The Issue of Ageing

The Life and Age of Man

‘What Is Old Age’? Conference, Warwick University

On the 23 February 2013 I went to a multi-discipline conference organised by Emily Andrews at Warwick University, looking at the question of ‘What is Old Age?’ The conference saw speakers from a variety of background, including literary studies, anthropology and history, discussing their work and contributing their research towards an attempt to answer the central question of ‘what is old age?’

In addition to this being a very topical area of discussion, my interest in the subject comes from my PhD research into civil service and occupational pensions in the nineteenth century and found the variety of approaches and subject matters inspiring. Just two examples of these varied sessions were the anthropological research into the ageing workforce in the Trinidad garment industry and the challenges of writing fiction focused on a person with Alzheimer’s disease. Rebecca Prentice’s work in Trinidad was fascinating, a contemporary examination of the older workers’ relationships with their body, these women accepted that their eyesight would be damaged by their work but also saw this damage as having a wider influence is gaining support from family or the state. With the increasing neo-liberal leaning of the state it was also interesting that the workers were reconsidering their relationship with the state and deciding they should rely on their own resources to support themselves.

The written word is central to how our social science and humanities subjects communicate so it was refreshing to listen to a paper focused on the art of writing. Though it was focused on writing fiction the amount of consideration and planning was a reminder of the importance of how we communicate our meaning and that there are different ways to do this. This was exemplified in Naomi Kruger’s paper by looking at how you write in first person with the voice of someone with developing Alzheimer’s disease. This paper and other sessions such as Hannah Zeilig, who highlighted the range of techniques available for storytelling, has really made me consider taking a creative writing course to see if it would bring any benefits to writing for my PhD or in my museum day job.

In addition to methodology and theory some of these sessions pointed me towards sources I wouldn’t have looked at before, Helen Small’s opening key note discussed the importance of Susan Sontag’s The Double Standard of Aging written in 1972 to the social sciences, and Dr Zeilig emphasised the work of Samuel Beckett’s plays in portraying perceptions of age, important for not portraying age as the other. Benoît Majerus focused on the Leroque report published in 1962, though it was never implemented it has inserted old age into the political dialogue in France, but also set the pessimistic tone continued today.

In almost all sessions, regardless of discipline, the importance of the use of language was clear and this was underlined by Andrea Charise when looking at recent perceptions of the old age and the use of wet language. Journalist reports and even public health documents have been using phrases such as the ‘Grey Tsunami’ or the ‘rising tide’ when discussing the global issue of greater numbers of people living longer. Continually using this apocalyptic language it is inevitable that a pessimistic perception of this situation develops, exemplified in popular culture through work such as Never Let Me Go, which Charise used as an example of the negative sublime.

I found the historical sessions were very good at providing some context to challenge this contemporary pessimistic view that was being demonstrated by speakers in policy and culture. Pat Thane’s excellent key note clearly demonstrated that there was never a golden age to be old, and that many of the fears and worries we have today were felt by generations before us. People have been living to into their 60s, 80s and even 100s since ancient times and though the average life expectancy was 40 in the 18^th century this would have been affected by the high child mortality rates. Lyn Botelho’s paper looking at aging in the 17^th century had demonstrated that the idea of a ‘good’ old age had become to mean financial independence at this time, and Prof Thane showed through folk tales and patterns of migrationary work that the relationship between parents and their adult children could be a complicated on. Folk tales warned of manipulative and ungrateful children mistreating ageing parents and during times of limited communication networks, if someone left to find work they could easily never be seen or heard from again.

It was also important to see older people as givers, not just receivers within our society. Prof Thane pointed to the economic benefits provided through the intergenerational relationships of lending money and providing free child care. Emily Andrew’s paper looked at how nineteenth psychiatrists and psychologists saw old age, and the general perception is that of ‘second childhood’ seeing old age as degenerative, however people such as James Critchton-Browne argued that intellectual prime was only reached in years 55 to 65 and proved this himself by continuing to write into his 90s, dying at the age of 97.

Finally society’s conflicting relationship with age was also demonstrated in Susanne Stoddart’s paper looking at the representation of the new pensioners under the 1911 pensions Act. The papers often depicted sympathetic images of poor widows or disabled old men in queues to receive their first pensions. They also reported the crowds that gathered to show their support. However, as Soddart demonstrated these celebratory images cannot be taken as face value, many newspaper had political sympathises and wanted to help champion this new policy and persuade the general public this was worth supporting. Furthermore the suspicions of the poor still remained as some comments were passed regarding pensioners visiting public houses. So, it is not surprising that though the shame and stigma of the poor law was seen to have gone, some pensioners chose to collect their pension not from their local post office, but from a larger more anonymous central office.

The conflicting relationship with how we view older people and what relationship we expect them to have with society and society with them continues today. A report published on 14^th March 2013 does thankfully acknowledge the large benefits of older people to society, but also warns that the country is unprepared for the increased numbers of people living longer. Through asking ‘What is Old Age?’ on 23 February I think we started a discussion that policy-makers could probably find a lot of value, and if I could share anything with them would be the removal of the sense of other and projection of a problem area. Communication and discussion is key and yes, financial aspects are central to this, but policy is more than just sums.

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Links:

Ready for Ageing? – Select Committee report on Public Service and Demographic Change: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/public-services-committee/report-ready-for-ageing/

NewStatesman article ‘The Grey Tsunami’: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/economics/2012/04/grey-tsunami

‘An Age Old Age Debate’, blog by Emily Andrews: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/culture/oldage/

The History and Policy website have a few articles and policy engagement articles on pensions & social care: http://www.historyandpolicy.org/

IHR Open Access Event, 1 March 2013 – a postgrad perspective

Some of the journals on my shelf.

Last Friday I went to the ‘Finch Report, Open Access and the Historical Community’ event organised by the Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Historical Society at Senate House.

I found it enlightening as well as a tad frustrating, but also hopeful. I’m not going to try and wade through all the arguments for and against Open Access or the processes and methods of rolling out Open Access across the discipline. As mentioned by many speakers at the event the blogsphere has been bursting with viewpoints and explanations. Here I wanted to touch on some areas I found interesting that I wanted to attempt to share in as straight forward and simple way as possible.

Mark Llewellyn, from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, made a very valid point that communication regarding Open Access has not been as good as it should be. I think this is a serious problem as the move to open access will have massive implications for PhD students (not to mention the rest of academia) and has the potential to completely change how we work as academics. It also needs to be discussed outside of academia, as it’s the spending of public money that is at the core of this, and the point is to widen the reach of academia and current learning to the world beyond the academy. Though the communication doesn’t have to only come from the policy makers and implementers and I feel it is our job as practitioners to also spread the word, hence this blog.

I hope you find it useful, and please do let me know if you think I’ve got anything wrong or if you’d like to share your feelings on the topic.

So, what did I find enlightening?
The existence of the event at all I think is very positive, it was well attended and had a great collection of speakers representing all aspects of the argument from journals and learned societies, to the research councils, publishers, funders like Wellcome and also History Lab plus, an organisation representing the interests of early career researchers. I thought the encouragement and interaction on twitter during the colloquium was great – I think social media channels like twitter have been invaluable in spreading the word amongst students.

It was good to hear from the publishers on the subject, and they are very well placed to discuss the differences in publishing for the arts and humanities disciplines compared to the STM disciplines. They also hold the relationships with the libraries and it was interesting to learn that the relationship between an article’s half-life (length of time until an article will have been read by half of its life time readership) could affect the likelihood of a library subscription. Peter Carpenter from Wiley gave the average half-life of a humanities article as 36 months, where as a Chemistry article was 18months – why pay for access to a journal, if it’s not likely to be read in the next year?

With this in mind and with the realisation that most of the discussions pointed towards humanities going towards the green route over gold, suggests that embargo lengths should be considered with half-lives in mind.

What did I find frustrating?
There are so many areas that appear unresolved and the concern at the speed things are moving was mentioned several times. The biggest issues appeared to be the tied up in the relationship between the REF (Research Excellence Framework), APCs (Article Processing Charge) and funding.

The Wellcome were strong advocates of project funding including the cost of the APC, detailing that it was only 1.5% of their funding costs. However there appeared to be strong feeling in the room that it wasn’t completely clear where other funding was supposed to come from – RCUK (Research Councils UK) were giving universities some, and the possible administration surrounding the delegation of this funding is worrying for many. The question still stands of who would pay for APCs on behalf of students, early career and independent scholars. They could just publish the traditional way, they publish for free and their work sits behind a paywall, but the problem is that to be considered under REF, work would have to be Open Access. Increasingly REF is not only important in assessing the work and impact of universities but is important for academic careers. Kimm Curran from History Lab Plus underlined the significance of this for early career researchers, the majority of whom (if they have a job) are often working part-time contracts. Wages are low and contracts short which could result in a decision over basic living costs or REF-applicable publication.

Alongside this is the questionable fate of humanities’ many journals and learned societies, many of which rely on publication profits to survive and fulfil a role in providing training, conference funding, book reviews and a variety of publications. Malcolm Chase, Chair of the Society History Society asked if societies would have to consider their offer for subscribing members if the publication became open access. Chase also brought up a concern over monographs and collections of essays, these are currently not under considered in proposals from Open Access, but if REF requirements stipulated items under consideration had to be Open Access it is a question of if this could remain that way.

Finally, what left me hopeful?
Though I didn’t feel like anything had been resolved at the late closing of the colloquium, I felt the history community had made some progress in promoting the peculiarities and value of the humanities peer review system. A short select committee in the House of Lords looking into Open Access, published on 22 February 2013, had acknowledged the lack of clarity in the current policy and the Research Councils are responding with a consultation document tomorrow. (See below for links)

As well as making concerns heard, useful questions were being asked, regarding monographs, and the type of licences work would have if open access, and also some clarity on the requirements of REF.

Research is being conducted in many relevant areas to help with some of these; Caren Milloy spoke on a project looking at open access of humanities and social science monographs gathering useful data on the area and holding a conference in July. I also realised my ignorance regarding the many Creative Commons licenses available and realised we all need to brush up on these as they will become increasingly important.

Then, looking to postgraduates and early career academics. Could they, amongst others (if not all), publish in alternative forums to journals to be open access and REF considerable? Could these be solely online journals or university repositories such as SAS-Space? However, journals and societies do provide other roles within academia, and publishers too play a role whether that is just marketing and the platform of publication, so this also needs to be considered.

Ultimately I was hopeful because as a community history practitioners do want open access and do want to share their discoveries and thoughts with the world. We also want to be able to welcome others to join our debates and discussions and so it feels the conversation needs to be widen.

The UK produces 6% of the global research output and we are part of a global academic community. It was a relief to hear from Peter Mandler, President of the Royal Historical Society, that discussions were being held with representatives from other disciplines, and I was glad a review of the situation is going to be made in 2014 by the RCUK. However, I came to the conclusion that these conversations need to continued and expanded with considered policy and practise decided before blanket implementation.

 

Just some of the many web pages out there:

The IHR have storified the event here: http://storify.com/ihr_history/open-access-for-historians-1

The Finch Report [opens PDF]: http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf

Open Access Implementation Group: http://open-access.org.uk/

Council for the Defence of British Universities stance on Open Access with other interesting links: http://cdbu.org.uk/campaigns/open-access/

Research Excellence Framework: http://www.ref.ac.uk/

Research Councils UK’s policy on Open Access: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx

RCUK’s revised guidance to be published 6 March 2013: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2013news/Pages/130228.aspx

Lords Select Committee Report on Open Access (with links to report and summary): http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/science-and-technology-committee/news/open-access-report-published/

Open Access Publishing in European Network project page – this is looking at open access of monographs: http://project.oapen.org/

Great piece on Open Access in Journal of Victorian Culture Online this explores the issues in much more depth than I have: http://myblogs.informa.com/jvc/2012/11/21/open-access-and-the-future-of-academic-journals/

Royal Historical Society standpoint on Open Access, a letter to members in January 2013 [opens a PDF]: http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/RHSPresidentE-letterJanuary2013.pdf

An interesting blog on the Open Access issue from a STM background – should we get rid of the middle-man publishers? http://telescoper.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/missing-the-point-on-open-access/

 

Local history comes to Life – Enfield Life

Enfield Life Exhibition at the Dugdale Centre. copyright Kathleen McIlvenna

Recently the Enfield Life exhibition, looking at the history of the modern London Borough of Enfield, which includes the historic boroughs of Edmonton, Southgate and Enfield, was officially launched. It was curated by Enfield Museum Service and has been open and receiving visitors for a number of months, but as part of the redevelopment of the first floor of the Dugdale Centre in Enfield Town, it was officially launched with the availability of meeting rooms and community spaces in the heart of Enfield Town.

Enfield Life exhibition including room sets. Copyright Kathleen McIlvenna

Now, I should immediately admit my bias to this, and declare that I was part of the team that put this exhibition together. It is something I am immensely proud of and can only claim to be a small part of the team that put it together, my two other colleagues, who were full time, put in a lot of time and effort and I think this is evident in the final display.

The exhibition is generally chronological, using aspects of life across Enfield to draw out themes. It largely follows a standard panel and case format, which results in the first couples of cases looking at the pre-history, ‘Early Life’, and also the Early Modern or ‘big house’ era called ‘Aristocratic Life’. However, I think a few touches have gone a long way to make the display more dynamic drawing visitors into and through the space. It was also a great excuse to exhibit some of the larger gems in the collection. A Roman coffin sits in the middle of the floor and two room sets demonstrate changes and continuity from Georgian to 1930s homes.

Community Life case in Enfield Life exhibition. Copyright Kathleen McIlvenna

The people of Enfield are at the heart of this exhibition and the cases looking at the later history of the area become more thematic looking at Suburban Life, Industrial Life, Municipal Life and Community Life (not in that order). Most of the objects in Enfield Museum Service collection were donated by local residents and hopefully the exhibition will facilitate a connection between the people of Enfield through the ages by translating how life has changed. From the Belling cooker, to a 1930 Toucan dinner gong and from a turn of the century silk women’s cooperative banner to a t-shirt created by the Enfield Island Village Mothers and Daughters group to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee in summer 2012.

The exhibition was also a great excuse to put up some of Enfield’s art collection depicting various aspects of Enfield’s people and places, and most of the press coverage of the exhibition has focused on the Constable drawing that has also been put on display. I won’t say much about that as it has been said elsewhere, but I will urge to take the trip to Enfield Town and the first floor of the Dugdale to have a look.

Modern Relevance of Rapiers: a visit to the Wallace Collection

apier of Christian II, Elector of Saxony, The hilt probably made by Marx Bischhausen of Dresden, the blade Solingen, c. 1605-7, Rüstkammer, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden on display at Wallace Collection’s ‘The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe’

What do Early Modern gentlemen and modern street crime have in common? Well I wouldn’t have thought much until I recently visited an exhibition at the Wallace Collection.

After reading the review of the Wallace Collection’s exhibition ‘The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe’ in the Museum Journal, I knew I had to visit. As promised the objects on show were exquisite and though the exhibition may appear quite small for some people, I think this helped convey the magnificence of the items on display. Items not only from the Wallace Collection, but also the V&A, Royal Armouries, Glasgow Museums as well as collections from Vienna and Dresden.

What I was surprised about was the familiarity of some of the themes brought up in the exhibition. These blades were not only violent weapons but they were fashion accessories and symbols of status. They went with a style of dress, obviously some elaborate suits of armour, but also a gentleman’s everyday look, beautifully demonstrated in a portrait of Robert Dudley, famous for being one of Elizabeth I’s court favourites. These are themes that are sometimes mentioned in reports on modern-day youth knife crime, and it did make me wonder if this is something that could be explored further.

I was impressed to discover the Royal Armouries have a literature review titled ‘Tackling Knife Crime’ published in 2006: http://www.royalarmouries.org/assets-uploaded/documents/RA_Literature_Review_on_Knife_Crime.pdf (opens a PDF document), and it highlighted to me the possibilities that historic collections of weapons could have in looking at and (maybe) addressing knife crime in the UK. There are obviously far more to youth violence that fashion and status, but any way to get the public and children thinking and talking about can’t be a bad thing.

‘The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe’ is free and open until 16 September. See more information here: http://www.wallacecollection.org/collections/exhibition/93

The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe

Firemen and the Sea

‘Torchlight Procession Around the World’, NMM object no. PAG8264

You know that frustrating moment when you discover something that would have been really useful for your previous piece of work? Well I had that joy a few weeks ago when looking into the employment culture of occupations to compare to the Post Office.

This story starts with this engraving, an image I discovered during a research internship at the National Maritime Museum as part of my MA. I was intrigued as to why an image created to be sold and celebrate the landing of the Atlantic submarine telegraph cable in New York, in 1858, would have firemen as the central figures.

At one point my dissertation supervisor and myself discussed the use of firemen and the possibility of looking at the American use of the image as an opener to my dissertation. However my research didn’t get very far and I went with the evening celebrations at the Imperial Institute marking the jubilee of submarine telegraph communication with the Far East in 1894. But those firemen have continued to bug me.

Then, some six months after I have handed in my dissertation and subsequently started my PhD, I came across an article by Shane Ewen called ‘Managing Police Constable and Firefighters: Uniformed Public Services in English Cities, c.1870-1930′ in the International Review of Social History, 51 (2006). In Ewen’s article I was introduced to the relationship between firemen and the Royal Navy in British cities. Ewen details how in Birmingham, between 1880 and 1920, approximately half of new firemen were recruited from the Royal Navy due to perceptions of an overlap in the need for disciplinary procedures and control. This wasn’t universal, Leicester and Edinburgh principally targeted semi-skilled and skilled workers, seeing the value in having practical skills among recruits. So it seemed, the origin of firefighter recruits stemmed from the perceived importance of certain attributes, either their skills or their ability to follow orders and live in a quasi-military regime.
Ewen didn’t go into too much detail about the American system, though he did note that the nineteenth century saw the transition from a voluntary to municipal paid firefighting system. This was partly in an attempt to deal with the ‘acute ill-discipline’ suffered by the service in the 1840s and 1850s. Perhaps due to the bad behaviour, sailors were first choice for American firefighter recruiters too.

From a review in April’s Labour History Review, I see that Ewen has written a book on the development of the fire service in Britain: Fighting Fires: Creating the British Fire Service, 1800-1978. Robin Pearson’s review is full of praise of this work and through his review one of my questions is answered: why sailors and not the army? Sailors were preferred as they had the physical strength, and were used to working at heights and extreme conditions – heat, cold and damp conditions especially.

Truly fascinating stuff, and I will definitely be keeping an eye for Shane Ewen’s book (it’s currently over £50 in Amazon which is a bit over my budget). It also shows that as historians, our work is never done. Even once the work is handed in/published you still make new discoveries and these revelations give some way to shedding more light on this intriguing engraving.

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I discuss the engraving in more detail in the blog I wrote for the NMM: http://blogs.rmg.co.uk/collections/2011/09/

Here is my dissertation on submarine telegraph cables (please note this opens a PDF document): http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/3388/1/McIlvenna_MA_dissertation_2011_-_Experiment_to_Relic.pdf

Link to Shane Ewen’s ‘Managing Police Constable and Firefighters: Uniformed Public Services in English Cities, c.1870-1930′ in the International Review of Social History, 51 (2006). (Please note you’ll have to pay to get this article): http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=420762&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0020859005002312

Shane Ewen’s Fighting Fires: Creating the British Fire Service, on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Fires-Creating-British-1800-1978/dp/0230517102/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343582080&sr=8-1

Enfield Exchange project

Enfield Exchange in Dugdale Centre, Enfield

How many phone numbers do you remember? Probably not many. Personally, since I started to use a mobile phone in my teens I rarely remember numbers. I just have to remember names or the name I’ve allocated a particular number (did I save my local hairdressers number under ‘hairdressers’ or its business name?). Our phones are becoming so intelligent that soon I don’t think I’ll even have to remember these small details, I’ll just take it out of my pocket and say I want a haircut and it’ll probably phone and make an appointment for me.

I digress, my main point is that in a short amount of time technology has developed to an astounding degree and though it is easy to forget, numbers are still a central part of this. Nothing can make this point more obvious than a large section of a manual telephone exchange. Manual telephone exchanges provided the friendly voice that introduced many to a telephone. They provided an immediate voice when a subscriber picked up the phone and helpfully asked ‘Number Please?’ ready and willing to connect your call to the number you required.

Recently a piece of Enfield’s telecommunications history, a section of the manual exchange, has returned in the hope of sparking memories and connecting those memories with one of the county’s largest depositories of the history of science, the Science Museum. This exchange was the last manual exchange in Greater London and was taken out in the 1960s. So there are people still alive who manually connected calls and could be using phone you don’t even have to touch to make a call.

It’s return is part of a Science Museum led project that is being hosted by the Enfield Museum service and hopes to find stories related to the old Enfield manual exchange. Through events, a website and a facebook page they want to those local stories to come alive – have a look and pass on the details to anyone you think would be interested, or just pop down to the Dugdale Centre and see the exchange for yourself.

Enfield Exchange project webiste: http://enfieldexchange.org.uk/

Enfield Exchange Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Enfield-Exchange/307731015977708?ref=tn_tnmn

Enfield Museum Service: http://www.enfield.gov.uk/museum

My holiday – blogged

Pythagora Monument, Pythagorio, Samos

 

A quick post to point you in the direction of something I have written for the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) travel blog. I recently enjoyed the luxury of a holiday for two weeks to the Greek island of Samos. A beautiful place, but I was surprised to discover the island’s strong links to the history of science and thought it was worth sharing on the BSHS travel blog.

It involves, Greeks, GCSE maths, tunnels – what more could you want? Hope you enjoy:

http://www.bshs.org.uk/travel-guide/samos-island