Historical Facts That Counter Fundie's Romantic Views

[Katiebug]

What's particularly disturbing to me is that this isn't just a phenomenon that exists in fundie circles. Nostalgia for 'the good old days' is actually quite common. It's easy to fantasize and recall the [subjective] 'good' while ignoring the bad.

There's a book by Stephanie Coontz called, "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap" that is about this very phenomenon.

[Muriel]

Many of us possibly know people who are minorly disabled from it. There is an older family member in my family who has legs with several inches difference between them because of it. You just don't know this because he has the lift hidden in his shoes.

And even in the 50's and 60's mumps was still common, my parents both had it and were lucky to survive with no long term effects.

Even in the 70's, in France at least, as a child I had mumps, measles, rubella and chicken pox... I still remember the horrible ear pain from mumps and the high fever from measles :(

I think the vaccines are available since the 80's here, all my children (born in mid 90'/early 00's) have been vaccinated, except for chicken pox, this one is not done in France (I don't know why)

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Can i throw terrible working conditions in there with poor maternal and childhood mortality rates?

Before the 20th century, there were virtually NO conditions to protect workers. Particularly as the Industrial Revolution started to kick off. You have horror stories like little children, 5 or 6, being strapped onto carts like donkeys and forced to work in mines, 16 hours days, children and women working around factory machines that would quite happily yank of their hair or a few of their fingers (and it's easy to screw up when you work 16/7). I have a book that talks about how some early railroad companies were reluctant to purchase air brakes, after they were invented, even though countless men died setting brakes by hand, because they didn't want to cough up the cash until the government made them do it--years later. Market will regulate, my ass.

There were also no environmental or sanitation standards back then, either. People would literally dump their waste into the streets. Apparently the Thames being so filthy during Victorian times that talked abwasout it being not uncommon for people to die of infection if they fell in. Back then basic goods like tea and flour were cut with fillers, so the happy natural foods idea is bullshit, too.

[Muriel]

Can i throw terrible working conditions in there with poor maternal and childhood mortality rates?

Before the 20th century, there were virtually NO conditions to protect workers. Particularly as the Industrial Revolution started to kick off. You have horror stories like little children, 5 or 6, being strapped onto carts like donkeys and forced to work in mines, 16 hours days, children and women working around factory machines that would quite happily yank of their hair or a few of their fingers (and it's easy to screw up when you work 16/7). I have a book that talks about how some early railroad companies were reluctant to purchase air brakes, after they were invented, even though countless men died setting brakes by hand. Market will regulate, my ass.

There were also no environmental or sanitation standards back then, either. People would literally dump their waste into the streets. Apparently the Thames being so filthy during Victorian times that talked abwasout it being not uncommon for people to die of infection if they fell in. Back then basic goods like tea and flour were cut with fillers, so the happy natural foods idea is bullshit, too.

Yeah, fundies should read Dickens books too understand that, and for France the ones by Emile Zola, but some of them as quite explicit and they could be defrauded :lol:

[patsymae]

In my hometown there is a Colonial-era cemetery. Lots of family plots that are one man, many kids and several wives--one dies after childbirth, he marries another..and so on.

Of course, even if you were one of those rich Southern plantation ladies, under that hoop skirt you would be wearing a belt with ribbons attached--and at the bottom of the ribbons would be small pots of honey to catch lice. What fun!

My mother's father was born in a tenement in New York around the turn of the century--lots of kids and one girl. She joined the convent as soon as she was 18. She was religious, but I think she--and millions of others--joined the church because that was the only option to get educated and not have to live in a crappy tenement having baby after baby.

My maternal grandmother died in a mental hospital. They had lots of money so it wasn't povery, it was ignorance. She just had too many kids, one of whom died at 3 months old, and nobody understood post-partum Depression.

Yeah, we're in a big mess now but how can anyone who wasn't a Robber Baron possibly think things were better before?

[constantgardener]

For a shocking insight into life in London in the early 20th century I would highly recommend a book called 'Round About a Pound a Week' by Maud Pember Reeves. I first read this as teen and it is what got me interested in women's issues and social history. A group called the Fabian Society (still going) made an in-depth study of women's lives in working-class London around 1910. The level of detail is absolutely fascinating - they focus on about 30 families, their living conditions, what they ate, what they earned, how they spent their days, how they managed on very little money, how they cared for their children. Every time I read a fundie blog idealising large families in days gone by I think of this book. A quote to illustrate my point:

"Though fond of the children, this life of stress and strain makes the women dread nothing so much as the conviction that there is to be still another baby with its inevitable consequences - more crowding, more illness, more worry, more work, and less food, less strength, less time to manage with."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keyw ... pjsto0g4_b

[Sweetpea1]

Maybe this was mentioned, but the Flu epidemic during the end of WW1. If you want a good documentary on the subject, try the American Experience program on it (I think it's on netflix.) The program has interviews on it- a lot of them were kids at the time of the epidemic. One of the stories I remember was of a child playing on stacks of caskets. Apparantly, funeral homes were running out of space to keep the caskets.

[Lady_M]

There were also no environmental or sanitation standards back then, either. People would literally dump their waste into the streets. Apparently the Thames being so filthy during Victorian times that talked abwasout it being not uncommon for people to die of infection if they fell in. Back then basic goods like tea and flour were cut with fillers, so the happy natural foods idea is bullshit, too.

This makes me think of Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. Very little charity, the major government social programs weren't in existence, long hours, corruption, and the descriptions of the meatpacking industry definitely make it sound 1906 was a fantastic time to live (not).

Give me refrigeration, social programs, a 40 hour workweek, and the FDA any day.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

This makes me think of Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. Very little charity, the major government social programs weren't in existence, long hours, corruption, and the descriptions of the meatpacking industry definitely make it sound 1906 was a fantastic time to live (not).

Give me refrigeration, social programs, a 40 hour workweek, and the FDA any day.

Let's not forget penicillin.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

More fun reading:

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5571/

Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his fellows say that “He’s got his boy to carry round wherever he goes.â€

The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners' consumption.

I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was pellucid [clear], and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust, and for many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of anthracite I had swallowed...

Boys twelve years of age may be legally employed in the mines of West Virginia, by day or by night, and for as many hours as the employers care to make them toil or their bodies will stand the strain. Where the disregard of child life is such that this may be done openly and with legal sanction, it is easy to believe what miners have again and again told me—that there are hundreds of little boys of nine and ten years of age employed in the coal mines of this state.

[Hane]

The reality of my grandmother's life (she was born in 1894 of Italian immigrants, in New York City) didn't truly hit home with me until I visited the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I saw exactly how she lived as a child and as a young woman.

We always kidded Grandma about how she loved washing dishes, and said that hot and cold running water were a "luxury"--by the time her kids were grown, she and Grandpa were very well-to-do, thanks in large part to her hard work and financial sense. But in the New York City tenements, she'd had to fill buckets at the pump in the courtyard, lug them upstairs, and boil the water on a coal stove.

She also suffered one stillbirth, and one "incomplete" miscarriage, in which the fetus died inside her and she became badly infected.

Yeah, Grandma's life was a picnic. I can only imagine what her mother's life was like.

[Hane]

Oh, and I just started reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," about the lives of immigrants in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the last century. 'Nuff said.

[Triplet3]

For a contemporary account of 1840s London, as it was for the majority, I strongly recomend reading Henry Mayhew's classic work 'London Labour and the London Poor', which describes absolutely horrifying poverty and suffering.

Volume 1: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/moden ... yLond.html

Volume 2: http://dl.tufts.edu/view_text.jsp?pid=t ... 5.DO.00078

Volume 3: http://dl.tufts.edu/view_text.jsp?pid=t ... 5.DO.00079

(For volumes 2 and 3 you have to click on the little arrow to the left of each chapter-section heading on the left of the page, then clink on the links).

A couple of quotes from volume 3:

THERE is a world of wisdom to be learnt at the Asylum for the Houseless Poor. Those who wish to be taught in this, the severest school of all, should pay a visit to Playhouseyard, and see the homeless crowds gathered about the Asylum, waiting for the first opening of the doors, with their bare feet, blue and ulcerous with the cold, resting for hours on the ice and snow in the streets, and the bleak stinging wind blowing through their rags. To hear the cries of the hungry, shivering children, and the wrangling of the greedy men, scrambling for a bed and a pound of dry bread, is a thing to haunt one for life. There are 400 and odd creatures utterly destitute— mothers with infants at their breasts—fathers with boys holding by their side—the friendless —the penniless—the shirtless, shoeless, breadless, homeless; in a word, the very poorest of this the very richest city in the world.

The following quote is from a section called 'Lives of the Boy Inmates in the Casual Wards of the London Workhouses':

The last statement I took was that of a boy of thirteen. I can hardly say that he was clothed at all. He had no shirt, and no waistcoat; all his neck and a great part of his chest being bare. A ragged cloth jacket hung about him, and was tied, so as to keep it together, with bits of tape. What he had wrapped round for trousers did not cover one of his legs, while one of his thighs was bare. He wore two old shoes; one tied to his foot with an old ribbon, the other a woman"s old boot. He had an old cloth cap. His features were distorted somewhat, through being swollen with the cold. "I was born," he said, "at a place called Hadley, in Kent. My father died when I was three days old, I"ve heard my mo- ther say. He was married to her, I believe, but I don"t know what he was. She had only me. My mother went about begging, sometimes taking me with her; at other times she left me at the lodging-house in Hadley. She went in the country, round about Tunbridge and there, begging. Sometimes she had a day"s work. We had plenty to eat then, but I haven"t had much lately. My mother died at Hadley a year ago. I didn"t know how she was buried. She was ill a long time, and I was out begging; for she sent me out to beg for myself a good while before that, and when I got back to the lodging-house they told me she was dead. I had sixpence in my pocket, but I couldn"t help crying to think I"d lost my mother. I cry about it still. I didn"t wait to see her buried, but I started on my own account. I met two navvies in Bromley, and they paid my first night"s lodging; and there was a man passing, going to London with potatoes, and the navvies gave the man a pot of beer to take me up to London in the van, and they went that way with me. I came to London to beg, thinking I could get more there than anywhere else, hearing that London was such a good place. I begged; but sometimes wouldn"t get a farthing in a day; often walking about the streets all night. I have been begging about all the time till now. I am very weak—starving to death. I never stole anything: I always kept my hands to myself. A boy wanted me to go with him to pick a gentleman"s pocket. We was mates for two days, and then he asked me to go picking pockets; but I wouldn"t. I know it"s wrong, though I can neither read nor write. The boy asked me to do it to get into prison, as that would be better than the streets. He picked pockets to get into prison. He was starving about the streets like me. I never slept in a bed since I"ve been in London: I am sure I haven"t: I generally slept under the dry arches in Weststreet, where they"re building houses—I mean the arches for the cellars. I begged chiefly from the Jews about Petticoat-lane, for they all give away bread that their children leave— pieces of crust, and such-like. I would do anything to be out of this misery."

[Noon]

Of course, even if you were one of those rich Southern plantation ladies, under that hoop skirt you would be wearing a belt with ribbons attached--and at the bottom of the ribbons would be small pots of honey to catch lice. What fun!

Interesting. I've never heard that before, and am curious how the logistics would work. Do you have any more info? My Google-fu is pulling a blank :think:

[PennySycamore]

Yeah, fundies should read Dickens books too understand that, and for France the ones by Emile Zola, but some of them as quite explicit and they could be defrauded :lol:

Emile Zola's Germinal, a novel about the coal mining in 19th century northern France, not only has a breastfeeding mother in it, but also a young woman who works in the mines and labor struggles.

[FireIsCatching89]

I second what everyone else has said- reading about the conditions young girls in Lowell, MA mills when I was a wee thing (about 10 or 12) is what first interested me in this sort of thing. I love women's history, feminist pop culture studies, etc. etc. I've added a couple books to my Amazon lists b/c of this thread.

For some more stuff to contradict the fundie ideal history, I recommend the documentary "Mental: A History of the Madhouse" about the history of mental health treatment in the US and UK. It was just brutal. As someone with psych issues (and frequent bacterial sinus infections!), I am so grateful for modern medicine. And as a recent college graduate, I appreciate and revere the women (and men!) who worked to make college accessible for women and the brave women who went before me when BAs were considered suspect.

For more recent "reality" I'd make the fundies watch "October Sky" with Jake Gyllenhaal. It's Hollywood, that's true, but I think it does a pretty good job of painting the desolate sort of life in a West Virginian mining town in the 1950s. A mine explosion kills people, most kids don't go to college, you see poverty and alcoholism, etc. etc. It's not pretty, the ol' "Leave It to Beaver" era.

[YPestis]

I always laugh at people who get nostalgic for the "good ol' days". My parents grew up in a third world country and lived like the people of yore....no electricity, no running water, little access to modern medical care, both parents losing siblings to disease. This was in the 1960's! They had to live through a famine. They washed clothing by hand. They collected kindling for cooking, bathed in streams....that's the lives of 95% of the population back in the "good ol' days".

My mother remembers having to stand on top of a box to reach the wok to cook for her family of five. My dad worked a full day in the fields before he hit his teens. This was life for most kids. My grandmother's idea of caring for her kids was keeping them fed and maybe sending a couple to school. She cooked, clean and did field work and sent her oldest to babysit the younger kids, preferably away from the house so she can get chore done.

My other grandmother worked all day as a common laborer with a baby on her back. Her two oldest did the cooking, cleaning and babysitting the rest of the kids. There was no lazy days to read (neither grandmother was functionally literate). There was no fancy dinners (rice and steam veggies if you're lucky, corn during the famine years). Women didn't stay home to knit and crotchet for fun. You darned your socks, made your shoes and mended your clothes so many times you forget what color the original clothing was in. You were lucky to get a couple of new pairs of shirts per year. Water was lugged in from a well. You took a sponge bath because there's no indoor plumbing. Both my grandfathers lived far away from their families for extended periods due to jobs. My one grandfather lived in another city because there were no jobs for him in his town.

I don't get this whole yearning for the "simple days". There was nothing simple or peaceful about watching your children die. Lugging water from a well. Going hungry at night. And what's even more laughable is that my WORKING parents have said they spend more time with me, and have taken greater care with raising me, than either of their moms growing up in the so-called "good ol' days".

Most women did not spend fulltime caring for children, they were busy managing a household and trying to survive. My parents could come home from work and spend hours with me. I spent my days in kindergarten and school playing and learning. My parents grew up having to care for those younger than them. Their moms only took care of the babies because they require so much more care. Toddlers were either left in the care of older siblings who may as young as five years old, or sometimes left alone. My mother said her toddler sister was left in the house by herself because her mother was not allowed to bring her child to work. Her sister wandered off twice and they almost lost her. Truth was, poor women (i.e most women) had little power in their lives. They were discriminated at in the workplace and paid little. My grandmothers couldn't afford childcare but also couldn't afford not to work.

In many ways, the "good ol' days" were extremely hostile to families as they forced mothers to leave their toddlers alone at home, or forced children to work long hours. I guess those fundies skipped over these little details when learning about history. Growing up, my parents had fundie friends who had similar nostagic trips....for which both my parents quickly corrected them on their false assumptions. There's a reason why people want to migrate to developed nations. Those parents would love to have the luxury of arguing over the Mommy Wars, or trying figure out quality time with the kids. These fundies have no idea how good they have it NOW.

[RachelB]

The idea that back in the good old days, men worked and women were keepers at home doesn't stand up to data, does it? Both my grandmother worked outside the home at least at some point in their lives-- my maternal grandma in a factory, my paternal grandma teaching ebil public school. Back a generation, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather met each other while working independently as missionaries. Their kids were raised in part by a nanny. Great-Grandma did not need to work for financial reasons. But her language skills were so much better than her husband's that no one ever suggested that she quit working at the mission school when they started having children. If memory serves, she and her husband were both working for the Reform church, which apparently was a lot more pragmatic at the time than Doug would have you believe.

Nthing, too, what people have said already about working conditions. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire was just 100 years ago-- you don't have to go far back at all for life to have been tragically bad for most people.

It's nice, too, that corrective lenses are widely available and much more affordable than they used to be. Sewing piecework by dim light while unable to see the needle sounds miserable.

[terranova]

Do not get me into this one: the appalling knowledge of history displayed by some of these people really gets me annoyed. I remember writing a very long post countering the Botkin girls' glorification of Anne Boleyn here on one occasion - and that's just one example.

HOW were they able to glorify Anne Boleyn??? Do they think she was some kind of Christian martyr? I love the Tudor period and Henry VIII and his wifes, but I've always understood AB was a bit of a slut, or at least lacking in serious moral integrity.

[Sweetpea1]

HOW were they able to glorify Anne Boleyn??? Do they think she was some kind of Christian martyr? I love the Tudor period and Henry VIII and his wifes, but I've always understood AB was a bit of a slut, or at least lacking in serious moral integrity.

Tudor history is an interest of mine, too. I had the same impression of Anne. I think they kind of look at her (and possibly Henry) as important parts of the Reformation.

[muffynbear]

Do you ever notice in pictures from "the good ol days" , no one ever smiled? Everyone looked miserable. Was it bad form back then to smile during pictures?

[Librul]

RE: people's expressions in old photos.

The exposure time was longer, and people had to stay very still in order for the photo to be clear and not blurred. For some posed pictures, they even put people in neck or back braces. They did that for my grandmothers' wedding photos in 1911. Also contributing was the fact that having a photo taken was a big deal. You didn't do it often, perhaps a few times in your life if you were lucky/middle class.

[CanadianHippie]

This makes me think of Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. Very little charity, the major government social programs weren't in existence, long hours, corruption, and the descriptions of the meatpacking industry definitely make it sound 1906 was a fantastic time to live (not).

Give me refrigeration, social programs, a 40 hour workweek, and the FDA any day.

Makes me think of the Bradford sweets poisoning in 1858 in London. No regulations surrounding the sales of poisons resulted in someone buying a bunch of arsenic in stead of such a filler (used as a substitute for sugar) by mistake. The thing is, it took a while for anyone to make a connection because Cholera was so prevalent in those days and the symptoms prior to death led people to believe that had been what killed the people.

The end result was the government finally stepping in to legislate not only the sale of poisons, but the alterations of food.

[Visionoyahweh]

Just to go in another direction - fundies love the - 'We signed the Declaration of Independence and Jesus instantly gave us the perfect, perfect Constitution!' history. They always, always leave out he Articles of Confederation, the presidents of the US before George Washington, etc. Setting up the US wasn't a clean, neat, simple, and perfect divine event they make it out to be. And yeah, women id play an (admittedly subdued) role.

[Wolfie]

RE: people's expressions in old photos.

The exposure time was longer, and people had to stay very still in order for the photo to be clear and not blurred. For some posed pictures, they even put people in neck or back braces. They did that for my grandmothers' wedding photos in 1911. Also contributing was the fact that having a photo taken was a big deal. You didn't do it often, perhaps a few times in your life if you were lucky/middle class.

This.

They also would take post mortem photos, especially of children, as they may have never had a photo taken during their life.

I also like to look at photos of babies, sometimes you can see mom behind a black drape holding the baby, other times there is a black drape hiding clamps.