Martin Fone's Blog, page 57

The Driving Test

The first tangible sign that road safety was being taken seriously came when the Road Traffic Act 1930 introduced the Highway Code. First published in 1931, it was an attempt to establish the fundamentals of sharing a road with other users. The Act also stated that anyone who had a disability that could affect their driving ability may “be subjected to a test to his fitness or ability to drive a motor vehicle”.

The Road Traffic Act 1934, a hotly debated piece of legislation, then made a driving test compulsory for anyone, irrespective of physical condition, who applied for a driving licence on or after April 1, 1934. Two hundred examiners, including sixteen supervisors, were recruited from 34,000 applicants to support the initiative and the test fee was set at 7s 6d. Candidates were required to demonstrate a basic understanding of the Highway Code and their ability to reverse, make a three-point turn, a hill start, and an emergency stop. A pink certificate was issued to those who passed, a yellow to those who failed to make the grade.

Introduced on March 16, 1935, on a voluntary basis, the driving test became compulsory from June 1st. In the run up to its introduction the motoring press devoted acres of editorial space to providing useful tips to their readership on how to hone their skills to meet the requirements of the examiner. The weekly magazine The Motor assuaged the concerns of many by reminding them that “the minimum of inconvenience and maximum of safety to other road users are the essentials of good road sense, and remember that much that passes under the name of road sense is really only courtesy”.

As there were no test centres, examiners would arrange to meet candidates at railway stations or parks. Mr R E L Beere of Kensington Hall Gardens, London W14, volunteered to take the test on March 16, 1935, becoming the first person in Britain to receive his pink certificate which he proudly displayed, in the company of his wife, to a crowd of assembled photographers.     

In the first year, 246,000 took the test with a pass rate of 63%. Such was the demand that the Driving Test Organisation made an “unintended” profit of £16,000 leading to a reduction of the test fee to five shillings two years later. However, the driving test initially only lasted just over four years, suspended on September 2, 1939 for the duration of the Second World War until its reintroduction on November 1, 1946. Those who held a wartime provisional licence were granted a year from February 18, 1947 to convert them into full licences without the necessity of passing a test.

The modern driving test is a more onerous affair with an overall pass rate in 2021/2 of 50.5%, although, curiously, those taking their test for the first time achieved a pass rate of 52.6% and 8% fewer candidates taking tests in automatic cars passed than those in manual vehicles. Analysis of data provided by the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency for the twelve month period from April 2022 suggests there is a wide variance in pass rates between test centres. At Speke in Liverpool out of more than 8,ooo candidates, only a quarter passed compared with 68% of the 1,800 taking their tests in Kendal.

Reflecting Hore-Belisha’s near-death experience, the 1934 Act also required pedestrian crossings to be clearly marked with an amber light globe sitting above a black and white pole. Popularly known as “Belisha beacons”, the first were installed on Kensington Road near Hyde Park in September 1934.

By the end of November there were some 10,000 in London, but, rather like ULEZ enforcement cameras, they were not universally popular, the Daily Mail reporting on November 12th that four men had shattered eighteen glass beacons with air guns. Eighty were stolen in Hampstead within weeks of installation and when the scheme was rolled out to the rest of the country, there were reports of “dismay and even rebellion” amongst regional officials. Plastic replaced glass to prevent vandalism and soon the furore died down, making them a distinctive piece of street furniture during my childhood.  The road to safety on the highway has been a long and winding one!

Head Of A Traveller

A review of Head of a Traveller by Nicholas Blake – 240207

At the end of The Head of a Traveller, the ninth in Nicholas Blake’s Nigel Strangeways series, originally published in 1949, the sleuth is on the horn of a dilemma. He has in his possession a written confession from someone he admires greatly but has now committed suicide that if handed to the police would tarnish their reputation. Suspecting there are significant flaws in the confession sufficient to make it unsound but convincing enough to pass muster with the police desperate to wrap up a tricky and gruesome crime, releasing the confession would spare others who are culpable and thus respect the writer’s last wishes.

The book ends with Strangeways uncertain as to what to do and leaves the reader to ponder what they would do in the circumstances. Some might argue that this is a bit of a cop out, but it is a very realistic dilemma for someone who has the greatest respect for a person with whom he has broken bread. In the circumstances, I would probably let things be.

The book begins with Strangeways paying a visit to Plash Meadows, the home of the poet, Robert Seaton, who lives there with his wife, Janet, son, Lionel, who is still unsettled following his war experiences, and lodgers, Rennell Torrance and his wild child daughter, Mara, and Finny Black, a servant. Robert came into possession of the estate when his elder brother, Oswald, was assumed to have committed and married Janet, a member of the Lacey family who for centuries had owned Plash Meadows and had been engaged to Oswald.

Some months later a headless torso is found in the river nearby and Superintendent Blount, with whom Nigel has worked before, suggests he lends a hand in the investigations. Strangeways agrees and stays with the Seatons, the better to observe the dynamics of the family. There are two mysteries to solve; identify who the headless corpse is and then to understand who committed the murder and why.

The former is solved relatively easily if somewhat gruesomely when a head is found in a string bag up a tree. The second conundrum is more complex but has a surprisingly simple answer and with such a relatively small field of suspects the reader has a shrews suspicion of what went on, even if the mix is complicated by the suspicion that some might be working in tandem. Curiously, Blount disappears out of sight before the denouement.     

As befits a poet, Nicholas Blake was the nom de plume of Cecil Day Lewis, a theme running through the book is the power of poetry. Robert Seaton had lost his poetic muse ever since he inherited Plash Meadows and the death of Oswald, for obviously his is the headless torso, has a cathartic, liberating effect which inspires him to produce, in Strangeways’ opinion, his finest work. To create poetry requires an alignment between one’s creativity and ease of mind. The other ever present leitmotif is the atmospheric house and its ability to evoke different moods and passions.

For the modern reader one of the controversial aspects of the book is the treatment of Finny Black who was a dwarf and was probably mute, although this was not conclusively established. The attitude of the other characters towards him and the language used to describe him might well upset those of a sensitive disposition, but, sadly, is reflective of the attitudes prevailing at the time.

At its heart, it is a story of rape and revenge, what happens when a family conspires against a black sheep, which is beautifully written, witty at times, erudite at others – the title, wonderfully chosen as Oswald had spent his time travelling comes from the opening of an A E Housman poem – and enthralling. It might not be his best but the open question at the end was a stroke of genius.

The Curious Case Of Won’t

As is my wont, I occasionally ruminate upon matters philological and what piqued my interest recently is why “will not” is contracted to “won’t”. Why has the “I” been dropped and replaced by an “o”?

To find the answer, we have to delve into the world of Middle English. The verb “will” appeared in Aelfric of Eynsham’s Grammar, compiled around 995AD, as “wyllan” and acceptable variants included “wil”, “wyll”, “wol”, “woll” and “wole” before spelling conventions were established. The Oxford English Dictionary cites many examples of the verb being spelt as “wole” or “wol” in the 13th century.

As a consequence, contractions to provide the negative included “wynnot”, “wilnot”, “wolnot”, “wilnat” and ”wonnot”. Even though so far as concerned the spelling of the verb the use of an “I” won out, for the contraction of the negative, the “o” from the variant was retained.

One of the earliest uses of “won’t” in print appeared in Thomas Shadwell’s Restoration comedy, The Sullen Lovers, published in 1668, which included the line, “No, no, that won’t do”. Grammarians, stylists, and commentators, though, were appalled by this seemingly illogical contraction, Joseph Addison fulminating in 1711 in The Spectator that “won’t” and other contractions “untuned our language and clogged it with consonants”.

The furore over its use rumbled on for another century before it and its confrères were eventually accepted. Even so, the use of contractions in print is still frowned upon, deemed to be too conversational in tone.

Truth Comes Limping

A review of Truth Comes Limping by J J Connington – 240204

It is a while since I have read anything by J J Connington, the pen name of Alfred Stewart, a distinguished Chemistry professor in his day. Thirteen, they say, is lucky for some and unlucky for others and Truth Comes Limping, the thirteenth in his Sir Clinton Driffield series, is somewhat below the standard of some of his earlier novels. It is aptly titled as the resolution of the mystery takes a long, perhaps overly long, while to emerge. It is long-winded book, not helped by the prolix journalist, Bob Denzil, who speaks as if he is paid by the word.

Sir Clinton, the Chief Constable, is called to investigate the death of a stranger found in the undergrowth on Leisurely Lane bordering the Carfax estate. One of the first to come across the body is a picaresque poacher who is in the process of helping himself to the £100 the otherwise impecunious Miles Huggin was carrying about his person. Although Huggin was shot, there is no trace of a bullet or a weapon. During the course of the investigations, there are two more murders, of Druce Carfax, the landowner, and the gamekeeper, lured into the woods by a note from a WELLWISHER warning of an attempt to snaffle pheasants, even though it was out of season.

Sir Clinton is accompanied by his faithful Watson, Wendover “The Squire”, who is appalled that any suspicion of crime, let alone murder most foul, should fall on a prominent family of the local landed aristocracy. Wendover is at his most unsufferable worst, espousing deeply conservative views about the countryside, and failing to grasp even the basics of what is going on is the device that Connington uses to impress upon the reader the brilliance of the professional sleuth. However, even Sir Clifford fails to twig the importance of some of the information he uncovers, which if he had would have significantly shortened the story.

The book contained a couple of words which have gone to extend my vocabulary. Firstly, Denzil frequently, too frequently in my book, refers to Sir Clinton as alguazil. This, apparently, is a term for a an officer of the law in Spain and Latin America who had once held high rank and is now enjoying an inferior status, presumably intended to be a humorous jibe at the Chief Constable. More relevant to the story is Melchizedek, a character in the Old Testament, not my strong point, I am afraid, and a variant of whose name also appears in Dickens’ Bleak House, who has no genealogy. It is an apt reference as the whole nub of the story is who is the true heir to the Carfax estate as the previous owner was not averse to sowing his wild oats.

This becomes a tale of blackmail and a desperate attempt to, on the one side, suppress the truth and, on the other, to reclaim rights in accordance to an unusual provision in Griswold Carfax’s will. Some of the familiar tropes of crime fiction are wheeled out – a character with a dual identity, much ado about the typeface of a typewriter and a mildly ingenious plan to remove it from the scene. Toxophily, archery to you and me, figures prominently and is the explanation for how the first murder was committed. A longbow and an extensive quiver full of arrows also provides the drama as the net closes around the culprit, although Connington cleverly springs a little surprise which in part rescues the book.

As always Connington plays fair with his reader and has devised a clever and compelling plot which, ignoring all the background persiflage, is interesting enough, but, for me, there was not the spark that there was in some of the earlier and far better books. The curse of thirteen, indeed.

Error Of The Week (15)

To “swinging the lead” and “pulling a fast one” we can now add “throwing a Christmas tree” as a euphemism for trickery or deceit after a court in Limerick in Ireland dismissed Kamila Grabska’s £650,000 compensation claim for injuries sustained after a car accident in 2017. She had claimed that the injuries to her back and neck were so disabling that she had been unable to work for more than five years or play with her children.

The diligent claims investigators of the insurance company expected to open their cheque book, however, found a photograph of the claimant in a national newspaper throwing a five-foot spruce at a charity event in January 2018 to such good effect that she won the ladies section of the Irish International Christmas Tree-throwing championship held at Ennis in County Clare. The feat convinced the judge, who considered it to be “a very large, natural Christmas tree and it is being thrown by her in a very agile movement”, that the defendant’s claims were grossly exaggerated and threw the case out.

A costly error, indeed.

The Sittaford Mystery

A review of The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie – 240201

Christie’s The Sittaford Mystery, originally published in 1931 and also known as Murder at Hazelmoor, sits outside of her Poirot and Miss Marple canon, and features an enterprising, high-spirited female sleuth, Emily Trefusis, who is not above using her feminine charms to get what she wants. She is motivated to unravel the mystery as her fiancé, James Pearson, has been accused of the murder of Captain Trevelyan, hit over the head in his temporary accommodation in Exhampton.

There is a distinctly Holmesian feel to the novel and, in particular, echoes of The Hound of the Baskervilles, with its setting in the wilds of Dartmoor and an escaped prisoner from Princetown, to boot. Continuing the Conan Doyle theme, spiritualism, in the form of a game of table turning aka Ouija which is organised by Mrs Willetts, the mysterious new tenant of Trevelyan’s Sittaford House, sets off the mystery when a message is tapped out informing the assembled guests that Trevelyan has been murdered at 5.25. Despite the snowy conditions, Major Burnaby, rushes out to make the perilous journey to see what has happened to his friend. And lo, the spirits spoke the truth. Preparations for a second session of table turning hastens the denouement and the revelation of the culprit.

There are really two mysteries to the story; who killed Trevelyan and why and who are the Willetts and why, having supposedly come from South Africa, have they taken a large house in the middle of nowhere in the depths of winter? Christie’s skill is weaving these two plotlines into a single story and keeping the reader believing until the very end that they are interconnected. The story comes with a whole shoal of red herrings, but her trawl net is showing some need of repair as some wriggle free and are not satisfactorily explained at the end, particularly the reference to Rycroft’s familial ties with the Derings. On the other hand, the doubts over the identity and trade of the mysterious Mr Duke are handled amusingly and well.

The story’s biggest weakness is the identity of the culprit and their motivation. I can accept an author who decides not to play fair with the reader, although second guessing the sleuth is part of the fun of reading this genre, but a feeling of inferiority, always coming second best, barely foreshadowed in the narrative, and a need for money, – £5,000 is paltry compared with the £20,000 each that the beneficiaries of Trevelyan’s will will receive – seem highly inadequate reasons to commit murder most foul.

Part of the problem is Christie’s feeble characterisation. We know little of the murder victim, save that he was a misogynist and parsimonious, and precious little about the inner workings of the culprit’s mind. Had a little bit time been spent on these aspects, perhaps the resolution would not have felt such a let-down.

Echoing The Mystery of the Blue Train, Emily has to make a choice between her hapless fiancé who is weak-minded and whose ill-luck landed him in a situation where circumstantially he seems to have committed murder and Charles Enderby, an energetic, thrusting journalist whose scoops on the Sittaford case ensure a comfortable future for him. Of course, Emily lets her heart rule her head.

For once, the police, in the form of Inspector Narracott, are not bumbling idiots, but in their own quiet way make progress on the cases and work well with Emily to reveal the culprit. A pair of missing boots hold the key to the identity of the culprit in what was a highly entertaining and undemanding read. I was left, though, with the feeling that it could have been so much better.

Driving Licences

For many it was the must-have coming of age present, a course of driving lessons and the chance to enjoy the sense of freedom that holding a full licence brought with it. It was a generational experience that peaked between 1992 and 1994 when as many as 48% of 17 to twenty-year-olds and 75% of those aged between twenty-one and 29 held one. By 2014 the percentages had dropped to 29% and 63% respectively and in 2021 the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) reported that the number of those aged between 16 and 25 qualified to drive had dropped to its lowest level on record, 2.97 million, a reduction that was even more remarkable given the increase in the overall numbers of that age cohort during the period.

A greater environmental awareness, enhanced digital connectivity, the boom in home working, and the spiralling costs of car ownership are cited as reasons for driving falling out of favour with youngsters. Another factor is that the driving test system itself has taken a frustratingly long time to recover from the disruptions of Covid with candidates still experiencing long waits for test dates, now an average of 18.8 weeks.

The need to show a level of proficiency in driving and manoeuvring a vehicle deemed acceptable to an independent examiner is a relatively new concept in the context of the history of the car. While driving licences began to be issued in Paris from 1893 and tests became mandatory across France in 1899, Britain was slower off the mark. Printed on a fabric, bound like a passport and costing five shillings, driving licences only became compulsory in 1904, and were available on application at their local Council office to anyone over the age of seventeen, and renewable annually.

However, there was no requirement to demonstrate even the basic competence behind the wheel to obtain a licence. Those who felt the need to do so, travelled to France to take a test, like the Honourable Evelyn Ellis, who in 1895 became the first Englishman to pass a driving test, in Paris, and Miss Vera Hedges Butler, the first British woman in 1900.

Rather like Kenneth Grahame’s Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows (1908), many a stolid Englishman seemed to undergo a dramatic character transformation when sitting behind the wheel of a car, often driving wildly and carelessly, at least until the often reluctant authorities caught up with them. The advent of cheaper and faster cars in the 1920s led to an explosion in vehicle numbers matched by an equally astonishing casualty rate. In 1933 more than 7,000 were killed on the roads and over 200,000 injured. The incoming Transport Minister, Leslie Hore-Belisha, who himself had narrowly missed being run over, likened the situation to “mass murder”.

The Pedestrian Association, formed in 1929, lobbied for stricter traffic regulations, adequate road safety measures, and law enforcement, a campaign furiously resisted by motoring associations who argued that these would be tantamount to an infringement of a driver’s civil liberties and suggested that irresponsible pedestrians were as much to blame for the carnage on the roads. And anyway, why such a fuss when 6,000 committed suicide a year?

All was soon to change.

The Murder Of Caroline Bundy

A review of The Murder of Caroline Bundy by Alice Campbell – 240130

Alice Campbell’s sixth novel, The Murder of Caroline Bundy, was originally published in 1932 and has been reissued by Dean Street Press. It is somewhat melodramatic, a tad overlong tale of the manipulation, exploitation and ultimately the killing of a woman who has all her life been under the thrall of her father, Theodore Bundy, whom she regards as a genius. Set near Glastonbury, it inevitably involves a hunt for the Holy Grail, said to be buried in the area.

The book has three distinct parts. In the first part we are introduced to Caroline Bundy and her niece, Natasha Anderyev, whom she has taken under her wind. Their domestic relationship is unsettled by the arrival of the Tilburys, Alfred and Connie, whom Caroline first invites to reside in her lodge and then into the house as caretakers while she goes on a trip to Rome. The Tilburys, with their ingratiating and somewhat uncouth manners, seem odd bedfellows.

Another arrival to the household is Neil Starkey, an American who has been commissioned to write a biography of Theodore Bundy and has access to his papers. Bundy was a scientist but in his later years had become fascinated with spiritualism and had become convinced that a series of tunnels near the property led to the hiding place of the Holy Grail. He is shocked by the change in appearance of Caroline who has lost weight dramatically and is erratic in her behaviour and moods. Family friend, Emily Braselton, is also concerned and decides to take Caroline away on holiday.

The pace of the book starts to rise as Caroline is found dead, her head caved in, in a deserted spot off the main road near Bath. What was she doing there when she was driven to London by Natasha? Why was she so concerned about an alligator bag she had left in Natasha’s car? Why was Natasha acting so suspiciously and who was the mystery man she was meeting, much to Neil’s chagrin as he was developing feelings for her? Did Caroline really give Natasha the pearls which she promptly sold and why did she need the money? After trying to flee the country, Natasha is arrested and charged with Caroline’s murder, although the evidence against is circumstantial.

The second part of the book concerns her trial in which the similarities between a Giesling and a Getz motor car and the distinctive nature of Natasha’s handbag lead to a surprising verdict. The third section, the most dramatic part of the book, details Neil’s attempts to clear Natasha’s name. It is another story where the behaviour of dogs, this time Alsatians, is crucial, leading to the discovery of Natasha’s imprisonment, the incriminating papers that were contained in Constance’s alligator bag are recovered and the dastardly plot against Caroline is revealed. Just to add spice to the tale, there is a shoot-out, Neil gets the chance to play the all-action hero and receives his just rewards.

From an investigative point of view, the oddity of the story is the role of the police. They are far from proactive, leaving Neil to do all the hard work, content to make up the numbers and give an air of authority as the culprit is ensnared in his lair. Their identity is easy to spot, although the plot against Caroline is convoluted and reveals the working of a clever if fiendish mind.     

I enjoyed Campbell’s earlier novels and found that this book did not quite meet their standard. Still, it is entertaining enough and a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of evenings in front of a roaring fire.

Advice Of The Week (7)

I am not a great fan of lightning and prefer to stay indoors during a storm. However, what should you do if you are caught in the great outdoors? Some German scientists, according to Nature, have some come up with some helpful advice: soak your head with rainwater.

While the chances of being struck by lightning are around one in a million, a direct hit to the head is usually fatal. Taking two model “heads” containing three layers representing the scalp, skull, and brain, they sprayed one head with a weak salt solution to represent rainwater and kept the other dry. They then exposed the two heads to ten electrical discharges of 2kA and 12 kV.

The found that the wet head carried a lower amount of the current to the brain layer compared with the dry head, offering a survival rate of 70 to 90% compared with 30% for a dry head. Vapourising water could reduce the temperature of the skin and direct lightning away from it, the believe, but they will conduct more research on their findings.

Instead of rushing for shelter when there is lightning and a downpour, perhaps we should stay in the open and bare our heads. The choice is yours.

Big Ben Strikes Eleven

A review of Big Ben Strikes Eleven by David Magarshack – 240127

Magarshack was better known as a translator, especially of Russian novels and in particular Dostoevsky, but turned his hand in the 1930s to writing detective fiction. Big Ben Strikes Eleven, which was originally published in 1934 and has now recently been reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, was the first of his three efforts.

Two of my enduring impressions of “classic” Russian literature, of which I have read mercifully little, is that they are overlong and full of deep introspection, traits which, unfortunately, has introduced into his crime fiction. The length of the book is extended by the suspects and witnesses either refusing to co-operate by refusing to answer questions or by giving their own particular version of what happened and even the humblest of characters, the window cleaner who discovers the body, is allowed the space to ruminate upon what implications his find will have on his life.

The book concerns the death of Sir Robert Boniface, found shot in his car close to Hampstead Heath. Was he murdered or was it suicide? As is the way with these novels, the victim is a deeply unpleasant man full of overarching ambition, not beyond a bit of fraud to achieve his business goals and betting the fortunes of his company and those of his investors in a wild attempt to alter the world order. It emerges that the Board of his company has rumbled his plans and are trying to force him out or at least clip his wings. Was this enough to drive him to suicide?

The absence of a gun at the scene suggests, though, that it is murder and there are several suspects with motive enough to kill Boniface. The principal suspect is Frank Littlewood, the disenchanted nephew who has recently been sacked by Boniface and has written a virulent article that indicates that he knows enough to dish the dirt on his uncle. Another with just cause is Matt Caldwell, the stereotypical bohemian artist, who painted a portrait of the businessman which revealed his true character but which Boniface took exception to and refused to pay for.

The third prime suspect is Benjamin Fuller who works in Boniface’s personal office and is spotted by Superintendent Mooney, who is leading the investigation for the Yard, disposing of the gun. His wife is Boniface’s lover and will not grant him a divorce to allow him to marry, perhaps motive enough although the death of the magnate will not solve the impasse in his marital affairs.

The resolution of the case revolves around those irritating little clues that do not fit easily into what otherwise seems prima facie to be an open and shut case, a grey handkerchief, a cinema ticket, a discarded cigar, and some scratches on the paintwork of Boniface’s car. Always be suspicious of a perfect alibi, especially when presented by an inscrutable secretary who clearly knows more than they let on.

The pace of an otherwise pedestrian book only livens up at the end when the culprit makes a break for it and rushes to their death on Westminster Bridge. When Mooney reflects on what has happened and what he could have done to prevent it, Big Ben strikes eleven. Mooney is a fairly colourless character but is more considered in his actions than his more impetuous colleague, Inspector Beckett, and has the knack of worrying the awkward details into a coherent picture.     

The book has its moments but it is easy to see why Magarshack concentrated on developing a reputation as a translator.