by Eddie

“People do not want the smutty stuff”

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Today, as our choice at the cinema is between a three-part Hobbit and yet another Hunger Games, Dodgy Perth asks: What Would Edith Cowan Do?

For thank goodness the first woman to be elected to an Australia parliament left us her detailed thoughts on the effects of movies.

In 1927, far too many movies contained exciting and thrilling incidents. Mrs Cowan was having none of this. She knew what was good for children. Pictures should be of the “clean, humorous type, devoid of criminals and crimes,” preferably “educational films, depicting industries, sports, travel, and adventure.”

In any case, she continued, going to the movies led to the medical condition known as ‘Fatigue of Brain and Body’ and damaged your eyesight. Worse still, movies could easily “stir into action the sexual side of the child’s outlook”.

“The majority of the people do not want the smutty stuff,” said Mrs Cowan. Instead movies should be such that a “child of eighteen” finds nothing in the film that they did not already know. (Today, I imagine there is little a child of fourteen does not already know!)

Frighteningly, some pictures suggested that married life was not always happy. What if a child saw something that changed their opinion on marriage? What if they started questioning whether mummy was really happy? These things could not be allowed to happen in Perth. Not to our children. Not to our married couples.

But let us not think that Mrs Cowan wasn’t thinking of the poor among us. She certainly was. Children should not be allowed to see movies which contained scenes of wealth and luxury in case it “accentuated the bitter class consciousness already fostered among them”.

Edith Cowan, Dodgy Perth salutes you and your quest to stop Michael Bay from making another frigging film.

by Eddie

Park petters and peeping perverts

In 1950, the Mirror undertook a special investigation into the parks frequented by couples, and the perverts who spied on them. (Presumably, the reporter exempted themselves from this latter category!)

At Weld Square, a well lighted area off Beaufort Street, two men sat on nearby seats and later flitted from tree to tree to peep on courting couples.

Russell Square, at West Perth, is not so popular with couples. It is usually frequented by ‘plonk’ drinkers and the type of habitués there is such that it does not induce courting couples to make it a rendezvous.

But Hyde Park is a place where a lot of peering is done. Men wait and watch and when they see a couple engrossed in lovemaking, take up a vantage point and do their best to see, at close quarters, just what is going on.

In some cases, the ‘Peeping Toms’ have been known to creep up and steal the female’s handbag while the couple are too engrossed to be aware of what is going on. And as the couples are, in the majority of cases, too embarrassed to make a complaint, no report reaches the police.

The worst place for the ‘Peeping Toms’ at present is on the grassed area on the river front on Riverside Drive. Numerous cases of men creeping up on recumbent couples are reported from there.

One night this week a man and wife were sitting quietly there when the husband noticed a man crawling up on them. Result was a bout of fisticuffs, with the ‘Peeping Tom’ rushing madly from the locality.

The police are practically powerless to deal with this type of pervert because few couples who have had such experiences feel like facing the resultant publicity if they lay a complaint.

by Eddie

Dear Santa, please send me a railway smash

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Stuck for last minute presents for a child in your life? Maybe the Kalgoorlie Western Argus of 1904 can help:

Some very ingenious toys are on sale this year, those of the mechanical order being very predominant and very novel.

Among the expensive things is a perfect model of the Decapod, the huge tank engine built by the Great Eastern Railway this year to cope with suburban traffic.

The child of an energetic disposition will enjoy himself in a motor car, big enough for him to ride in. It is propelled by pedals like a bicycle horse.

There is the diver, a little man arrayed in complete uniform, who takes his plunge, remains below for a while, and then returns to the surface like his human counterpart.

The clockwork ‘airship’ is having a very large sale. It is suspended from the ceiling by a string, and, on being round up, sails round and round in a most realistic fashion.

A remarkable piece of mechanism is a clockwork train which climbs and descends inclines by means of a cogwheel underneath. This cog wheel only comes into action when on an inclined track, where it encounters a rack-rail.

The latest train novelty is called the ‘railway smash.’ This wonderful toy consists of two carriages and a goods van, so constructed that when the train is in motion an accident occurs, and the train smashes up in quite a realistic fashion. Of course it can be put together again.

Another novelty of the year are the electric tram-cars. They meet each other on a single line, with an occasional double track for passing. The first tram to arrive on the double portion of the line comes automatically to a standstill until the other has passed the points safely, and then glides away again.

by Eddie

Stocking up for Xmas

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She’s got legs, she knows how to use them

There is a silly media cliché that men are useless at shopping for presents, and usually leave it until 4.30pm on Christmas Eve to start. Unfortunately, the men in the Dodgy Perth office are living examples of this cliché. There is nothing more they would like than a 1930s “office girl” to send out into the hell that is the shopping mall at this time of year.

Speaking of men and shopping, in 1938 the newspapers were full of advice on how to make life easier for the hairier sex.

Christmas comes but once a year—thank heaven! Such is the sentiment of the average man when faced with the annual problem of buying something for ‘her’.

At this time of year miserable specimens wander helplessly among the stocking, handkerchief, perfume and novelty counters, desperately in search of appropriate gifts for women folk. Having failed they either send their office girl out for “anything” or simply buy a couple of pairs of stockings—“you know the sort that women wear nowadays—from a sympathetic saleswoman.

As any woman will tell you, no one can have too many stockings, but there perhaps this year it is time for something different. Something she wouldn’t buy for herself. To our great surprise in this office, it turns out that shops have so many things other than stockings for sale…

not even a mere man should be stumped for ideas this Christmas.

Perth has jewellery counters where you can buy something for even the “most fastidious of wives”. Would you prefer imitation gems or just severely plain? A string of synthetic pearls would make any woman squeal with delight. If not jewellery, how about a dainty evening bag or a handbag in one of the smart new shapes?

Fortunately for us muddle-headed males of the species, it was slowly explained that shops have something called an “assistant” who could aid in the choice of such a gift.

Now, where’s that office girl?

by Eddie

Just girls in fancy dress: 100 years of women’s football

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In honour of Perth Glory women’s team reaching the W-League grand final this Sunday (I’ll be there), Dodgy Perth decided to seek out the first women’s football game played in WA.

The authoritative history of soccer in this State is Richard Kreider’s Paddocks to Pitches. He says that after WWII there were a few ladies social matches, particularly among the Italian community.

However, the first organised women’s soccer game was not until 1971 when the Vel-Belles played the Beauts as a curtain raiser to WA v Moscow Dynamo.

To find women’s football older than this, we need to turn to the domestic version of the sport.

In the late 19th century, when women in other countries were beginning to play games seriously, most men found the idea either ridiculous, or at the very least unladylike.

The West Australian even found space to mock the idea of women’s sport in a lengthy song, of which this verse is typical:

The goal-keeper looked at the ball—quite amazed at it!
Now, the next time it neared her she’d turned to a friend
To examine the cut of her blouse, and to chat on it,
Said the captain, “Miss Bodgers, I wish you’d attend!”
So she turned to see where the ball was, and she sat on it.

With attitudes like this, it is easy to see why women’s sport was slow to develop in WA.

It was not until 29 September 1917 that the first Australian Rules game was played by ladies. It seems that the number of young men away fighting in Europe probably had an influence on the development of the women’s game.

Taking place at Subiaco Oval, the event was organised as a charity fund raiser by Miss Gell Howlett.

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One of the 1917 women’s football teams, these players worked for Foy & Gibson

Taking to the field were a team in maroon and a team in gold. The former won three goals to two.

Even so, this ground-breaking moment in WA sporting history was simply scorned by the media, who referred to it as women in ‘fancy dress’ who showed little talent. Although there was much ‘laughter’, it was said to be a total failure as a game of football.

Seems the women didn’t quite see it that way, since leagues were established both in the metropolitan area and in the Goldfields, and grand finals were keenly fought.

With the centenary of women’s organised sport in WA coming up in a couple of years, Dodgy Perth proposes that the Gell Howlett trophy should be established as an annual competition. Anybody want to organise that?

by Eddie

Bacchanalian revels in flats

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Perhaps it’s surprising that the first flats built in Perth were extremely controversial. As far as the press could see, nothing good was going to come of this new way of living in the 1920s.

Prepare to be shocked by the discovery that unmarried males were renting apartments:

The latest thing in Perth is flats for young single men.

The flats are used not for residential purposes but for the wild parties of these young high-livers and in more than one instance the practice has become a scandal among the neighbours.

But it would be a worse scandal if some highly respectable Perth parents knew the sort of place their sons were keeping and also the type of resorts some of their daughters were frequenting.

Most of these young fellows are sons of well-to-do families and the result is that they have more to spend than the average working boy. Hence they are not content to take their enjoyment at public dances and shows as ordinary people do. And as the parties they hold are not of the kind that would be sanctioned in their own homes they have to look elsewhere.

On three or four nights a week the bright young bloods invite their girl friends down to these places. If the parties were quite alright nothing need be said. But young men don’t go to these measures for parties that are quite alright.

The truth is that they are wild affairs in the real sense and if a girl isn’t used to drinking before she goes there she finds it very hard to avoid it once inside. To put it briefly some of these well-educated sons of wealthy families are priceless young scoundrels and they don’t scruple to get decent girls along to these flats under the belief that they are coming along to an ordinary private party.

Of course there is nothing in the law to prevent people keeping such establishments if they please. At the same time it is not a practice that is any credit to the flash youths who have started it in Perth. As it is most of them have more money than morals.

So in their own interests we advise them to leave the flat habit to the older roués and enjoy themselves normally as the average healthy-minded young man does.

Private flats for young men are sure to cause trouble in the end.

by Eddie

The frogs were having a good time of it

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If you’ve not been keeping up, the story so far:

Henry Whittall Venn is a pompous oaf, and WA Commissioner of Railways, who has fallen in love with a young married actress, Eve. She doesn’t seem particularly keen on the old bugger, but who knows what might happen?

Venn has had Eve’s husband arrested on a trumped-up charge, so he can send a love letter, which he is convinced will forever win over his intended. Never mind that Venn also has a wife.

It is getting late in the evening, and Venn is coming towards the end of his letter.

Now read on:

Eve was travelling to Melbourne on the troopship Orient—the Boer War was still raging—and Venn was concerned she might mix with soldiers. He warned her that, as a man of the world, he understood these men, and she should not fall for their fake charms or she would suffer as a consequence.

Although inexperienced at courtship, Venn was no fool. He instructed her that letters were to be sent to the Weld Club, not his home or office. If they were sent to his home, his wife would find them; at the office, his secretary.

The letter repeatedly assured Eve that the stiff, pompous git she had met at the party was dead, and now he was but a man “who looked now and then into a pair of brown eyes and thought the frogs were having a good time of it, because they would sing on, and be near you while I was far away.”

Suddenly, Venn became anxious. Why was Eve keeping her Melbourne address from him? Was she just being careful? Or was she being untrue before their relationship had started?

No… he must not think like that. Instead, he decided to praise her brief note to him, describing it as being like “the fragrance of the roses.” What a charmer the old man was turning out to be.

With a final warning—Please destroy this letter after you have read it—Venn went to bed, ready to post the note in the morning.

To be continued…

by Eddie

Egotistical and uncaring: FloHum on 1960s mothers

First female councillor at the City of Perth. Awarded an OBE. Had a kiosk on the Esplanade named after her. And a tiny little park on the corner of St George’s Terrace and Mount Street.

Surely, Florence Hummerston must have been a wonderful lady. After all, look at the gentle love beaming from Cedric Baxter’s caricature above.

Let’s continue our series of excerpts from The Gap, with Auntie Flo’s observations on women who want careers. I’m sure they will be heart-warming.

Today we find so many mothers setting their children aside and going out to work because they believe it is more interesting and because it satisfies their egotistical desire for admission to society.

Okay. So Flo isn’t exactly Germaine Greer. But let’s read on, maybe she’ll soften up a bit.

The price of this, the loss of love and respect of their children is no concern.
They know they are neglected. They pretend to love the mother because they are afraid.

Quick date check. Nope. Definitely written 1962, not 1862. Anyway, Councillor Hummerston, do continue.

The argument that a mother can properly care for her children, her husband and her home and undertake a job which requires her daily absence from the home is unsound.

Do tell us why…

There is no time to cut lunches so the children go off with a few pence to spend at the tuck shop and the children’s lunch is usually chips, sweets and a bottle of fizz, as they call it.

Oh FloHum, you are so hip and up-to-date with what the young folk are saying. No wonder they all love you.

And what happens to children of those evil homes where the mother (perish the thought!) has a job?

With revenge they rejoice in their ‘day of reckoning’ and set out on a crime spree.
They are the delinquents, the problem we hear so much about.

So, if you were at school in the late 1950s or early 1960s, had a working mother and ever partook in a disgusting bottle of ‘fizz’ (as I believe the cool cats say), take a good look in the mirror. Auntie Flo did not approve of you, and there was no hope for your future.