VIEWS | 210K, Ten Most-Read Posts in March

This blog has passed 210,000 pageviews! Your readership is appreciated. Please leave your comments or contact your blogger direct at teppermarlin @ aol.com. This blog's most-read posts in March 2020 were topped by the story of Tilly den Tex van Hall, wife of the great Resistance Banker Wally van Hall. They were: WW2 | Tilly den Tex van Hall (1907-1988) Jul 28, 2015

WW2 | 1.The Boissevain Clan (Updated July 9, 2016)... Oct 31, 2014

LISTER | First article on antiseptic surgery Mar 16, 2020

U.S. FLAG | Why Its Origins Are Masked (Updated 20... Jun 2, 2013

POETS | Elizabeth Bishop in Ouro Preto Feb 16, 2014

GYM MEMBERSHIPS | Disclosures, Cancellations Feb 29, 2020,

MUSIC | The Trapp Family Camp (Personal Comments) Mar 19, 2014,

HERALDRY | Wilfred Bayne, OSB, Heraldist, Portsmou... Feb 20, 2016

WOODIN | 9A. Musician (Updated Mar 11, 2017) Oct 13, 2013

MUSIC | Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg and Leona... Jan 23, 2016

SURGERY | Lister's first antisepsis article, March 16

Lord Joseph Lister of Lyme Regis (1827-
1912), Father of Modern Surgery

March 16, 2020 – As the world confronts the pandemic COVID-19 disease, antiseptic hygiene is becoming widely stressed. Wash your hands, wash your hands – soap and hot water, in a vigorous 20-second routine.

The theory behind it was first set forth in an article  published on this date in 1867 by the august British journal The Lancet. The author was Joseph Lister, later to become Lord Joseph Lister of Lyme Regis (1827-1912).

He is called the Father of Modern Surgery. He would be called Dr. Lister in the United States, but British surgeons like to acknowledge barbers as their professional ancestors by calling themselves just "Mr."

Born in 1827, Joseph Lister attended University College Hospital, London for his training, the only place he could go as a non-conforming Quaker. He became a professor of surgery at Glasgow University in 1860 and moved to Edinburgh in 1869, marrying the daughter of an Edinburgh professorial colleague, James Syme. He was 40 when he published his first installment of a now-historic series of six articles on antiseptic surgery.

At that time, putrefaction commonly followed operation, leading to the common report that "the operation was successful but the patient died." Lister read Louis Pasteur's study of the cause of fermentation in beer and milk and speculated that the same cause might lead to putrefaction in wounds. Authorities in nearby Carlisle were using creosote to deal with bad-smelling sewage because it reduced the odor. They discovered it also reduced disease amongst cattle and humans. Lister theorized that it was the carbolic acid in creosote that stopped the putrefaction, and that Pasteur's study provided an explanation.

Ridiculed at first, Lister experimented to prove his theory. He used dressings soaked in carbolic acid to cover wounds. The practical outcome of his work was that the rate of infection in his own operations was vastly reduced. After trying combinations with different emphasis of hand-washing, sterilizing instruments, spraying carbolic in the operating theater (he developed a carbolic spray) and antiseptic treatment of wounds, he steadily improved surgery survival rates. His first article of six appeared in The Lancet on this date in 1867. The last appeared in July.

Between 1864 and 1866, before his experiments and remedies, 46 percent of Lister’s surgical patients died; during the next three years, he brought the average down to 15 percent. Yet Lister was initially a prophet without honor in his own country. His work was accepted in Germany, but continued to be ridiculed in London (Scotland's science was still fair game for London opinion-shapers).

To promote his work, Lister accepted a post as Professor of Clinical Surgery at King's College Hospital, London in 1877. His teaching was finally accepted after his astonishingly successful "open" operation for fracture of the patella, the kneecap. A patient, Francis Smith, had fractured his patella a fortnight earlier. Lister wired together the separated fragments of his bone, a complicated process that previously might have been avoided because of the likelihood of "hospital disease." Lister showed how his antiseptic system “removed for ever the threat of hospital disease.”

Smith survived the operation and walked out of the hospital three months afterwards. Many people came to the hospital from far and wide to watch him operate (notices were posted in three different languages requesting no smoking in the hospital). In 1883, Lister was made a Baronet. In 1897 he was the first surgeon to become a peer, the 1st Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. Lyme Disease is indirectly named after the town attached to his title, since Connecticut's Lyme was named after the British one.

GYM MEMBERSHIPS | Disclosures, Cancellations

NY State Senator
Brad Hoylman
 (D-Chelsea, Manhattan)

February 29, 2020–I was pleased to see that New York State Senator Brad Hoylman (D-Chelsea, Manhattan) succeeded yesterday in getting his bill to protect users of commercial gyms through the State Senate.

Hoylman chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

His legislation is called the "I Wanna Quit The Gym" bill. It will protect New Yorkers who sign up for gym memberships from Roach Motel-type contracts that you can get into easily but can't get out of.

The contracts automatically renew until you figure out the magic words that get you released from them. This curse is not restricted to gyms, but you have to start the remedies somewhere.

I remember how easy it was for me to sign up for a gym membership years ago in Chelsea. They had a card table outside the front door with balloons tied to the table and warm, welcoming signs. Anyone could sign me in. A signature and a check and I was a member. Smiles and welcomes all around. Same thing when I signed up for a trainer.

Years later, when my job and daily routine changed and I decided to exit, the situation was very different. I handed in my reservation the same way I signed up, at the membership desk. But the monthly bills continued to come.

I went back to the branch and I talked to several people. The membership manager looked puzzled about how on earth to make this happen, as if I was the first person ever to ask for this. She even called a meeting together with several other people from the branch, to see if together they could figure out how to address this challenging request. In retrospect, forgive me for my thinking that she was showing them all how to talk to people who want to resign. Chat them up without giving them the information they need.

It turned out that I could not resign at the branch where I was gladly signed up. I had to follow a complex sequence involving a registered letter to an address that no one could remember.  

By the time I discovered what to do, in stages, several months had passed and I never was refunded the money for the months when I was no longer using the gym and was still paying for it. I still remember vividly at being rankled at the asymmetry of joining versus resigning.

"Exercising regularly is tiring enough," Hoylman said in promoting his bill. "New Yorkers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops simply to quit their gym and join another." You can say that again.

Senator Hoylman's bill will require gyms to disclose details about pricing and provide easy ways to cancel service.

At the very least, there should be symmetry between signing up and cancelation. If you can sign up at the branch, you should be able to cancel at the branch. If you have to send a registered letter to an obscure address to resign, they should make it just as difficult to sign up so you remember the drill.

As Hoylman said: "Too many gyms, subscription boxes and other companies use misleading offers and promotions to lock unwitting customers into long-term contracts that are ridiculously difficult to get out of. I’m grateful to Leader Andrea-Stewart Cousins for passing this strong consumer protection legislation that will help save New Yorkers money."

Bravo, Senator. It's about time. Now the bill goes to Assembly Member Dinowitz to push through the Assembly.

BOISSEVAIN | Frans Polak Family

Engelein de Booij and Frans Polak,
before the Nazi invasion, 1940.

The following powerful letter is posted here by permission of the writer, Maaike Knottenbelt, in Adelaide, Australia:

Hello John,

...from a person you do not know, but one who is overwhelmed by reading your chapter about Hilda Boissevain de Booij and her daughter Engelien, and Engelien's husband Frans Polak, in your 2015 post.

Since I'm not so digitally literate, I didn't think I would succeed in leaving the following comment on your blog, so I am writing direct and hope this reaches you.  

[This is the post that Maaike refers to: https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-first-year-of-dutch-occupation.html. There is another one that fills in more details, here: http://warriors-families.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-dutch-resistance-goldberg-family.html - JTM]

I have not previously read any of your writing although I probably should have. I am a niece of that young Jewish man Frans Polak, whom Engelien your cousin married in 1940. I have a copy of a photo of them on their wedding day (perhaps you have photos of that occasion too). 

I also have in front of me a letter from Engelien written on 24 July 1999, after Frans had died. It confirms what you already know from a Boissevain source, that although they divorced after the war was over, they remained on good terms with each other until his death. I did not know the reason for their divorce but what Engelien said to you, that the debt he owed to her for his survival [the Nazis seem to have usually spared the lives of Jews married to gentiles in Holland] was too great to bear, seems so plausible to me. 

My mother Meta Polak was Frans’ younger sister. My mother went out to the Dutch East Indies in December 1939. She married my father, Robert Knottenbelt, the following year, in Batavia, 12 November 1940. It is therefore unlikely she was at Frans and Engelien's wedding in 1940 in Holland.

My parents both became Japanese prisoners of war – my father on the Thai-Burma Railway together with one of his older brothers; my mother in Sumatra together with the wife and three young children of one of my father’s cousins.  Elly, the eldest sibling of Frans and Meta was in different camps in Java, together with her two-year-old son.  Her husband Bert van Helbergen was also on the Thai-Burma Railway, but in different camps from my father and his brother (who were not always together in the same camps either).  My maternal grandmother’s brother Piet van der Goot, his wife and child died in camps on Java.  All other family members survived the Japanese camps.

My maternal grandfather James Joseph Polak left Holland with my grandmother Tetta van der Goot for North Carolina in early 1940 before the Nazi invasion of Holland; he worked for the Enka Corporation.  His brother Ernest Polak was a District Court Judge and second wife Renee Polak-Hirsch did not.  Stolpersteine [10x10 cm brass markers for victims of the Holocaust, at their last location seen alive] were laid for them in Rotterdam on 7 April 2010.

There are family war-time letters, including two postcards from Renée to Frans and Engelien written under very straitened circumstances.  

I was so moved to read the letter written by Engelien’s mother to your grandmother in Washington DC, which Engelien translated for you. Do you have more war-time letters from Engelien’s mother or Engelien? Have you finished your book [about the Boissevains in WW2]?  

I grew up on a diet of your mother’s unforgettable books: The Cottage at Bantry Bay, Francie on the Run, Pegeen, The Mitchells (oh Angela and the angel! ), Andries, Kersti and St Nicholas — I know there is another one there whose title currently escapes me. [A list is here: http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/vanstock.htm.]

With a great deal of help I am currently in the processes of collecting, transcribing and translating the family WW2 correspondence, and collecting also those primary source documents that support information about the writers. Unlike you I am not trying to compile a wider family history; just focussing on the wartime correspondents, their correspondence, and any subsequent correspondence that refers directly back to that time. This will always remain an incomplete collection: in the extant correspondence there are references to letters that do not appear to have survived. Perhaps also, more may yet emerge. [The Amsterdam Archief has a lot of Boissevain letters, well indexed.]

My father, mother, older brother and myself migrated to New Zealand in 1951, where the sibling count increased to six. I have lived in Adelaide, South Australia since 1979 with occasional excursions overseas.  I hope very much to hear from you —

Most sincerely,

Maaike Knottenbelt 

Second letter from Adelaide, Australia: 

I include below just briefly two quotations from my English translation of a letter dated 8 October 1945 written by my maternal grandmother Tetta (with a postscript by James) to their son Frans.  They lived in Asheville, NC, and Frans was in London at the time.  It was a momentous day, with the receipt of two family letters: the first letter from Elly in 3 1/2 years confirming that she and young Kees were still alive; the other from my father in Bangkok, confirming the same. No news yet from Meta.

“Aunt Olga writes that they will move soon to Montreal, where her son-in-law Marlin has become liaison-officer with the Inter[national] Civil Aviation Ass[ociation].”

and from the brief postscript written by my grandfather:

We also received recently a short letter from Willem van Marle, at Camp Davis.  He cannot get any leave, so I fear we shall not see him.”

PORTSMOUTH ABBEY | Monastery in the 1940s

PORTSMOUTH PRIORY MONKS IN THE 1940s

Standing: Aelred (Barney) Wall, Andrew Jencks, Hilary, John, Crepeau, Julian, Peter, David
Seated: Placid, Crenier, Richard, Prior Gregory Borgstedt, Hugh Diman, Wilfrid Bayne, Joseph
Missing from Photo: Alban, Ansgar

The monks I got to know quite well when I was a student there in 1955-58 were Fr Aelred, Fr Andrew, Fr Hilary, Fr Peter, Fr Wilfred, Fr Alban.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY CONSECRATED | Dec. 28, 1065

Edward the Confessor (last of the great Anglo-Saxon kings)
directs construction of the Abbey. Drawing by Richard
Caton Woodville of Baltimore, Maryland, or his son.

December 28, 2019 – Westminster Abbey is today 954 years old.

The abbey church is formally called the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster.

It is known as Westminster Abbey but is officially neither an abbey nor a cathedral. 

Elizabeth I made it a Royal Peculiar in 1560, which means that the church's dean and chapter report directly to the monarch. 

Henry III began building the present church in 1245. He  selected the site for his burial.

An abbey has existed on the site since around 1060, and the English Congregation of Benedictine monks occupied the area from  about 970.

King Edward the Confessor began building an abbey in 1042. On December 28, 1065, the abbey church was consecrated, a week before he died.

His successor Harold II was probably crowned there, but nobody much cares because he wasn't king very long. Harold was defeated and killed by William the Conqueror at Hastings. William was crowned on December 25, 1066 at the abbey.

Since then every English and British monarch has been crowned at the Abbey. Many royal weddings and funerals have been held there. Other notable people buried there include 16 monarchs, eight Prime Ministers and famous writers, actors, scientists and military leaders.

The Art. The impressive art showing Edward the Confessor directing construction in a manner that might ordinarily be better associated with leading a country into war, is signed by Richard Caton Woodville, although the History Today article that included the article says that the artists is "Unknown". Possibly the artist is Woodville's son, who had the same name and was also an artist and the "Jr." may have been stylized. See 

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/consecration-westminster-abbey, retrieved January 4, 2020. 

Your blogger has notified History Today that Richard Caton Woodville's name appears in the lower left of the art and he is a distinguished artist from Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore's greatest 19th-century artist, Woodville was from a prominent family in the city. He was probably considered a black sheep for becoming an artist rather than a doctor or businessman, by marrying his first wife against their wishes, and then by divorcing and getting remarried to a fellow artist at the Düsseldorf Arts Academy in Germany, where he studied. He died in London in 1855, at just 30 years old, leaving behind only a few dozen works. His 16 known paintings were in a 2013 exhibition, “New Eyes on America: The Genius of Richard Caton Woodville,” at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. He died of a morphine overdose, and no one knows why, said Joy Peterson Heyrman, who curated the exhibition. 

Woodville was survived by his second wife, Antoinette Marie Schnitzler and their two children, one of whom was artist Richard Caton Woodville Jr.  He became a famous British battle scene painter. Woodville also fathered two children by his first wife. See the story by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post, March 8, 2013.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/walters-art-museum-exhibits-baltimore-artist-woodville/2013/03/07/99cecf22-85dc-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html.

NAZI PARTY | Birth, January 5, 1919

The original name of the Nazi Party, the
German Workers Party.

January 5, 2020 – This day in 1919, the German Workers' Party was created. Hitler joined it later in the year and it became his Nazi Party.

On September 12, 1919, Corporal Adolf Hitler was sent by the German Army to investigate the Workers’ Party, which by its name seemed to have Bolshevik leanings. 

Hitler was not impressed with the 25 people he found in the back of a Munich beer hall. He didn’t like what their leader said, and told them all so. https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/joins.htm

The group, however, was impressed and invited him to join them. He did. The group became the Nazi Party. Within a year it had 2,000 members. In 1921, Hitler became its leader. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nazi-party

By 1928, the Nazi Party had 100,000 members. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-reichstag-fire-and-nazis-rise-power-180962240/

The Crash of 1929 gave Hitler the opening he needed. By 1934, he became Germany’s dictator. https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2016/08/hitler-aug-19-becomes-president-and.html