Archive for the ‘History’ Category
10 inventions your great-grandmother wished she had
Saturday, March 19th, 2011
One of the first vacuum cleaners
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
I have a job. A great job. One I could choose myself. My great-grandmother also had a job. A tough one and not one she could choose herself. She was a housewife, and in the 1800s being a housewife was a tough, full-time job. If you had the money you would hire a maid to do the dirty work for you. If not, you had to do it yourself. I am a housewife too: 1 hour a day. In that time, I cook a meal for my family on my efficient gas stove, using the stock in my fridge, my freezer and the tins of food in my garage. While dinner is cooking, I pop some washing in the washing machine or dryer, vacuum clean the carpet or clear out the dishwasher. And while I’m doing so, my thoughts wander of to my great-grandmother and how she would have marveled at my easy housekeeping. In honour to her and all the great-grandmothers in the world, here’s a list of the 10 inventions they would have loved to have. The 10 inventions that has made it possible for our generation to seek a life beyond housekeeping if we want to!
Gas/electric stove
Imagine cooking on a coal stove or range. First you need to feed it with coal which you have to go get from the coal cellar. Then, you have to light a fire that burns just so that it gets hot enough to cook on without consuming the coal too fast. Regulating the heat was a heavy task involving lifting heavy iron rings from the range or letting them down. Pots and pans would get stained with a black patina, and coal particles would land everywhere in the kitchen making a thorough weekly cleaning session no luxury at all. Just compare that to gas or electric cooking: just turn on the stove, it heats up immediately, you can regulate the heat just by turning a button, no patina on your pots and pans and no coal particles flying around. So clean and easy!
Washing machine
Washing would take three days: one to soak, one to wash and one to dry and iron. The washing alone took a whole day. It started by getting buckets of hot water at the water shop, carrying them home to fill the washing tub and boil it further on the range. After the cooking, some rinsing, then bleach for the whites. Rinsing again, and yet again. Finally, wringing it all out (by hand in the worst case). Imagine how she would have been thrilled by a machine that would do all that automatically at the push of a button!
Dryer
Holland is perhaps one of the countries with the fewest days in a year suitable for hanging out the washing. It’s often too damp, too rainy or too cold. So great-grandma probably spent a lot of time cramming lots of damp washing on a couple of drying lines in the attic or above the stove. She would have loved the drying machine.
Running hot and cold water
No more pumping up the water and heating it on the stove or buying it a the water store. Just open the the faucet and get instant hot water to clean your house with, wash your hair, bathe the kids…
Electric iron
Ever tried to iron with a coal iron? It’s heavy, clumsy and a real art to get the wrinkles out without burning the tissue or staining it with coal!
Fridge and freezer
Have you ever thought about how much time your great-grandma would have spent preserving food? Hours of making jam and chutney, salting and drying fish and flesh, keeping the dispense dry and keeping out the bugs from flour and the like.
Vacuum cleaner
In a coal-heated house dust was everywhere. Not only did your great-grandmother have to clean the floor more often, it was more tedious to do it also. If somebody would tell her that in a hundred years time women would clean the floor of an entire house in just half an hour she would have never believed you.
Central heating
Only the rich would have spent the time, effort and money to light a fire in every room. It was more common to only have a warm kitchen (where the range gave heat already). The rest of the rooms would have been bitterly cold in winter. Think of the luxury we have. We simply heat up all rooms by turning a button.
Canned food and supermarkets
If you cannot preserve your food that long, you need to go shopping every day to get fresh bread, veggies and meat. It must have been a great way to meets friends and gossip, but it was time consuming as well. Getting bread, vegetables and meat alone already required a trip to three different shops. Self-service was unheard of, so every visit to a shop involved standing in line and waiting for the shop assistant to complete your order. Doing all the shopping for a whole week (or two) in just one hour, and keeping it fresh was something of a dream. Canned food and supermarkets made it possible though.
Dishwasher
Washing dishes was a heavy job. With families often consisting of about ten family members, and with heavy pots and pans and no running hot water, it definitely wasn’t your great-grandmother’s favorite job. I’m certain she would have loved that dishwasher!
So next time you use your washing machine, vacuum cleaner, open a can for dinner or stock up on food in the supermarket and think you are doing a tedious job, think of your great-grandma and how she would have loved to trade places with you!
Finding Dutch Holocaust Victims
Friday, February 4th, 2011
The Memorial Monument at camp Westerbork
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Every year on January 27, the victims of the Holocaust are remembered worldwide. The memorial day was established by the United Nations in 2005 to honor all those that lost their lives in this horrible episode of our history.
The Holocaust is especially painful to the Dutch since given their very well kept civil records that included faith specifics and collaboration of the Dutch NSB party (Nationaal Socialistische Beweging, meaning National Socialist Movement), an astonishing over 100,000 Jewish people were deported easily and murdered in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor. As a comparison, in Germany –the heart of the fascist movement and a country about nine times bigger than the Netherlands– about 160,000 Jews shared the same horrible fate.
Even today, it is a subject not easily spoken off. Many Dutch feel ashamed they let it happen. However, not all Dutch stood by and watched. There were brave resistance people that risked being executed themselves by hiding Jewish people on their attics, in their cellars and the like.
For those of you that are researching Jewish relatives that lived during WW II, sadly, the best place to start is the Digital Jewish Memorial Monument, which can be found (in English) at: www.communityjoodsmonument.nl. Here you can find lots of details about Dutch Jews that were murdered during the holocaust. A real treasure, though a dark one, for Jewish people seeking Dutch ancestors from the Holocaust period.
Literacy: from luxury to everyday commodity
Friday, January 21st, 2011
Hurray, for mister Van Houten!
by Elias Spanier, 1874
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Today, we almost take it for granted that we can send our kids to school at no cost at all. To be precise, we must send them to school: education is mandatory for children between 6 and 17 according to Dutch law. Home teaching is not allowed, and keeping your child at home for trivial reasons as an extra holiday can result in serious fines for the parents. It’s clear that education is taken very seriously in the Netherlands. However, it has not always been like that. For many of our ancestors, learning to read and write was a luxury far beyond their reach…
Middle Ages
Up until the late 1500s education was a rich man’s thing. Among the nobility it was customary to educate the firstborn son as the successor of his father. Private teachers would educate him in the art of reading, writing and calculating (all needed to run the estate he was to inherit) and politics, discussion and noble manners (needed to deal with political intrigues and acquiring a strategically chosen spouse). The second son would receive a decent military training, also given by private teachers. The third and other sons could opt to go into a monastery in order to get a proper education, which involved a generous donation to the monestary by their dad.
Daughters would be trained in music, dancing, reading and writing in order to become suitable spouses for financially interesting noblemen. Becoming a nun was a popular way to escape being married off and dedicate a life to science and art.
Ordinary people usually did not master reading and writing. They did not have much need for it either. Books were scarce and in everyday life it served no practical purpose. Youths would simply learn a craft by starting to work as young as possible. Fathers would teach their sons their own craft or send them of to be taught by a master craftsman. Daughters would be trained at home by their mothers to become mothers and housekeepers themselves. For both, calculation (by head) was a far more important skill to master than reading or writing. After all, that was a skill you needed to make money and spend it wisely.
