Mrs Baguley

[greenwoodside]

To Mrs Baguley, who won the women's skeleton sled race down the Cresta Run in 1925

She might have won more, but some men discovered that doing the Cresta Run – 1.2km in 1 minute – caused breast cancer, and so women had to be stopped for their own welfare.
 

Who were you Mrs Baguley? The internet says your initials were J. M. So perhaps you were a Jane, or a Janet? To be hanging round an early Swiss ski resort, you would probably have been wealthy, if not laden down with riches. 

If Baguley is even your real name, and you weren't using a pseudonym for some propriety-related reason. 

You seem like the kind of person that should have had a poem written about you by – I don't know – Carol Ann Duffy, UA Fanthorpe, or something spiky and odd by Stevie Smith. I can imagine one of Smith's drawings illustrating your 1925 victory. 

Comments

[theseatheseatheopensea]

This is absolutely delightful, thank you for sharing! I loved reading about Mrs Baguley, and a Stevie Smith poem (plus drawing) would definitely be perfect for her!

[greenwoodside]

Glad you liked it!

We really do need an academic or investigative journalist to find out more about those early women competitors, Mrs JM Baguley included.

The St Moritz Toboganning Club is still going (and still full of rich upper-class men and sponsored by Koenig Jewellery and Ripa Ripa 'Redefining Italian Men's Swimwear'). Their website says they have a big archive – they might even have kept material on the original women's races. Or they might have used it to light their pipes and start their après-ski fires in the thirties!

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Yes to all of this! All these small bits of history should be preserved--I definitely hope that the Toboganning Club archive hasn't been used to light fires, that's sadly more usual than one might think! :(

[greenwoodside]

Unfortunately, yes : ( I was reminded of a colleague a few years ago, who said he'd bought some boxes of bric-a-brac at an auction, and which turned out to include a number of diaries belonging to a woman whose life spanned most of the twentieth century. (He'd brought in a commonplace book belonging to her, it looked a lot like the book of quotations and pressed flowers that my grandmother kept as a child.)

I said that some museums/social history collections might want the diaries.

He said he'd thought they were a bit boring, so he threw them away.

Friendly guy who liked indie music and was environmentally conscious; I imagine that most of the people in the Cresta set are a lot less appreciative of women's history.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Oh no, this is heartbreaking, but I'm not surprised--archives (especially personal and women's) are still seen as unimportant and disposable! This story reminded me of something that happened some years ago at my job. We keep records for different state departments, which we sometimes return to them, because of our limited space. So we were returning Air Force records, and told them that there were regulations from our National Archives that a specific part of them had to be kept permanently, because they'd been produced during the dictatorship years. The person in charge actually asked me why and I explained, but still, I'm almost positive that these records became barbecue kindling! :(

[greenwoodside]

:( I hope he had opened some of the records, saw a name that reminded him of a relative, and had a Damascus moment. And is now an archivist somewhere campaigning for better protection of records.


(Well, a person can dream).

[igenlode]

I'm afraid Mrs J.M.Baguley was more probably the wife of Mr J.M.Baguley, and not a Janet or a Joan... ;-)

[greenwoodside]

Hah, I'd completely forgotten about that. I'm just old enough to remember seeing my mother receive a couple of official letters addressed to "Mrs [name of greenwoodside's dad]" and not understanding it all.

'Who the hell is that meant to be?' would have been the sentiment if not the literal words of six-year-old me.

Anyway, I guess if I get as far as hunting through ancestry.co.uk looking for Baguleys, I should be focussing on the men initially. : )

[igenlode]

My mother certainly did -- and my father expected to have "Esq." suffixed to his name on official communications instead of "Mr" prefixed to it ;-)

(So it would be "Mrs J.M.Baguley" but "J.M.Baguley Esq[uire]" on the envelopes... or 'omvelopes', which was the genteel pronunciation!)

[greenwoodside]

Now I don't think I've ever seen an 'Esq.' suffix in the wild. Though I guess places like the Garrick may still make fairly unironic use of them?

I may once have spotted one (the abbreviation, not the bearer) on an HTML dropdown list of courtesy titles/suffixes/post-nominals? Mr, Mrs, Your Grace, Rev, Professor, OBE, KC etc.

[igenlode]

Now I don't think I've ever seen an 'Esq.' suffix in the wild. Though I guess places like the Garrick may still make fairly unironic use of them?

I don't think I've seen one for forty years or so...
Wikipedia claims that it is still used on letters sent out from Buckingham Palace (although this appears to be based on a source from fifteen years ago -- I don't know anyone who has ever received a letter from the Palace whom I could ask!), and that Americans use it as a title for lawyers, presumably like the French use of the obsolete Maître ('Master') for the same purpose.

[greenwoodside]

It may come back into fashion...

(Like lack of adequate housing and social security /political grumpery)