Table Of Content

NEWSLETTER \ Issue 20 \ Winter 2006 We are famIly I t’s been all go since the last newsletter We’d particularly like to thank – our show, Really Living and our exhibition, Susy for taking the cover photos Bona Books, both went down well during and everyone who posed for the Summer’s Brighton Pride and we’re them. delighted that the exhibition will have another airing in February (3rd-28th) for the Winter Pride lOst truths Arthur and John with AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1992 Festival and LGBT History Month. This time Brighton Ourstory is eighteen from the Pride Centre’s growing photo exhibition it will be in the Jubilee Library in Brighton city years old in January – and like centre and as well as the display panels there all young adults is preparing will be glass cabinets to show off some of the to make its way in the books from the 1,000+ we have in our Heritage world. As a bonnie baby, neW In the Library. They include fiction (both serious and Ourstory drew to it a vast saucy), biography, history, crime, politics, theory and previously unknown & analysis (both sensible and daft), plays, extended family, whose gifts poetry and some odd things that don’t seem to of life stories, photographs, archIve fit anywhere. Thanks are due to all those who skills and care have enabled have donated books to the archive, to Brighton it to thrive. An £18,000 s s & Hove Library Service and to Brighton Pride legacy a few years ago e nt Pr for supporting and funding the exhibition – and has been paying for our W e were delighted to receive from Jo Women’s and Gay Liberation movements. mo to the dedicated band of Ourstory volunteers adolescent’s upkeep and education, along u - one of the pioneering souls who Includes an invaluable index. From Elizabeth a who have spent a good part of the last year with small grants from local funders and whether we need them or not! e B organised the first Brighton Pride via Jill, a number of lesbian and feminist books y cataloguing this fantastic collection. welcome contributions from family. Bursting Have you got cupboards containing household b to take place in Preston Park, back in 1992 and periodicals, including issues of Common d with ideas for the future and embarking soon appliances/clothes/bits of mysterious e - a collection of photographs she’d found in Lives, Lesbian Lives, Conditions, Gossip and print legacy pack on vocational training, in three years time technology, seldom if ever used? Ourstory her attic. They include those pinned to the wall Sinister Wisdom: “We believe that what we 6), We have also taken some time to put together Ourstory will be ready to play a full part in now really needs those who care about its 3 at the Pride Centre in West Street and some read affects our lives. That the images we look 00 information to help you work out if you’d like society by providing a Bursting with future to think twice before 5 shots of the Brighton Area alf has brought at influence how we see. 2 3 to leave Brighton Ourstory something in your centre that has something buying more of those things – 9 ideas for the Action Against Section 28 That there are pictures and 7 will. The result is an eight-page booklet that for everyone of us or taking another exhausting 7 in some queer 0 National Tour. Thanks to words that numb us, dull n ( contains all you need to know (well, quite a lot) – bringing back memories, future... short break – and consider o Jo, now living in far flung tableware... us, keep us circling in one ks about making or amending a will and about uncovering lost truths and whether their money might c parts, and to Brighton place, others which can Di the financial benefits of leaving a gift to charity. valuing our lives. As it stands at the moment, be more productively and creatively spent Pride for forwarding this collection to us for challenge us to the quick, heal and empower ser though, what it won’t have is anywhere to live. on supporting the cultural activities for our a safe-keeping. From Val, a complete set of The us.” Adrienne Rich, Issue 17. We are glad larry Berryman y Fr Without large-scale support from family and community that Ourstory uniquely provides. Ladder, as reprinted and bound after its sad to add these to our Heritage Library. Alf has ● It’s with great sadness that we report d b rOOm fOr One friends old and new, Ourstory is likely to be Sending a donation, setting up a standing demise for lack of funds in 1972. Originally brought in some queer tableware and Ben has the death, in his early sixties, of graphic gne mOre On tOp... sleeping on someone’s sofa – or worse still, order from your bank, asking your employer si conceived and published by the Daughters sent from his travels the programme of artist, Larry Berryman. Larry worked de ● Patrick has been in touch with news out on the streets. to deduct an amount from your salary each of Bilitis in San Francisco in 1956, this lesbian a photographic exhibition staged by the with us on our book, Daring Hearts, 06, that another of the city’s bus fleet has We live in a time of low taxation and high month are all good ways to keep Ourstory 0 magazine gives a fascinating insight into Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand. and produced for it a number of elegant y 2 been named after one of us. Look out for consumer activity – everything around us buoyant – and a legacy would help take care changing attitudes in the years leading to the Thanks to all. illustrations. Shown here is his sketch stor music hall star Dougie Byng, trolling along encourages us to spend our money on things, of the long-term future. of the Fortune of War pub on Brighton Our the number 25 route from Hove/Kemp seafront. We’ve lost a fine intelligence and on Town to the universities. (For more Brighton Ourstory PO Box 2861, Brighton BN1 1UN a very sweet man. He is survived by his Bright about Dougie see Brighton Ourstory Visit us online at www.brightonourstory.co.uk partner, Nigel. © newsletter #16). theOry & practIce The London lounge of Patrick Bellew; Schrijver’s ‘scheme is blue and white t he International Women’s Day choose to be lesbians or bisexual.” throughout’ celebration on 12 March 1977 At the Birmingham conference in 1978 – a surging of women’s energy Sandy and the Brighton Women’s Liberation in Brighton – marked the formalisation of Group further championed the lesbian cause International Women’s Day by the UN General by getting the Sixth Demand shortened to Assembly. The slogan on the banner pictured simply “An end to discrimination against here referred to a demand adopted at the lesbians.” There was fierce debate and Women’s Liberation Movement’s national disagreement about this and the newly conference in Edinburgh three years earlier. adopted Seventh Demand which was about The Women’s Liberation Movement in male violence, with the result that 1978 was Britain had a number of demands that it the last national conference of the Women’s made of the world. To start with in 1970 Liberation Movement in Britain. there were four, which dealt with equal Sad though this was, the Brighton pay and educational an end to Women’s Liberation opportunity for women, Group had laid the discrimination contraception, abortion foundations for later and child care. At against lesbians... discussions in all areas the 1974 national of sexual politics: conference, two more were added – Lynda Birke of the Brighton group: “What the sixth being “An end to discrimination lesbianism did for the women’s movement against lesbians and the right of all women was that it put sexuality onto the agenda and to define their own sexuality.” Brighton it provided a framework in which women Women’s Liberation Group member, Sandy could talk about emotional binding to other Best remembers: women. What the Women’s Movement did ”Back in 1974 there was still a tremendous for lesbianism, I suppose, it began to help to amount of discrimination against lesbians politicise it, the Women’s Movement allowed within the Movement. The women who lesbians to have a political handle on their “all draperIes must instigated the Sixth Demand were women existence.” BOOk revIeW... from the North London Women’s Centre and Herman Schrijver Be heavIly frInged Women’s hospitals in Brighton at home in somehow I got myself involved in that. I wasn’t & hove by val Brown Onslow Square, happy with the last part of the demand. The London and trImmed” ● This lively account of early twentieth word sexuality was all-encompassing and century pioneering women doctors is was therefore up for abuse - the demand teeming with facts, not only about the HERMAN SCHRIJvER (1904-1972) was meant to be there as a Women’s medical profession but also the women’s Liberation support suffrage movement and the First World for women who O ne of the curious features of the early In 1922 his father’s company collapsed, the War. Val traces the development of the history of the BBC is that advice on victim of swindlers, and Schrijver was forced two local women’s hospitals from the domestic matters for housewives into uncongenial employment as a clerk in a first gleam in an idealistic eye, to their International Women’s was almost entirely dispensed by queens. Swiss bank. He soon found happier work in successful operation followed by sad Day March, 1977. Among those employed to poove away on the the soft furnishings department of Peter Jones absorption into the National Health Service, From the Susy Taylor Collection airwaves were the chef Marcel Boulestin, the in Sloane Square and then an antique shop which led to their eventual demise. knitting expert James Norbury and the interior in Brook Street before launching his influential I found it a fascinating read, not least for decorator Herman Schrijver, a firm guide to career as a decorator with Elden’s Limited, the descriptions of women’s networking the perils of skimpy pelmets and the ruinous designing for such exalted clients as Wallis and committees, still going strong in effects of hefty furniture and covered radiators. Simpson and the Prince of Wales at today’s community organisations. I Born in Holland into a Fort Belvedere. particularly felt for these doctors in the austere with family of Jewish diamond Schrijver’s taste - austere challenge they faced securing funds to merchants, Schrijver touches of with touches of opulence turn their vision into bricks and mortar! moved as a boy to Preston - is documented in his 1939 Unlike today though, they had the local opulence... Court, a large Italianate compendium Decoration aristocracy to help out villa at 253 Preston Road, for the Home. Alongside through the tradition of while his father was involved in a scheme Wells Coates’ and Marion Dorn’s designs for noblesse oblige. to employ local war veterans in a diamond- Embassy Court in Brighton are illustrations There’s also plenty here polishing factory. of Schrijver’s favoured mixing of modern and for future researchers of Herman was by his own account a traditional styles in the likes of silver-gilt Queen lesbian history to get their precociously gay child who delighted in picking Anne chairs upholstered in zebra skin. teeth into – lots of “lifelong up men in the local park and spending their Readers wanting further details of this companions” and pairs Churchill Square, gratuities on gifts of flowers for his mother; the charming man should seek out Charles of single women. The ball Brighton scene of these early pleasures was possibly Burkhart’s Herman and Nancy and Ivy: Three has already rolled a little the nearby Preston Park. lives in art and Hilary Spurling’s Secrets of a way on some of these Woman’s Heart which documents his friend – see Brighton Ourstory newsletter no.12 Ivy Compton-Burnett’s pleasure in his for more on Val’s two heroines, Dr Louisa Call Brighton Ourstory on 01273 206655 or contact us by email on [email protected] ‘flightiness, cheerfulness, unfailing pessimism Martindale and Dr Helen Boyle. and wild overstatements’. Linda