The Postcard
An Oilette Series postcard that was published by Raphael Tuck and Sons, Art Publishers to Their Majesties the King and Queen.
The card was posted in London using a ½d. stamp on Saturday the 17th. September 1904 to:
Miss N. Manson,
36, High Street,
Hastings.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"39, Cuthill Road,
Camberwell,
London SE.
Dear Nellie,
Pleased to know you are
both having a fine time.
The sea can hardly be any
smoother than at Brighton
last Saturday & Sunday.
219 steps are in the shade
when I tell you that our
wheels went round 37,280
times, covering about
300,000 feet.
The dance went off alright.
Good luck and good
weather,
Yours sincerely,
Will."
Will has also written on the front of the card:
"How we got off on
the West Cliff 1904."
What did Will get up to on the cliffs in 1904? Among its other meanings, to 'get off' can refer to an experience of great pleasure, especially sexual pleasure; in particular, to experience an orgasm. But maybe it had not yet acquired that meaning in the early years of the 20th. century.
Will's reference to wheels is almost certainly referring to bicycle wheels. Assuming a circumference of 91 inches, 37,280 rotations produce a length of 282,707 feet, or 53.54 miles. The distance from Camberwell to Brighton is about 52 miles, so it is likely that Will cycled to Brighton and took the train back to London.
The Bicycle Wheel
Have you ever wondered how the thin metal spokes of a bicycle wheel can support the combined weight of the bicycle and its rider?
Well they don't. The thin spokes would buckle if they were compressed from above by such a weight. In fact the bicycle wheel hub hangs from the spokes immediately above it; a thin steel spoke has a high degree of tensile strength, meaning that it can carry a lot of weight without failing.
As the bicycle wheel rotates, successive spokes take over the job of carrying the weight of the bicycle and rider.
The bicycle wheel is such a remarkable piece of engineering that someone (Jobst Brandt, 1981) has written a 150-page book about it that has run to three editions.
The Perils of Alcohol
So what else happened on the day that Will posted the card?
Well, on the 17th. September 1904, an early study on the relationship between alcohol and cardiovascular disease was published in the United States.
Clarice Halligan
The day also marked the birth in Ballarat, Victoria of Clarice Halligan. Clarice was an Australian nurse and missionary. During World War II she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service, and while a prisoner of war was killed by the Japanese in the Bangka Island massacre.
Clarice Isobel Halligan was the daughter of Joseph Patrick Halligan and Emily Watson Chalmers. She had seven brothers and sisters.
Halligan trained at The Melbourne Hospital and Women's Hospital, and she worked for three and a half years at the re-named Royal Melbourne Hospital.
In 1934 she travelled to Papua New Guinea as a missionary, landing in Port Moresby on the 31st. July.
Clarice Halligan in WWII
On the 11th. July 1940 Halligan enlisted at the A.A.M.C. Depot in Melbourne for the Australian Army Nursing Service. On the 20th. December 1940 she joined the 2nd./13th. Australian General Hospital serving in Malacca, Malaysia and Singapore following the Japanese advance.
In February 1942, Halligan was evacuated from Singapore on the SS Vyner Brooke with 65 Australian Army nurses and over 250 civilian men, women and children three days before the fall of Malaya.
Clarice was injured when the ship was attacked by Japanese torpedoes and sunk in the Bangka Strait on the 14th. February 1942, leaving 22 nurses stranded on Bangka Island in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The nurses were taken prisoners of war by the Japanese, along with 25 mainly British soldiers.
The Bangka Island Massacre
On the 16th. February 1942 almost all the members of the group were massacred. The soldiers were shot or bayoneted, and the nurses were ordered to march into the sea at Radji Beach, where they were machine gunned when they were waist-deep. Clarice was 37 years old when she died.
Only Australian nurse Sister Lieutenant Vivian Bullwinkel, American Eric Germann and Royal Navy Stoker Ernest Lloyd survived.
For almost 80 years, the fact that the Japanese troops had raped the Australian nurses before they were murdered was suppressed. It was never reported at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1947, or included in subsequent post-war re-tellings of the massacre.
Evidence that the Australian women had suffered violent sexual assault before their deaths was only reported in 2019 after being uncovered by research. Lt. Bullwinkel said she was told by the Australian government to never to speak about what happened on Bangka.
Awards and Honours
Halligan was honoured at the Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial on the 9th. February 2020. Her memorial is in the Singapore Memorial within the Kranji War Cemetery.
She is also commemorated on the Augusta Australian Army Nursing Sisters Monument, the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat, and the Australian Military Nurses Memorial.