100 years ago

The problem and the controversy of the athletic girl should have been considerably narrowed and simplified by the recent dogmatic opinion of a medical authority.

The authority remained anonymous, but he was described as being well-known. His conclusion was that “the girl who has played games and entered into the spirit of games is not only the best mate for any man who respects his comfort and happiness, but she is mentally and physically the best girl.”

There was no doubt whatever that the active, modern girl was infinitely preferable to her type of the late Victorian age, and an infinitely more useful unit in the State. She had not forfeited any of the innate charm of femininity by ceasing to be a very doll-like and automatic person and becoming a free-limbed, independent thinking woman, with ideals and energies and enthusiasm quite aggressively her own.

The athletic girl, in fact, was smashing up all sorts of fusty illusions and foolish fetters. Every time she swung her golf club or manipulated her hockey stick she was helping to knock old ideas, colloquially speaking, “into a cocked hat.”

 

50 years ago

Britain had the best newspapers in the world, said the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas Home. He was speaking as guest of honour at the centenary festival dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund at Grosvenor House.

Recalling the days when the Fund had been founded, he said: “What was true of the weekly newspapers which were printed and published then is true now of our sturdy provincial Press. I always, whenever I can, read it, and I am a greedy reader of it, because it gives you news. The provincial Press still understands what the national Press has forgotten - that fact is much stranger than fiction.”

Sir Alec said that he had seen a report of UNESCO which showed that the people of Britain were the most voracious of readers of newspapers in the world. We were well ahead of our rivals, and we boasted 51 copies for every 100 Britons.

 

25 years ago

Experiments in electronic tagging which could ease chronic overcrowding in remand prisons would begin in August, the Home Office had just announced.

Trials of the high-tech “ball and chain” would start in Nottingham on August 14. Home Office Minister Mr John Patten said: “If it proves successful, electronic monitoring could provide a more humane technological cure for the ills of overcrowded remand prisons.”

The electronic tagging pilot would see people wearing an anklet fitted with a low-powered radio transmitter which signalled every few minutes to a receiver unit attached to the person’s telephone. If the signal was not received a message was relayed to a central monitoring station.