Uncovering a History of Secrets

There's a small estate in the Buckinghamshire countryside where extraordinary things happened. 

The history of Bletchley Park is so intricately complex that I'm just going to give an overview of what happened here:

It started in 1938 when a small group of people from MI6 and the Government Code and Cypher School came to a mansion on an abandoned plot of land. These people were government officials, academics and mathematicians who created a team of Codebreakers with a mission to crack the Nazi codes and ciphers.

The most famous cipher system cracked at Bletchley Park was the Enigma, but they also broke lower-level German and Japanese code systems. The ingenuity of Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman to create complex electro-mechanical devices, the Bombe, facilitated the Codebreakers by narrowing down the million, million, million possible Enigma wheel configurations to a manageable number for further hand-testing. It was reported by veterans at Bletchley Park who were interviewed for the audio guide that the work accomplished at the Park may have shortened World War II by two years. Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, visited the Park in 1941 to show his support. When resources were needed, the heads of the Codebreakers appealed to Churchill, to which he responded with,"Make sure they have all the want extreme priority and report to me that this has been done." 

What is most amazing about Bletchley Park is the pivotal role women played, many of whom were between 18 and 24. Women worked in all roles at Bletchley Park - intercepting enemy codes, deciphering, translating, and analyzing the codes, couriering information, administrative and clerical work, operating codebreaking machines (such as Bombe and Colossus.) Members of the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) were assigned to operate the Bombe machines. Women across classes worked together and were treated as equals within the Park, recognized and promoted based on their accomplishments and merits. 

History of Medicine: Smallpox

In a rare moment when my professional life intersects with this hobby while reading for my book club, I was introduce to Lady Marty Wortley Montagu. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her son, Edward Wortley Montagu, and attendants
National Portrait Gallery

Montagu is known as an poet and prolific letter-writer. She was also the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and played an important role in the promotion of the smallpox inoculation in the eighteenth century. 

Smallpox has affected humanity so profoundly that inoculating against smallpox, i.e. vaccinating, is called variolation after the the Latin for smallox Variola vera for "spotted pimple."Variolation is the deliberate infection of the smallpox virus to bring on a mild case of smallpox to create an immunity against the disease. 

While in Turkey in 1717, Montagu was exposed to variolation against smallpox through the practice of ingrafting, which involved a process by which pus from an individual with a mild case of smallpox was spread into an open wound of an uninfected person. Montague had lost a brother to smallpox and considered the risk of becoming sick from inoculation worth taking. 

There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take the pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue, for the good of mankind. (Source)

Montagu inocluated her five-year old son while in Turkey and upon her return to England, she indeed contract doctors to spread the word about variolation. In 1721 when a smallpox epidemic broke out in England, she had her four-year old daughter inoculated by a physician who had been at the Turkish embassy, Charles Maitland. She publicized the event to spread the practice and even persuaded the Prince and Princess of Wales, to inoculate their own children, all of who recovered. 

With the procedure deemed safe after a series of experiments on orphans, prisoners, and the royal family, the procedure became more common as a method for preventing smallpox. 

Rights for Women!

In my travels in upstate New York, I passed through Seneca Falls where, in 1848, the Women’s Rights Convention occurred on July 19 and 20 in the Wesleyan Chapel. The church was known as a haven for antislavery activity, political rallies, and free speech events.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, and Mary Ann M'Clintock met in the home of Jane Hunt in Waterloo, New York to plan the First Women's Rights Convention. This was the first meeting to be held for the purpose of discussing the “social, civil, and religious conditions and the rights of woman.” It was the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the United States. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

At the time the convention was held, women were not equal to men in the law, church, or government. They could not vote, hold elective office, attend college, or earn a living wage. If married, they could not make legal contracts, divorce, or gain custody of their children. These hindrances on a woman's person and actions dictated the path of her life and, in the broader perspective, effected the structure of politics and economies, society and culture. 

The Report of the Woman's Rights Convention, a copy of the minutes from the 1848 meeting, was circulated at local and national women's rights conventions. (The text of the report can be read here.) 

The Declaration of Sentiments was presented at the Women's Rights Convention. Based on the Declaration of Independence, it stated that "all men and women are created equal" and demanded equal rights for women and the right to vote. The Wesleyan Chapel, a National Historical Park, displays the entire Declaration of Sentiments in as a monument to this moment in history that changed everything everyone had ever known. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

A Room of One's Own

Apologies for the lack of blog posts in the past two months. I've switched jobs and so with all my efforts directed at "life" there has been little time for "play." Until now! 

I recently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit "Rooms With a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century," which depicts interiors with windows by 19th-century European artists. The show explores the open window as a favored concept of Romantic painters. The pieces span from the early 1800s to the 1860s. (To place these works into historical context, parts of Europe were recovering from the ravages of the Napoleonic Wars while in others there were liberal revolts that gave rise to the age of nationalism.)

There were many pieces in this exhibit that struck me as incredibly intimate and thought-provoking for a variety of reasons:

1. Caspar Daniel Fredrich's "Woman at the Window", 1822

There is such a deep intimacy to witnessing this peaceful moment. I feel as though I have just walked into this room where this woman is standing and am afraid to interrupt her. Yet, I'm utterly enthralled with watching her watch something outside. She is leaning forward and slightly turned to get a better look out of the window. What does she see? Is she expecting someone or is there something happening outside? In addition to my curiosity of what is drawing her attention, I enjoy the green palatte of this piece (better seen in person than on a screen) and the complimentary hues of her green dress, the green walls and shutters, and the lighter shades of green seen through the window.

 

2. Adolph Menzel's "Sleeping Seamstress by the Window"

This sweet little image is of the artist's sister. She was too busy working to pose for him, but he was lucky and captured her at an opportune time of unguardedness when she drifted off to sleep. The theme of intimacy of this show is epitimozed in this work because what is more serene and private than that of a sleeping form? I imagine that she was too busy to pose for her brother because she has too much work to do, and in working so hard she has exhausted herself. So she takes a brief reprieve to put her work down and shut her eyes in the warm sun of this day.

 

As an alternative to the pieces that allow us a peek into private moments, there are those that allow you to almost step into the scene and take a place in the moment the artist has chosen to depict:

3. Caspar Daniel Fredrich's "View from the Artist's Studio, Window on the Left", 1805-06

This is the river Elbe from Friedrich's studio in Dresden. This piece is more than simply showing the perspective of the Elbe from the room. It is a juxtaposition of the near view of the window and wall and the far view of outside the window as well as the balance between the dark interior and the bright outdoors. This simple work is a metaphor for the Romantic's unfulfilled longing for possibilities; of what is beyond the window, what is beyond the confines of his life, what he hopes for, what he wants, what he portrays on the confined space of his canvas within the confined space of his studio.

 

4. Carl Ludwig Kaaz's "View from Grassi's Villa toward the Plauensche Grande near Dresden," 1807

This piece surprisingly is my favorite. I felt a true sense of realism.  As I approached it on the wall, I simultaneously felt as if I was approaching the window. I was transported to Dresden, looking out on this quiet serene countryside, feeling the breeze, and hearing the rustling of the trees. By stepping into the artist's world, I became not a viewer of this work but its subject. I imagined that the artist is standing behind me capturing me as I peer out the window because something caught my attention and drew it away from my book, which I've set down on the window sill.  In that instance I felt like Fredrich's "Woman at the Window" in which a private moment is captured before it disappears. 

Sacrifices in the Advancement of Public Health

I have been reading Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I've copied a summary of the book below from the author's website. I could not eloquently explain the complex and intricate plot that Ms. Skloot delivers to us with great skill: 

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.

We take for granted the remarkable events that had to occur for us to be able to live healthy lives in environments that do not threaten our existence. We are able to walk down clean streets that are not swamped in sewage and garbage. If we catch a cold or have a headache, we can pop into our local drugstores for a few pills to ease our symptoms until our immune systems can battle the foreign invaders and return us to health. 

 

But, there are faces and life stories behind the scientific discoveries that have made advances in our health and medical knowledge and allowed our lives to be cleaner and healthier. Henrietta Lacks' illness and the resulting events that unfurled are unfortunate for her and for her family. However, the ordeal that she and her family experienced is not the first intersection of public health and sexual politics. Ms. Lacks was one of many women who suffered because she was a woman in a patriarchal society and who sacrificed more than just her cells for the good of public health

The Contagious Diseases (CD) Acts were first passed in 1864, amended in 1866, 1868, and 1869, and ultimately repealed in 1886. These parliamentary acts were an attempt to regulate prostitution in British garrison towns so as to control the spread of venereal diseases, referred to as "contagious diseases" at the time. With these acts, British law enshrined the belief and practice that women were a source of contamination. 

The CD Acts defined any woman detained by the police within an area of garrison towns as a common prostitute, regardless if they were innocent mothers, sisters, or daughters of a garrisoned man. Any woman arrested was charged as a prostitute and was forced to comply and undergo a horrific and intrusive medical examination. If she refused, she was imprisoned. 

Though the CD Acts meant to contain the spread of venereal disease for very serious and vital public health reasons, they instead created a crime by their observance. Whether the women victimized by these laws were in fact prostitutes or were innocent, women were targeted and persecuted because they were women.  No attempt was made to regulate the spread of disease by penalizing the men who paid for sex. The working-class women who performed this kind of work as a result of economic circumstances were "fallen women" whose sins were greater than the man's. 

The abuses caused by the CD Acts and the debates that resulted and ultimately led to their repeal were powerful catalysts for the Women's Movement. 

Source:

The Victorians by A.N. Wilson