of her, the other side of the equation.
Josephine Baker was an educated professional, a woman of some advantage who, rather than spending her time playing bridge or swanning about town imitating wealthier doyens of the upper classes, became a pioneer, dedicating her life to the field of preventive health care for children. After a private school education, when Vassar proved out of reach, she attended the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, interned at the New England Hospital for Women and eventually moved from private practice to a distinguished career in public service. She lectured, authored books and was elected president of the Babies Welfare Association. As early as 1908, she was the leader of a team of nurses who taught hygiene and disease prevention in the worst districts of the Lower East Side, her efforts resulting in a significant drop in infant mortality. She was one of many remarkable women from relatively comfortable backgrounds who broke all the rules, fought the good fight, tried actively to make the world a better place – usually in the face of hostility and ignorance.
Between 1845 and 1849, four years of relentless blight on the Irish potato crop, at least a million Irish people passed away, most the victims of starvation and disease. Three million others were left absolutely destitute. Their heartless English overlords did nothing to help. As the 1851 census of Ireland puts it:
. . . the once proverbial gaiety and lightness of the peasant people seemed to have vanished completely, and village merriment or marriage festival was no longer heard or even seen.
Marriage, even in furiously Catholic Ireland, was suddenly a very bad idea. If you were a dirt-poor potato farmer and your potatoes weren’t coming in, taking on a wife, much less a family, didn’t make much financial sense. It meant that you’d more than likely starve sooner, rather than later. Any already remote chances of moving up in the world – even in pre-famine Ireland – were diminished by the prospect of a wife and family to feed. People became reluctant to marry early – it made no sense, and parents became less inclined to subdivide their already near-worthless property holdings among heirs, as was the custom.
Irish men and women lived very separate lives. Schools were segregated. Saloons and pubs were the exclusive preserves of men and whatever limited social activity revolved around them. Disapproving clergy and relatives were everywhere, and much of male social activity revolved around drinking. Marriage, increasingly, became based on economic circumstances – and those circumstances were bad and getting worse.
From the mid-nineteenth century, the marriage rate among rural Irish declined dramatically – as did the number of children born, whether within wedlock or out of it. People were getting married less, and even when they did marry, women worked. They’d been running households for years, of course – seeing to the finances, cooking, cleaning, weaving, and in general, doing all those things which men couldn’t, or more accurately, wouldn’t, do. But the harsh realities of an economy based on the cultivation of the now-unreliable potato crop, required that women also work in the fields, digging turf, tending to chickens, selling crops at market. At the end of the day, the husband could go blow off steam at the pub, buy his mates some drinks, shoot a few darts, get stuttering drunk. The wife was left at home. Married couples rarely even ate together. The wife ate alone or with the children, then prepared a meal when hubby staggered home from the pub. As both parties were usually illiterate – or damn close to it – there wasn’t much to talk about in front of the fire. The thought of taking the wife out for a nice walk, maybe a visit to town, did not occur to too many husbands, who felt such a display would in some way diminish them. In short,
Josephine Baker was an educated professional, a woman of some advantage who, rather than spending her time playing bridge or swanning about town imitating wealthier doyens of the upper classes, became a pioneer, dedicating her life to the field of preventive health care for children. After a private school education, when Vassar proved out of reach, she attended the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, interned at the New England Hospital for Women and eventually moved from private practice to a distinguished career in public service. She lectured, authored books and was elected president of the Babies Welfare Association. As early as 1908, she was the leader of a team of nurses who taught hygiene and disease prevention in the worst districts of the Lower East Side, her efforts resulting in a significant drop in infant mortality. She was one of many remarkable women from relatively comfortable backgrounds who broke all the rules, fought the good fight, tried actively to make the world a better place – usually in the face of hostility and ignorance.
Between 1845 and 1849, four years of relentless blight on the Irish potato crop, at least a million Irish people passed away, most the victims of starvation and disease. Three million others were left absolutely destitute. Their heartless English overlords did nothing to help. As the 1851 census of Ireland puts it:
. . . the once proverbial gaiety and lightness of the peasant people seemed to have vanished completely, and village merriment or marriage festival was no longer heard or even seen.
Marriage, even in furiously Catholic Ireland, was suddenly a very bad idea. If you were a dirt-poor potato farmer and your potatoes weren’t coming in, taking on a wife, much less a family, didn’t make much financial sense. It meant that you’d more than likely starve sooner, rather than later. Any already remote chances of moving up in the world – even in pre-famine Ireland – were diminished by the prospect of a wife and family to feed. People became reluctant to marry early – it made no sense, and parents became less inclined to subdivide their already near-worthless property holdings among heirs, as was the custom.
Irish men and women lived very separate lives. Schools were segregated. Saloons and pubs were the exclusive preserves of men and whatever limited social activity revolved around them. Disapproving clergy and relatives were everywhere, and much of male social activity revolved around drinking. Marriage, increasingly, became based on economic circumstances – and those circumstances were bad and getting worse.
From the mid-nineteenth century, the marriage rate among rural Irish declined dramatically – as did the number of children born, whether within wedlock or out of it. People were getting married less, and even when they did marry, women worked. They’d been running households for years, of course – seeing to the finances, cooking, cleaning, weaving, and in general, doing all those things which men couldn’t, or more accurately, wouldn’t, do. But the harsh realities of an economy based on the cultivation of the now-unreliable potato crop, required that women also work in the fields, digging turf, tending to chickens, selling crops at market. At the end of the day, the husband could go blow off steam at the pub, buy his mates some drinks, shoot a few darts, get stuttering drunk. The wife was left at home. Married couples rarely even ate together. The wife ate alone or with the children, then prepared a meal when hubby staggered home from the pub. As both parties were usually illiterate – or damn close to it – there wasn’t much to talk about in front of the fire. The thought of taking the wife out for a nice walk, maybe a visit to town, did not occur to too many husbands, who felt such a display would in some way diminish them. In short,
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