FA Mitchell-Hedges 1926

(By Thomas Gann, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.I., M.R.C.S., London: Duckworth).
     Anything with mystery about it is always attractive. Belize, capital of British Honduras, is a favourite jumping-ol place for expeditions into the unknown parts of Central America. Whatever the travellers' interests may be, archaeological, scientific or commercial here are buildings, animals, plants, timbers, metals and minerals to interest and gladden them all. Belize has been called the "Venice of the Caribbean," and from it the author set out on his expedition.
     Leaving Benque Viejo for the ruins of Xunantunich, he set his seven men to the task of cutting a passage through the bush up the side of a mound and clearing its flat top. Its shape was that of a pyramid, 35 feet high and 300 feet in circumference, and the inference was that it had served as a burial mound. Excavations showed an accumulated vegetal humus of thirteen centuries, and below it again flints, jade, shells, beads of white stone, and stone chisels. Human bones were also found, and what amounted to the entire outfit of an Old Empire Maya jeweller and lapidary, and some specimens of his work. Perhaps the individual buried here was a jeweller.
     The book contains account of other mounds opened up, some of them being temples and carvings indicated a highland civilisation, which flourished from Mexico to the Andes some 2000 B.C. How they came to be in this particular river drift is one of the many mysteries of Central America.
     Ascending the Rio Grande and continuing on its Columbia branch, Mr. Gann joined Lady Brown and Mr. Mitchell Hedges in exploring the ancient Maya ruins of Lubaantun. Coming upon a subterranean chamber, they had great hopes of discovering the burial place of some high personage, but not a weapon, vase or ornament was found. Smaller mounds furnished specimens of pottery plaques, with seated figures and hieroglyphics and human figurines, tigers' heads, leg bones, monkeys heads and similar objects. It was found that a common procedure of the Maya was to let in small round plugs of jade, gold or obsidian into the front teeth, from aesthete motives. Ornaments were purchased from Indians, and showed Spanish influence, being of the shape of the horse, which was unknown to the natives.
     Many Indians regarded with superstitious feelings the act of disturbing ancient tombs, and when ill-fortune or sickness overtook the archaeologists they viewed it as a kind of judgment. Insects, poor food, bad water, malaria, the steaming climate, the dark, dank gloomy bush meant a general and persistent sense of misery.
     At Lubaantun an amphitheatre measuring 350 feet by 300 feet was found, capable of accommodating 5000 to 10,000 people. The grand stands consisted of rows of broad steps and above them terraces rising to the height of 34 feet. What did the ancients look at when they filled this place? Was it a religious ceremony, or a gladiatorial combat, or a play? Probably a dramatic entertainment accompanied by music and singing. Perhaps the Devil Dance, illustrating the Maya Satan introducing evil among men by means of women, swine, monkeys and death.
     The ruins suggest an extraordinary amount of labour ; at least a million separate blocks of hard limestone had been squared, and all with hammer stones of flint.
     Although this title of this very interesting book points to ancient cities, it casts much light on the habits and customs of the natives of to-day, and from this point of view also is exceedingly interesting. Ethnologists and antiquarians will find it good reading. The site has been occupied at three different periods, dating from the Old Empire to the Spanish conquest. Researches are to be continued this year into the great aboriginal Mayan civilisation.

Bobbing and shingling of women's hair is a new fashion in England; but it has long been a social and religious custom in some primitive tribes.
     This Ceremony of the Hair-cutting was described by Mr. F. A. Mitchell Hedges, the explorer, in a talk in London on his recent journeys with Lady Richmond Brown through little-known regions in the north of South America.
     The ceremony takes place at the transitional stage from girlhood to womanhood, a closely cropped head signifying that the girl has reached a marriageable age.
     On a day appointed by the witch doctors the chief, his headman, and the entire population arrive.
     A priestess has the immediate supervision of the young girl, who is placed in a large hole dug in a corner of the dwelling. The hole is then filled in to the girl's shoulders.
     After a chant by the whole assemblage, the priestess sprinkles the girl with water, then, placing a half calabash over her head, burns off a small piece of hair with a red-hot ember, which is afterwards buried in the earth.

Primitive Scissors.

     Again a chant breaks out, and another piece of hair is burnt off. The burying of the ember each time, and the throwing on of cold water, are intended to symbolize the trials and trouble the girl will have to encouter; and the chanting snd singing the pleasures that lie before her.
     "I witnessed one of these ceremonies," said Mr. Hedges. "The girl was buried for over six hours, and when she was released from her cramped position she was unable to stand, and had to be carried to a hammock."
     In some little-known tribes a number of marriageable girls stand in a row, then dart off into the jungle. The youths give chase a few minutes later, and by tribal law each girl is the wife of her captor.
     In one utterly degenerate tribe it was the girl who chose the youth. He was simply seized, carried to her home, and, after certain rites had been performed, they were man and wife. Thenceforth, for the rest of his life, he had no will of his own, and did nothing until first ordered by the woman.

The Shingle
A shingle cut was a special kind of bob haircut. A shingle cut started off with a basic bob style, with the hair cut about the same length as the earlobes. However, for a shingle cut, the bottom hair at the back of the neck was cut in a "V" shape and close to the skin. The hair was cut longer the closer it got to the top of the head. This created a very thin and cropped bob style.

Shingle haircuts could be worn plain and straight. However, the look was often paired with a few spit curls around a woman's face. Spit curls were tiny, circled tendrils of short hair that would lay perfectly flat, sweeping into the face.

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One of the many remarkable finds made in British Honduras by Mr. Mitchell Hedges, the well-known explorer, who, with Dr. Gann, arrived at Avonmouth in November, was a gigantic aboriginal stone building covering the seven acres.
     The building comprised millions of blocks of cut stone. Lady (Richmond) Brown was another member of the expedition which has been excavating in the ruined city of Lubantnum, Maya.
     Mr. Hedges told the "Daily Sketch" at Avonmouth that the temperature amid the ruins was 105 and the party encountered a terrific electrical storm.
     "It commenced at nine o'clock in the morning," said Mr. Hedges, "and it was an incessant blaze of light until 1.30 p.m. Suddenly there was an amazing sight, for the palm fronds which had been drooping under the heat rose straight up into the air. Shortly afterwards there followed an awful explosion, and our yacht, which was anchored some 50 yards from the shore, looked as though it had been struck by an 18-inch shell.
     "The masts disappeared and part of the vessel was carried away. Next morning there was a mass of molten metal lying about the deck, while the wires and controls were put completely out of action."

Representative of a doomed race, no member of which has ever before been seen in Great Britain an Indian girl appeared before a gathering of scientists at the British Museum on January 10. She was introduced by Mr. Mitchell Hedges, the famous explorer.
     The girl is of the once mighty Maya Kekchis race, of which scarcely 250 representatives remain today. Yet before Tutankhamen was ever thought of this race, dated B.C. 3200, lived and worked.
     Denegerates, both physically and mentally, the Mayas of today lack all will power, and when they sicken from fever they merely lie down and die because they know instinctively that they are the last survivors of a nation whose history is over.

WOMEN DOMINANT

     While Mr. Hedges was on an expedidition to Panama, a chief of the San Bias Indians told him of a people living further inland who were dying off in vast numbers. With a party of guides the explorer penetrated to the heart of this region.
     They had never seen white people before, and looked upon Mr. Hedges and his party as gods. Not one of them is more than four and a half feet in height.
     The women wear round their bodies wonderfully decorated cloths without tying or fastening of any kind, and they refuse to disclose the secret by which the apparel is kept in position. They are the dominant sex and direct the labor of the men. Life among these Indians is entirely primitive, but they are rigidly moral.
     This land of mystery is the most terrible and ghastly jungle in the world, both from the climatic point of view and from the living horrors it contains.

A new mystery associated with the Maya civilisation is to be investigated by Mr. T. A. Joyce, Deputy Keeper of the Department of Ethnology at the British Museum, who early in February left for British Honduras for the purpose.
     It was referred to in a lecture delivered by Mr. Mitchell-Hedges in the lecture-room of the British Museum on January 10. He gave no details of its character. There was, he said, still a great mystery close to the site of the Maya city, about which nothing had been said, nor would be said, until it had been examined, scientifically by Mr. Joyce. He proposed at the moment not even to form an opinion as to its character.
     Mr. Mitchell-Hedges was introduced by Sir Frederick Kenyon, and at his request Mr. Joyce described briefly certain aspects of the Maya civilisation. He reminded the audience that the so-called Maya "cities" were, in fact, ceremonial centres, where the people had met to perform rites in order to make the crops grow, to increase the number of animals hunted, and so forth.

Wooden Methods.

     These "cities" had been built of hewn stone, cut by means of stone implements and derived from unknown quarries. It was known that the builders were highly, skilled potters and weavers, but for centuries before the Spaniards arrived they had been steadily degenerating. It was clear that their technique was based on wooden methods, and there was evidence that their civilisation had passed through three definite periods. There was reason to hope, he said, that by excavation it would be possible to throw light on the problems of the beginnings of the civilisation which they had established.
     Mr. Mitchell-Hedges described the discoveries that had been made. There was one building alone, he said, that covered three acres, and millions of blocks of hewn stone had been used in the city's construction. Between the pyramids on either side there had been constructed a sort of via sacra along which doubtless the king and the nobles and the priests had passed on ceremonial occasions, while the people from their wooden huts all round had thronged the vast terraces. To reach these terraces there were large avenues leading thereon both from the east and the west.
     The "city" discovered was only the beginning, for three-quarters of a mile to the east of it and three-quarters of a mile to the west of it the remains of great pyramids had also been found.

Sixteen Miles Away.

     According to reports from Indians there were other ruins as far away as 16 miles from the original site, while beneath the city already cleared there lay another city, the construction of which showed an even higher degree of civilisation. There was reason to believe that the Maya civilisation might have dated back to 5,000 or 10,000 years before Christ, and that a full knowledge of it might be gained by excavation.
     The Maya people had proved that they were geniuses in mathematics and astronomy, but for 1,000 years they were exempt from war and practised a communal system with no money and no tax collectors, and when the Spaniards came they fell an easy prey to them. To-day they were utterly degenerate.

Mr. Mitchell-Hedges, the explorer, lecturing at the British Museum recently on his discoveries in British Honduras,
introduced to the audience a Maya Kekchi Indian girl (says the London "Daily News").
     "She is probably of the oldest descent in the world," said Mr. Mitchell-Hedges, "for she comes from the Kings of the Maya, and her ancestry dates back to 4000.B.C."
     The little girl, whose name is Emilia Vascqez, was born in the crater of an extinct volcano, Panchimalco, where the remaining members of her race, about 50 in number, live. She came to England about four years ago and speaks English well. Her dying mother gave her in gratitude to the woman who befriended her.
     Emilia is the first of this dying race ever to reach England. When asked if she wished to return, home she emphatically shook her head.

How seven women and one man occupied the platform at the Memorial Hall, Farrington-street, E.C., is told in the London "Daily Chronicle" which avers :—
     The man is a brave man. He is Mr. Mitchell-Hedges, the explorer, and soon he is disappearing into another jungle.
     His bravery he proved when he faced a very large audience, in which women outnumbered men by perhaps 20 to 1, and thundered his affirmative to the question: "Do we need a male revival?"
     Miss Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., crossed swords with the explorer, who was really in the dock. He has been taken to task by the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, for what they consider his anti-feminist writings. So they lured big, strong Mitchell-Hedges into the city, and persuaded little Miss Ellen Wilkinson to deal with him.
     And these are some of the things the explorer told this critical, at times heckling, audience of city women and girls :—
     He was "flaying alive" the so-called Smart Set, who did more harm in this country than any other body of people.
     It is a man's duty to protect the female. (Laughter, and a cry of "He doesn't do it!") That is why I want a male revival.
     It is man's mission to be a pioneer.
     It is man's mission to lead in sport. A country with women leaders of sport would be the laughing stock of the world.
     In no instance in the world, where women had ruled had a nation survived.
     Rome, virile and great, crashed to the ground when men developed into the worshipper of woman.
     He had other points, too. He did not think women were built to enter jungles alone. He didn't like the idea of 22,000 men watching 22 men playing football.
     He condemned "those wonderful, delightful ladies who do very little, get up at 12, and spend money on every known extravagance. . . . And the poor, miserable, silly puny, men pay. That, too, is where we want a male revival."
     Where women rule tribes are utterly degenerate. Here the explorer became almost inarticulate with indignation. He named an Indian tribe where, he assured his audience, the man did not even know he was going to be married. The wretched bridegroom was just seized and carried away to the altar, as it were.
     And that is not everything. Once married, the man cannot go anywhere or do anything unless his wife says "Yes." So degenerate are these people that they do not know how to feed themselves.
     Little Miss Wilkinson thought that women—she instanced miners' wives—were capable of working as hard and as long as most men. She thought that Mr. Mitchell-Hedges had been over-impressed by "the scented darlings of Bond-street,'' and invited him to come among the wives of her blast-furnace men and miners.
     "Why did 22,000 men whatch 22 playing football ? it was because the spreading blight of industrialism had deprived the masses of the playing fields they needed.
     Rome decayed because men and women of a small class began to be parasites on an Empire workers. The danger was that the British Empire might go down because of the same kind of exploitation.
     "Where you get your best and most virile civilisation," said Miss Wilkinson, "is where men and women are meeting in fair competition, intellectual, scientific, or in any other pursuit."

Association of Women Clerks & Secretaries (1903-c.1921) was founded in 1903 as women became employed in this sector. At the end of the nineteenth century, there was great opposition to women's employment amongst male employees, in contrast to employers' acceptance of a new workforce who worked for lower wages and was less inclined to industrial agitation. This hostility also affected the male-dominated trades unions of the period, especially those concerned with the Civil Service. This meant that women civil servants of the time continued to occupy separate and lower grades than those of men, and a marriage bar prevented them continuing to work after they became wives. It was not until the turn of the century that female trade union agitation for equal pay and conditions with the male workforce began. SOURCE