Crime Statistics in Suffolk

A temp posting of some interesting things I found in books relating to crime in the 19th Century. Halesworth (where I live) was a black spot of criminality then.

Digital switchover a boon to rogue traders

I should share some information I gained from a regular meeting of Age Concern, Suffolk ACRE, Orbit Housing, Suffolk Fire and Rescue, Department of Work and Pensions, Trading Standards and Suffolk Constabulary to discuss and share practice on improving safety for vulnerable people.

Distraction burglaries

This time of year sees a seasonal increase in distraction burglaries. A very popular gambit for these thieves is saying they’re from the water board (no such body exists) and people working in teams to draw a person outside on some pretext while others go in the back or front door.

I could fill pages with all kinds of public safety advice but I hope that someone who knows or is looking after a vulnerable person, will advise them if a stranger calls making claims about their roof or looking for a lost cat, then have them alert a neighbour or carer or a relative or a person designated before letting them in. Any legitimate caller wouldn't mind waiting or coming back later or having their purpose verified.

It is a matter of judgement and it is difficult to set concrete protocols but I personally would prefer to foster a culture of ‘stop  - think - check’, rather than paranoia that all unexpected callers must be evil. Excellent crime reduction efforts in certain hotspots naturally forces criminals to seek pastures anew and nowhere in Suffolk is immune but my community work often involves door-to-door canvassing and surveys and it would make a difficult task almost impossible if every home had the drawbridge up. Unfortunately, due to data protection laws, if I wanted to write to a target group, say parents, carers or disabled people, to advise them of new services or survey their needs I cannot access a health or education authority's database to get a list of addresses but have to post leaflets through everyone's letter box (which usually get ignored) or go out into the community and simply ask questions.


Sadly I have seen examples of security companies distributing official-looking leaflets hyping non existent threats which only increases fear of crime and leads to communities establishing 'no-calling' zones. While those offer some relief, in my opinion, such measures are signs of failure in community cohesion. It would be better if people felt they could ask their neighbour for a second opinion and people knew their neighbours well enough to think that checking-up on them wasn't going to be taken as interfering.

Digital Switchover

Another kind of Rogue Trader

One event likely to cause a spike in rogue traders and distraction burglaries is the digital switchover of television transmission which is starting in Suffolk soon. The important message public safety bodies want to get out is that there is no need to change your aerial or your TV. Old ‘analogue’ televisions will need a new digital box (such as the Freeview box) while 90% of people’s aerials will work as before. In areas of the UK which have already done the switchover, rogue traders were gouging vulnerable people for installing unnecessary aerials because they might have heard on the grapevine that some people (the other 10% presumably) needed to.  Some people are entitled to get a digital box, set-up instruction and aerial installation free of charge, others will pay a fixed rate of £40. Call 0800 4085900 or www.helpscheme.co.uk 


If you you have the means to display information, such as in the lobby of your office or shop window, or you participate in clubs and associations (such as the WI) in your community, then you can also call this number to get display materials and leaflets as well.

You can check if you might need to adjust the aerial from a test pattern on Teletext page 284 but if your reception fails the test now, check again once the transmitters start digital broadcasts at full power (many places around me can’t get Freeview). Although for most it will be unnecessary, you can appreciate why legitimate installers and electrical shops could advise people to get new aerials if someone asked if they needed one for the switchover. Aerials installed five or twenty-five years ago will not perform as well as newer ones. Generally speaking: a digital signal is all-or-nothing, either it works or it doesn’t. So if you enjoy good reception now on analogue, your aerial is likely just fine for digital. If your present reception is poor, a weathered and misaligned aerial might not cope with digital but a “digital aerial” is marketing hype.

Something else to know is while most analogue VCRs can record on one channel while watching another, after the switchover, when your signal is coming through the box, this will not be possible (unless your VCR is a digital receiver) and you will only be able to record or watch but not both. I expect howls of anguish when this comes into effect and a huge waste mountain of analogue VCRs and TVs. If you want to replace your television and VCR for digital models, please take them to household recycling centres to ensure they are properly disposed of.

The switch-over will be phased in through the transmitters serving Suffolk, starting with those receiving from Sandy, then Sudbury and then Tacolneston in three-month intervals

The first mailings should be going out on 20 September with media ramping up everywhere soon. The first channel affected is BBC2, so you’ll know when it’s happening in your area if you can’t receive it anymore!

Design and Travel Ephemera 1968

It was said on the cover of LIFE magazine that 1968 was an "incredible year" filled with events of immense historic significance. I have a CBS record celebrating the same. In hindsight, Western history had reached a tipping point. 


I have been going through a suitcase of my fathers' papers lately. In it there is a file on a conference on Teamwork in Design sponsored by the Council on Industrial Design [now the Design Council] that he attended, held in Edinburgh on Friday June 28, 1968.


Design, the journal of the CoID, said back then: "the conference is aimed at management executives, designers and educationalists...  Speakers will include representatives from each of the six companies which have won this year's capital goods awards, who will talk about the design problems in their particular industry; and plenty of time is to be left for discussion. The chairman is A. R. Miller, who was also chairman of the ColD Awards capital goods panel."

In the file there are several rounds of correspondence between bureaucrats at County Hall and my father about his claim for travel expenses which had been initially agreed to be limited to £20 but when all overnight trains were cancelled because of a national railway work-to-rule, he was forced to fly to Edinburgh. The extra costs, including airport parking - which he could only claim reimbursement at the equivalent of the bus fare to Heathrow - had exceeded the stipulated budget by £4 which he was not willing to bear.


I wonder if there is any database of UK industrial action; of who and when and for how long particular companies or whole industries were on strike? 


The following weekend was my seventh birthday party where I got an 'Action Man' figure and discussion about the cost of it was the first inkling I had my parents were worried about money. Perhaps my dad was feeling rather short, being considerably out of pocket because some other working stiff felt they deserved more money for their labour too.


A topic of conversation my father was fond of then is still unresolved now: there is little point in innovation of the machinery of production unless we also innovate the role of 'man' in such production. I don't recall who said it but I heard on Radio 4 recently that there hasn't been a major step change in management since Taylorism.

What might be fascinating to the casual web-surfer landing here is the travel ephemera I also found in the file. There are certainly many people who collect this, the BEA timetable below is already on the web. 


Flicking through the 'Official Accommodation Register 1968' of Edinburgh gives an insight into the lost world of theatrical landladies and rooms for rent in private houses for working men and commercial travellers along with two establishments styling themselves with the novel Americanism of 'motel'. 


I imagine such things are invaluable to anyone writing historical fact - a thesis on the history of travel promotion? - or say crime fiction set in Edinburgh at this time. 


There was a landlady on Clarence Street called Mrs I. Love, I wonder if that caused a titter? The Misses M and K Canning of 94 Lothian Road sound like genteel respectability, were they middle-aged spinster sisters forced to take in lodgers?


Although much too tedious for me to do, plotting the location of every hotel and room with its prices in the city (and if other registers can be found; over several decades) might produce some interesting economic insight. 


I wonder at the cause of disparity of prices for bed and breakfast in private houses. In 1968 Mrs Fleming of 3 Grindlay Street officially offered the cheapest B+B in Edinburgh offering her two rooms for 12/- per night low season when only three other establishments went as low as 12/6.  At the other end, Mrs Maran of 24 Kingsburgh Road presumably got the 25/- she asked for one room B+B year-round when good hotels offered full amenities for 22/6. Was Mrs Fleming's neighbourhood at the foot of the castle a den of inequity? Mrs Maran's was presumably then a leafy well-to-do neighbourhood like it is today. Do travellers to Edinburgh have more beds to sleep in now? Are they cheaper and more conveniently located? What has happened to those houses since and where are these people now?

If you think your ancestors might be listed, you can get in touch with me to look them up or even better, suggest to your local media they follow this up as a feature. I don't know where else could you find any lists of Edinburgh's landlords and landladies. It seems you have to go to Australia to access another copy of this register and subsequent editions.

The 18-room Dunraven (proprietress Mrs Caldwell, high season rate 20/- per night) doesn't appear to be a guest house today and there is now a fence between number 5 and 7, the two halves of the semi-detached property.


The Forth Bridge Motel was part of the Watney brewing empire but apart from being a popular stop, no trace remains (or does it?)

The Sixties were called a 'sexual revolution' where the role of women in society was redefined (somewhat) towards equality. Then the gender semiotics of the BEA timetable invites discourse; here the female is placed in a subservient position to the male, who has a surfeit of authority and status symbols, while she is symbolically loaded for both nurturing and protection? 


Old time-tables are a great resource for transport historians/enthusiasts looking to say when a particular service or aircraft was introduced. Real price inflation data is hard to come by so these can be a resource for this too. I know that in 1968 my mother was a very junior draughtsman earning £14 per week, so a round-trip flight on a standby ticket exceeded a week's wages. I don't think a draughtsman in an architect's office would need to spend a week's wages on a flight to Edinburgh today however, if a room in a decent B+B was 20 shillings (that's £1 in new money), then I reckon at £60 today, they are more expensive now than they were then.














Just for the sake of posterity, my father's expenses claim was:


Conference fee                                                  £  8  8s 
Fare from NW1 to Victoria: West London Air Terminal                   1s 6d
WLAT to Heathrow                                                      7s 6d
Heathrow to Edinburgh - standby fare                            £  7 10s
Edinburgh airport to Edinburgh AT                                     2s 6d
Edinburgh AT to Edinburgh airport                                     2s 6d
Edinburgh to Heathrow - standby fare                            £  7 10s
Heathrow to WLAT                                                      7s 6d
WLAT to NW1                                                           1s 6d
Dinner at Edinburgh Airport                                           8s 6d
Total                                                                                          £ 24 19s 

http://www.yellins.com/transporthistory/Bus/airport.htm

I remember seeing these BEA airport buses towing their luggage trailers passing our house so on this evidence their fare was 7s 6d. When BEA and BOAC later merged to form British Airways, they reasonably had no need for two London terminals (BOAC's was opposite Victoria Coach Station) for passengers to check-in. The debate that followed when BA then tried to close BOTH terminals occupies reams of Hansard. It seems road congestion would delay the buses and so the aircraft departure because its passengers were already checked-in. BA moved to have everyone check-in at Heathrow. The opposition cited the already congested facilities at Heathrow and the common sense behind being able to conveniently check-in luggage in central London when there was no rail link to Heathrow then. The terminal on the Cromwell Road is listed and has been converted into Sainsbury's supermarket.

This BUA timetable invites comparison to the BEA one. While the fares were exactly the same, BUA was at an interesting time in its history, being thought of as the second tier after the flag-carrying BEA and BOAC. By 1968 its original MD, Freddie Laker, had moved on to form his own airline and BUA was in financial trouble after investing too much since his departure in improving service, reliability and promotion which had improved their share of the market but not improved their profitability.

Tane

The following undated text by Geoffrey Bocking was typed and handwritten on torn-up architectural drawings, some of which are marked 'Tregothnan North-West Wing - Kitchen for Viscount Falmouth'. The word 'Tane' appears as a title on several pages. I have attempted the best I can to piece together the intended narrative of evidently an unfinished work.

TANE

As anyone knows who has done any market research, the kind of answers to be got from even the most skilfully phrased questions depends very much how they are asked and in what circumstances. If the purpose of the research decides what questions are asked, and how, when, and where they are asked; who asks them and who replies must all be taken into account in considering the answers. Especially this is true in dealing with people in an attempt to predict how they will behave in a future situation. But many of the pitfalls which are encountered in direct questioning are still to be met with at second-hand in any enquiry about human behaviour because subjective experience in necessarily one of the principal sources of information.

Our purpose in this enquiry is to try to throw some light on how our surroundings are created. In the broadest sense, they are the material result of man’s struggle with his environment and the questions we shall have to ask will, therefore, be about the nature of man about the forces with which he struggles. But obviously if we are to thread our way through so immensely general a subject towards a useful and informative result with any pretence to accuracy we have to take care to ask the right questions in the right places. We need to adapt the techniques of our enquiry not only to the particular subject matter as it exists in the concrete reality of time and place but also to the type of concept we are looking for and to its place in the field of conceptual reality.

Thus the kind of objective truth that scientific research seeks is manifestly in a different category from that revealed, for instance, in spiritual ecstasy or, more mundanely, from that perceived in musical harmony or mathematical logic. Yet as a motive for human action each may as powerful as the other and result in equally great changes in our material surroundings. Since we are trying to find out what causes these changes we cannot afford to neglect one kind of truth for another and must adopt any line of enquiry which promise to throw any light on them. But in deserting the authentic techniques of scientific research we also leave behind the traditional safeguards which science has built up to test the validity of its findings, and must perforce seek new ones. Further, if we are to interpret our results as a useful guide to the shape of things to come, we are faced at some point with the necessity of making value judgements of them. Fortunately, since what we are principally concerned with are the processes by which man creates his environment and not with their reform, much of our basis can be pragmatic and the technique of our enquiry directed to what happens in fact rather than to what might happen under different circumstances.

A convenient way of studying man in his material environment is from the point of view of the ecologist. Ecology (oikos, abode, habitat) is the study of animals and plants as they actually live in their surroundings and it takes into account everything which affects this living process. Thus, not only is the plant or animal; organism itself studied and its properties, construction, growth and reproduction described and analysed, - but equally the environment and climate in which it lives are subjected to a like scrutiny and enquiry. More important still the ways in which the organism and its habitat interact so as to produce whatever situation is found to exist at the time of observation are given special attention. It is essentially a field science rather than a laboratory one – concerned more with things as they are naturally than with how they may be under special conditions.

For our purpose, its particular virtue lien not so much in its technique but in the way in which it focuses attention – emphatically and continually – on what happens in reality as the starting point of enquiry and the criterion by which to judge the truth of its findings. Ultimately, however intrinsically interesting the facts we find out on the way, this is what we want to know if we are to predict the next stage of development.

Man is, of course, in a special category. All animals modify their environment to a greater or lesser extent but man is unique in doing so consciously and in response to motives of which, too, he is more or less conscious. Furthermore – and this is what especially concerns us here – man is now entering a stage of development where the material environment is not just the natural one modified but one which he has built-up from scratch. In terms of human ecology, therefore, the three basic subjects of study: the organism, its habitat and the interaction between them – must be enlarged to take account of man: the ‘builder and constructor’ and environment: ‘man-made’.

And as a builder and constructor, creative man is subject not only to his material environment but, because of his consciousness, to the cultural environment of his time. What he builds depends in part on material considerations and factual motives which can be studied and analysed in the same way and using the same terminology as we would use in a purely animal ecology but the mental concepts and formal images which play such a large part in human activity require a different technique. Like instincts and other motivating devices they can only be studied in the actions which they stimulate and the material effects they cause but are quite distinct from them in the sense that they have a conceptual reality - an immaterial form and substance - which can be visualised, delineated and to some extent communicated. Thus for instance we may study the nest-building activity of birds by looking at the different forms of their nests and speculate usefully about the instincts by which they are motivated without having to consider the effects of any mental picture of a nest which a bird might have, since for most purposes we need not endow birds with this form of consciousness. But the case is quite different for man.

The formal images and verbal concepts which form a large part of man’s consciousness of reality play a major role in determining the form and organisation of the things he builds. In the same way as we can associate such and such a form of nest with such and such an instinctual drive operating under such and such conditions, so too with man, we can identify particular building forms with particular mental concepts (as well as with other motives which man shares with animals). But these mental concepts are not constants to be found substantially unchanged from generation to generation. They depend among other things on the particular cultural environment of the time. So too there may be said to be an ecology of man on his cultural environment which parallels that of man in his material environment. Its viewpoint remains the same; only its technique and terminology need adaptation.

So much for man. Similarly, our surroundings and the changes they undergo as a result of natural forces may be studied as an ecological problem. From this viewpoint, man himself is bit one of the many natural forces which cause these changes – of little effect in virgin jungle by no means the sole or even the principal force operating in a man-made environment. Whether we look at the topography of an entire region, the layout of a village, or the weathering of a cornice, we see a continual process of change, of growth and decay, which is the proper course of ecology to study. And in this application we are not faced with the necessity of taking man’s consciousness into account. Since we are concerned with the forces which cause change, it is changes and the forces that cause them, it is not necessary to make any distinction in kind between those which have a human origin and those which do not, nor to enquire into human – or to that matter any other – motives. To take an extreme example, it is sufficient to regard the House of Commons as the result of, inter-alia, ‘force’ of Gothic Revival in the same way we regard an outcrop of rock as the result of the forces of the wind and weather. The fact that the former is the result of a human agent building for human motives and with a picture of ideal Gothic form in mind is irrelevant here. Needless to say, what we neglect in this application of ecology has to be studied in its application to man but this is only one illustration of the importance of asking the right questions in the right places. The Gothic revival as a concept belongs under the heading of man; the visible form of the House of Commons, like the shape of trees or the course of a river, belongs under the heading of material environment. From the viewpoint of ecology, each particular instance is best studied in its own appropriate environment: the Gothic Revival in that of man’s culture; the House of Commons in that of buildings generally.

The necessity of studying any topic in its proper context is of course sufficiently obvious without dragging in ecology to justify it, but in practise we find again and again that where a topic has several contexts – abstract and concrete, conceptual or realistic – the attempt to take a synoptic view leads to a confusion of different kinds of meaning. Or where one context only is scrupulously attended to, the findings are in such splendid isolation from those obtained in different contexts as to frustrate any attempt to relate them into a coherent whole. The semantic problem this raises and the difficulties of effective communication between different intellectual disciplines with which it is associated are immense, and cannot be solved by any simple choice of approach or viewpoint. The most that can be expected of the ecological point of view selected is that it should, firstly guide us to asking the right questions in the right places and secondly provide a unifying form of presentation well adapted to the kind of information we are seeking. What we want to know – how our surroundings are created – is a process. A descriptive system capable of integrating many different kinds of action and interaction on a restricted but varied range of materials is to be preferred to an analytic system attentive only to specific kinds of action and pre-determined methods. For any process to be comprehensive we need to know something about how processes in general operate and, more specifically what we are dealing with, we need to know the context. In fact, if we are to speculate usefully about the new environment now being created at the present, we need to know how the process operates. For any process to be comprehensive, we need not only a description in words but some form of pictorial representation with which to supplement it. Verbal imagery, the conjunction of sign and symbol in a diagram and frequent reference to the scale of things are all essential aids. Furthermore we need context; an understanding of how processes in general operate and more specifically what kind we are dealing with here. And finally, we need to define it carefully because we are dealing with a process which although in itself provides the background to everything we do; in itself it is a small part of human activity.

The Designer - May 1968

I found this in some papers of my father Geoffrey Bocking that have recently come to light. During the protest at Hornsey College of Art in May 1968, he was a Senior Lecturer in Design at Hammersmith College of Art and Building. It is noted by several authors that along with his close friends (and rivals) Norman Potter and Anthony Froshaug with others, he was very influential in determining the form of education for designers. It is evident from the papers I have put here and here that these questions had occupied him for more than a decade previously.

According to Nick Wright, the peripatetic visiting practitioners accorded Hornsey status which I surmise Shelton naturally wished to protect.

LETTERS

An unpopular plan

Dear Sir,

The shrill trumpetings of Harold Shelton [principal of Hornsey College of Art] have gone on so long now outside the city walls of London and they become more and more amusing. The wild and woolly provincials beyond his demarcation line of Coventry, Birmingham and Leicester can be heard giving vent to vulgar belly laughs in their caves in the hills. As Shelton struggles to decide what provincial borough he really belongs to, he also is striving desperately to crawl beneath the gates of the big city. He dearly wishes to align himself alongside the truly traditional London Colleges who lightly wish to preserve their own identity. Outside the gates he marshals his secret band of professional artists and designers the like of whom exist apparently nowhere else in the world if his argument holds good, let alone in the North of England. When he plots his demarcation line he forgets the educational armies in other countries with more enlightened views.

My own experience after teaching for some years in two of the main London Colleges is that there is a great weakness in a preponderance of visiting part-time specialists. This adds to professional techniques but weakens the concerted overall educational policy.

It is certainly a fact that artists and designers converge on London from all the provinces, but it is also clear that educational ideas often emanate from outside London. We can really ill-afford to neglect the overall contribution of different environments within such a small country for we need to work on firmer ground than for instance Carnaby Street, Bond Street and the Royal Academy if we are to achieve something that is Nationally worthwhile. Unconsciously however he may have struck a very good idea. A North versus South, all holds barred, kid gloves off battle tickles me no end for it could well lead to the deeper thinking this Polytechnic problem deserves but is not getting because of petty individual difficulties clouding the issue. And he might also get rid of a lot of the cant and humbug that has put Britain in its present difficult position if educationalists and designers all over the country got together. This is surely a national educational problem.

The trouble is that artists and designers have preached so-called efficiency, collaboration with industry and educating the consumer for years but when they are actually faced with the problem and the hard facts there is immediate withdrawal into their normal isolationists' unrealistic little Bohemian empires.

The greatest fear says Shelton is lack of identity and individualism. This is certainly lost by weakness but the DipAD developments have created an entirely new situation from that in the past. Art Departments in the old Polytechnics used to be swallowed up by larger ill-informed Technology Departments and they really asked for it with the sloppy approach to art and design that existed at that time. The problem still remains however and we are not solving it anywhere by backing away.

Are we forgetting that we've traveled a long way since the early failures and that technology is now in a better state to attempt inter-disciplinary education. With the strength gained by DipAD we could now achieve a tremendous advance if only we can tackle the matter rationally.

When the combining of all resources is an inevitable step that we must take for the betterment of education generally however difficult it may be, surely it is wrong not to get to grips with the matter now rather than wasting our time carping over personal difficulties.

ERIC TAYLOR RE ARCA ASIA

11 May 1968

The Editor

THE DESIGNER

12 Carlton House Terrace

London SW1

Eric Taylor’s scattered broadside hit upon at least one target against which I too should like to loose off a few rounds: the weakness inherent in a preponderance of visiting part-time specialists.

The notion that a successful design course can be run by relying on the peripatetic visitations of active and up-to-the-minute practitioners deserves to be exposed for the nonsense it is. The last thing working designers have time for, immersed as they are (and must be if they are to be of value to students) in the day to day running of busy and successful practises is the contemplation and reflection – as well as the objective study – needed to formulate an educational programme.  This is the job of the pedagogue, the expert who because his principal concern is education and not practice, can devote a sufficiency of time to devising, organising and running courses that will properly prepare students for practice. Charmingly nostalgic as the renaissance idea of ‘apprenticeship in the studio of the master’ is, we must recognise that in this age it is no more than an indulgent euphemism for ‘sitting with Nellie’ – a mode of training even the most backward industry finds adequate. What is urgently needed today - a need well recognised in the Polytechnic white paper, incidentally - are methods education and training that will better equip students practise than – let’s face it – the inept irrelevances with which most of today’s practitioners were themselves surfeited – relics of once-noble craft traditions served up in the mould of sterile academicism.

Peripatetic visitation, part-time heads of department and all the other devices for totally immersing students in day-to-day practice does not meet this need. Educational establishments should certainly not, for this purpose, be ‘groves of academe’ – but nor should they be pseudonymous workshops, in which students are encouraged to ape the working methods of their masters. Design schools if they are to do their job must face up to the fact that they are concerned with a comparatively new and still emergent discipline. We are as yet far from being able to say: this is what design is; and until a lot more objective study and hard thought has been given to it by men able to stand at the right distance, empirical methods will no doubt have to continue in service. But let them be methods based on some deliberate assessment of what design is about.

Here again the active practitioner is badly placed. He will tell you what design is – it is what he practises – and of course he is right, so long as we recognise that what each practice is no more than an aspect of a very much larger whole. But ask him what the whole is and in the rare instances where get a complete answer, you will find some remarkable lacunae in its conceptual structure. So when practising designers come together, as presumably they did to formulate, for example, the Society’s Policy for Design Education you may expect to look in vain for even an indication of what the content of design education should be, although admittedly there are usually some pious platitudes about the need for such content.

This gives teachers – men skilled in preparing students for, inter alia, a working life, precious little to get their teeth into. It is hardly surprising that academicism is still for some a convenient refuge. There is, as Eric Taylor advocates, a pressing need for educationalists and designers to get together. But if they are to do so fruitfully, busking designers must recognise that more will be asked of them than an admission ticket to their working lives. If, as I contend, design is a discipline - albeit an emergent one – it is worthy to be taught differently from, say shorthand and typing at a level consistent with an honours degree. And what design course in the country can claim it has this in view when even architecture, a recognised discipline of which design is the very stuff, has yet failed to get C.N.A.A. approval? Perhaps if designers were more secure in the knowledge of what they practice, they would have far less fear of its being contaminated by technology?

Yours faithfully:

Geoffrey Bocking

Senior Lecturer in Design

Hammersmith College of Art and Building