Women the World Over

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 144, 8 September 1927, Page 5

Women the World Over

LOCAL COLOUR The well-known English writer, Rosita Forbes (Mrs. A. T. McGrath) takes the securing of local colour more seriously than do most writers. Her latest venture on that quest is the exploration of Morocco, going south through the Areg Desert into Nigeria. She will travel disguised as a Moorish woman, and intends to adopt the manners and customs of the inhabitants. She believes she will thus obtain much better first-hand information than if she went as an ordinary traveller.

A SPORTSWOMAN

Lady Alexandra is the eldest of the three daughters of Field-Marshal Earl Haig and Countess Haig, and will celebrate her twenty-first birthday next year. She is a keen sportswoman,

spends the greater part of her time out of doors, and is very much at home in the saddle. Eord Haig, the 29th Laird of Bernersyde, married the Hon. Dorothy Vivian, second daughter of the third Lord Vivian, and a maid of honour to the late Queen Alexandra from 1899 to 1905.

A FILM EXCHANGE

Said to be the only girl managing a film exchange in the Commonwealth, Miss Jean Adams was the one feminine represen tat \\o among the score that attended a Fox Films convention recently in Sydney. She is manager for this film organisation for all Tasmania, and her office in Launceston is entirely staffed with girls and women.

TIRELESS WORKERS

A. London-born woman, Miss Laura Fairbanks, regarded as the cleverest embroiderer in Britain, and her seven highly-skilled girl helpers, have made the five new standards which were presented to the Life Guards and the Horse Guards by the King on the Horse Guards Parade. To make these magnificent emblems, costing altogether £ 2,000. these eight women worked fdl' 600 hours.

AT SEA

Two years ago Mrs. C. A. P. Helsham, wife of the captain of the tank steamer Henry Deutsch de la Muerthe, which recently discharged a cargo of bulk oil at Fremantle, was ordered to seek a change from the Continental climate and chose to accompany her husband. The company fitted out a suite of three rooms under the* navigation bridge for them, and Mrs. Helsham is not a little proud of her “floating home.” In her “den” she has all manner of literature, and, since she is also an industrious seamstress, time never drags on the long voyages. In addition to a big collection of crochet work, Mrs. Helsham has gathered many lovely pieces of woman’s art in the numerous ports she has visited. Apart from these interests she acts as purser of the boat, and her husband vows he has never had a better.

WOMEN DOCTORS

Dr. Pedro Albuquerque, Chief of the Maritime Department of the Brazilian Public Health Service, has appointed two women doctors on ships of the Brazilian merchant service going to Europe and the Argentine. He intends to make further appointments.

AN ASTRONOMER

Her garden, in which she is eminently successful, did not provide sufficient distraction for Mrs. R. Dafter, of Northgate, near Brisbane, while her husband was at the front. She therefore took up astronomy and has become an enthusiastic and fruitful student of celestial bodies. She has the distinction of being the first-recorded Queensland observer of the comet Pons-Winnecke. Mrs. Dafter has made a chart of the comet’s positions as predicted by astronomers from June 25 onwards, and of its actual positions according to her observations. These records, which almost agree, were prepared for the Queensland Astronomical Society and the* British Astronomical Society, both of which number Mrs. Dafter among their members.