Another decade added to the UK outbound Passenger Lists 1920-1929

A boon to Genealogists and family history buffs. Findmypast.com has added another decade of passenger records to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists which are available for searching right now. Records have been expanded to include an incredible 15,749,960 names with over 97,614 passenger lists spanning the period from 1890 to 1929, which increases the chances of finding that well-travelled relative who didn’t show up on a census!

There’s more useful information available on the original images than on records from previous decades, items such as each passenger’s last address in the UK, which makes it easier than ever to fill in the gaps in your genealogical or historical research.

The 1920s – full of bright young things and abdicating kings

In the 1920′s people were beginning to travel not only out of necessity, but for travels sake. People were still emigrating and travelling on business but they were now also able to visit their family overseas, enjoy entertaining cruises to exotic locations and participate in international sporting events. When immigration to the USA began to fall off after 1922 as the United States started to close its borders, there was a expansion in the number of people seeking to make Canada and, increasingly, Australia and New Zealand their new home.

Family history researchers may be able to find gems of information in these newly available records that will possibly fill in one more piece of the jigsaw or maybe make that important breakthrough.

THE romance of unfamiliar place names has been felt and exprest by many poets. Here is a lyric that dedicates it to the supposedly unpoetical theme of export trade. The Public Ledger (Philadelphia) gave it currency first, but our curtailed version comes from The World’s Markets (New York):

MERCHANDISE

By MILTON HAYES

Merchandise! Merchandise! Tortoise-shell, spices,
Carpets and indigo—sent o’er the high seas;
Mother-o’-Pearl from the Solomon Isles—
Brought by a brigantine ten thousand miles.
Rubber from Zanzibar, tea from Nang-Po,
Copra from Hayti, and wine from Bordeaux;
Ships, with top-gallants and royals unfurled,
Are bringing in freights from the ends of the world.

Crazy old wind-jammers manned by Malays,
With rat-ridden bulkheads and creaking old stays,
Reeking of bilge and of paint and of pitch—
That’s how your fat city merchant grew rich;
But with tramps, heavy laden, and liners untold
You may lease a new life to a world that’s grown old.
Merchandise! Merchandise! Nations are made
By their men and their ships and their overseas trade.

So widen your harbors, your docks and your quays,
And hazard your wares on the wide ocean ways,
Run out your railways and hew out your coal,
For only by trade can a country keep whole.
Feed up your furnaces, fashion your steel,
Stick to your bargains and pay on the deal;
Rich is your birthright, and well you’ll be paid
If you keep in good faith with your overseas trade.

So send out your strong to the forests untrod,
Work for yourselves and your neighbors and God;
Keep these great nations the homes of the free,
With merchandise, men and good ships on the sea.
Merchandise! Merchandise! Good, honest merchandise!
Merchandise, men and good ships on the sea.

THE salt spray drips from every line of these verses which Punch, forgetting Irish troubles and Washington conferences, regales himself with, perhaps, after the manner of the old Greeks in their exile, to remind himself that he is still John Bull:

THE FLYING-FISH SAILOR

(Old Style)
BY C. F. S.

“The Western Ocean rolls and roars
From Sandy Hook to Europe’s shores,
From Fastnet Light to Portland, Maine,
And Newport News and back again,
With Boston, Salem, Montreal,
And plenty o’ ports, both large and small,
And them that like may keep ‘em all,
Not me,” says the flying-fish sailor.

“The Western Ocean roars and rolls
With all its deeps and all its shoals,
And many a thundering wintry gale
And many a storm of rain and hail,
And let who likes have sleet and snow,
And driving fog and drifting floe,
For South away and Eastward Ho!
Is the road for the flying-fish sailor.

“In Blackwall Dock a ship is moored,
Her hatches on and her stores aboard;
In Blackwall Dock she lies to-day,
And she will sail when the morning’s gray
For Sundra Straits and Singapore,
And Palembang and plenty more.
And many a swarming Eastern shore
That’s known to the flying-fish sailor.

“The girls they’ll cry and the lads’ll shout
When the blooming tugboat warps her out;
We’ll drop the pilot off the Nore
With fond farewells to take ashore
To mothers, wives and sweethearts too—
Love to Sally and love to Sue—
And that’s the last for a year or two
You’ll see of the flying-fish sailor.

“We’ll drop the tug and we’ll bear away
Down the Channel, across the Bay;
The Western Isles we’ll leave behind
And make the Line with the good trade wind;
We’ll see the dolphins sport and play
(And haul our yards ten times a day),
While South’ard still we beat our way,
The way of the flying-fish sailor.

“And, forty South when we have passed,
Her easting down she runs at last
Where the white whale swims in the far-South sea.
And the brave West winds blow full and free;
The good old winds they bluster and blow
The same as they used to years ago,
And the good old stars that well we know
Look down on the flying-fish sailor.

“The darned old hooker’ll log sixteen,
She’ll ship it heavy and ship it green,
She’ll roll along with her lee-rail under,
While the big seas break aboard like thunder;
The pots and pans they’ll carry away,
And the cook go down on his knees and pray,
But let the seas roar as they may,
All’s one to the flying-fish sailor.

“At Sydney next a call we’ll pay
And meet a pal on Circular Quay;
We’ll glance at Java Head also
And Fuji’s crest of frozen snow;
And slant-eyed girls in far Japan,
Wun Lee, Wang Ho and little Yo San,
With braided hair and twinkling fan,
Will smile on a flying-fish sailor.

“And last of all the day’ll come round
When the blooming mudhook leaves the ground,
And to old England we return,
Our pockets filled with pay to burn,
With a painted fan and an ivory comb
From foreign towns beyond the foam,
And a golden ring for the girl at home
That waits for the flying-fish sailor.”

Source: The Literary Digest for December 3, 1921

The decade of the 1920′s was interesting for the significant changes that took place in the hairdressing industry.

Up until the 1920′s, long hair was preferred by most women. It was either worn long, fashioned into buns or plaits, or worn up in fancy hairstyles for special occasions. The first world war precipitated a change in attitude toward long hair, when for practical purposes, women in certain occupations had their hair cut short.

The short hair styles that became common in the 1920′s were referred to as “Bobs” or “the Bob”. Intially these hairstyles were very basic but they served a practical need. When celebrities embraced the bob and took it “upmarket” then the number of women cutting their tresses increased dramatically.

Taken to the extreme, the bob was known as the “Eton Crop” after the famous boys school. The Eton crop was a very boyish style with very short hair, and only suited a small number of women.

There were short, medium, and long versions of the Bob. The longer the bob, the more could be done to enhance it by way of styling, waving and curling, and shingling. An excellent book that teaches the techniques of haircutting for Bobs is “Haircutting and Styling Techniques of the 1920′s and 1930′s” .

As the decade progressed, women looked for ways to enhance the Bob. Hair decorations were used by some women but the techniques of finger waving and marcel waves were soon developed to add style to the bob. Hairdressing salons expanded to cater for an increasing call on their services as women abandoned dressing their own hair in preference to the more sophisticated styles available from the salons.

Initially the short hairstyles were thought by many to be a passing fad, but they proved to be enduring. What prevented the bobbed hairstyles from just being a temporary phenomenon was the continuous evolution of the style by creative hairstylists. Women loved the freedom the short hair provided, but they wanted style as well. Hairdressers the world-over developed techniques to add style to the basic bob. New cutting, waving and curling techniques kept short hair styles fresh and appealing for the best part of twenty years, so it was no passing fad as first thought.

Eventually all good things must come to an end and fashion dictates change for fashion’s sake. However fashion moves in cycles, never repeating itself exactly, but rhyming, and so we once again see short hair coming back into fashion. Not the beautifully styled bobs of the twenties, but a shallower and often punk interpretation by the early adopters this time around. Lets hope that the beautiful waves and curls reassert themselves and take over.

RESOURCES: A couple of popular books that teach the hair waving techniques of the 1920′s and early 1930′s

Marcel Wave  – Similar in style to finger waves but uses heat to set the waves

Finger Wave  - Shaping the hair while wet into “s”-shaped curved waves with the fingers and comb.