Sotheby’s “Miss Auctioneer.”

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

Sotheby’s “Miss Auctioneer.”

Sotheby’s, one of London’s most famous and conservative auction rooms, has for the last 15 years had on its staff a woman partner, print expert and auctioneer (states a London correspondent). She is Miss Evelyn Barlow, now at the end of an auctioneering career she was forced into by the war. The salerooms of London lose a keen mind and gracious personality through her retirement. Daughter of a former Dean of Peterborough and sister of Sir Montague Barlow, senior partner of Sotheby’s, Miss Barlow became a partner and auctioneer in 1918, when the saleroom staff was temporarily depleted for the war. The conservative buyers liked her calm assurance and her voice, called her, “Miss Auctioneer,” and admitted she knew as much about prints and etchings as they did.

Taller Women To-day. Modern diets are making women taller, declared Dr. Charles Read, superintendent of the Elgin State Hospital, Illinois, in an address to the American College of Surgeons, which met in Chicago recently (states an exchange). The average woman of to-day, he said, is at least three inches taller than the average woman of 1893, and he attributed the fact to the influence of modem dieting on the nervous system—an influence which, he asserted, was greatly lessening nervous disorders among women. • To Remove Strawberry Stains.

After the strawberry season table linen and table napkins are frequently found to be stained with juice (states an exchange). The articles should be treated before they are sent to the laundry, or the stains will become difficult to remove and in many cases impossible. If the stain is treated as soon, as it is incurred, boiling water should be poured through it from a height. After several jugs of water have been poured through the stain it will disappear. A stain of long standing should be first softened by soaking for some hours in a saucer of glycerine before the hot water is used. Miss Bondfield on U.S.A.

Miss Margaret Bondfield (General and Municipal Workers), formerly Minister of Labour, speaking at the T.U.C. Congress, said she had had an exceptional opportunity of judging the nature of the change in America during her recent visit across the Atlantic, and emphasised the change of ■ outlook she discovered.

“I found to my amazement,” she continued, “that a real revolution of ideas was sweeping through America. The imagination of every section of American opinion was caught by the speed with which decisions were taken. There was a sense of adventure and a feeling -that economic life had reached a perilous position in which all were liable to be engulfed. “The average person in America does not think in terms of working-class and middle-class as we do. There is always the individualistic feeling that everyone has a marshal’s baton in his pocket or that the tramp may next day be a millionaire.

“That is, perhaps, why the middleclass were swept in behind this movement. That is particularly true of women.”