smack for the newbie, eh!
gee, you're a lovely bunch!

WK