Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need

Subject: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jul 02 - 06:21 PM

In working on my family history book, I've come across, again, the fact that my mother apparently needed eyeglasses in all of her childhood, yet did not receive them, nor knew that she needed them until she was 16, which would have been in 1932! At that point, when some doctor recognised the need and she got her first prescription lenses, she was sick with vertigo for a week, so unused was she to such clear vision. She marveled at being able to see the veins in leaves of the trees; something she never remembered in her childhood.

Her parents were not poor, though they did have many children. I know girls had more of a subservient role back then, but they all had music lessons, read well, and did well in school and church.

I am wondering if any of you know more about societal views back then and how it could be that it took so long for someone to realise she needed glasses? She didn't realise it because she had nothing to judge her vision by being a small child and one of the youngest in the family. Did people just not go to eye docs at all back then? Did GP's not check vision on their own? Did one not take their children to the doc at all unless deathly ill?

Thanks for any assistance!

kat

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Jul 02 - 06:38 PM

Don't know kat, but I wear glasses (very near sighted) and nobody discovered it until I was 13. I guess they were more worried about the hearing loss.

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 12:08 AM

Thanks, Sorcha. If you don't mind my asking, did you know any different? Were you able to read without problems? (I can never remember which is which with the near and far-sighted! Sorry:-)

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: Sorcha
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 12:30 AM

I could always read, it was the far away stuff like the blackboard that caused problems. Never too big a problem in the lower grades because they knew I was hard of hearing and sat me in the front. Also, because lower grade teachers tend to write LARGE on a blackboard.

I do tend to think that it was relatively unknown for a doctor of any sort to be called upon in that time period. It was the Depression after all, and poor eyesight was not exactly life threatening. The Dr. was called only as a last resort when it was usually too late to matter. Such is never the case with not being able to see.

I don't really remember not being able to see (and I should!) but I do remember being nauseous for a couple weeks after getting the glasses.

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 12:51 AM

Thanks! That's kind of what I've been thinking, too, about it not being a last resort/necessity.

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: GUEST,Al
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 01:21 AM

I am an optometrist, and I still get kids in for their first eye exam with terrible vision. Visual loss due to the need for glasses does not happen suddenly, so I know these kids were handicapped with poor vision for a long time prior to coming in. Parents often wait until the child complains loudly. I'm sure the situation was even worse in the 20's when there was less availablility of care, no insurance, and scarce dollars to pay for non-urgent care. Al

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 01:56 AM

If you are a child you don't know that what you see isn't normal. I have reduced distance vision in my right eye, but how do I know that isn't normal unless someone tells me? It's only when someone asks you directly and you can describe what you see to them, that a problem can be identified. I identified my eyesight problem when I couldn't read a bus number from a distance of 20 feet, a scary thing when you know that I'd been driving around quite happily for a year like that!

Phoebe's eye problems were identified by several factors... a routine eyetest through the school, coupled with information from her teachers - poor concentration, disturbing others with chat and questions, tendancy to go off and do something else familiar - I would suggest that in the 1920-30's, that sort of classroom behaviour was considered just being a naughty child, and was punished rather than investigated.

My father had glasses at an early age (b1927, glasses by age 7), but I've no idea of the circumstances in which he got them. Presumably a parent or teacher noticed he was reading at a distance of about 6 inches!

LTS

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 03:28 AM

Thanks, Al and LtS! It really helps me to understand what, to me, seems and incredible oversight. Now that I think about it, maybe mom raised us with more of an emphasis on making sure we could see well because of her own experience.

I know my sisters, the twins who were preemies, had to wear glasses from the time they were very little and, so, it just seemed commonplace, to me, that some children went to an eye doctor. Sadly, now, one of them is going blind because they were given too much oxygen when born.

Thanks, again!

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 12:15 AM

G'day Kat,

Since you have not really pushed the (somewhat separate) issue of girls vs boys in this regard (remember: "Girls who wear glasses, never get passes"?) I might mention the Rudyard Kipling wrote an autobiographical short story about his time sent back to England with his sister while his parents remained in India.

The family (aunt & uncle?) that looked after them adored the sister ... and paid little attention to him. He was doing badly in school and so was banished to the back row of the classroom ... from where he couldn't see anything written on the blackboard. Fortunately for young Rudyard, the fact that he was myopic was eventually realised and he did well once he got glasses.

I doubt that the schooling, medical - or such public health systems as existed in decades past - even believed that children were anything less than in perfect health ... until it proved to late!

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 01:55 AM

Ah,those were the days when it was the responsibility of the parents to sort out the child's healthcare....

A friend of mine is a primary (Kindergarten) teacher, and frequently gets children aged 5 and 6 who cannot dress themselves, and even had one 5 year old still in nappies (diapers) and totally untrained in the use of the bathroom. When her child was "excluded" until trained, the mother complained bitterly saying "you're a school, you're supposed to teach them"!

As for the 'boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses' there are several issues. Women were supposed to learn homecare and childcare. You don't need to be able to read to have babies so women weren't considered as students. Boys had to be able to see the target in order to hit it and eat. Because of this, eyesight problems in girls went undetected or uncorrected. Glasses have been around since the 1400's in one form or another, and seem to have been almost exclusively for men. Certainly pictures of women in glasses are rare. Not until the vignettes and pince-nez of the 18th Century do we see women using eyeglasses. It's only since girls have been going to school regularly say, late 1800's, that it's been noticed they can't see, so have corrective lenses, and even then, it would be only the upper classes who could afford them.

Consequently, a girl who wore glasses was obviously a scholar, and therefore not suitable, childbearing, wifely material.

Since then, I think a lot of the trouble is to do with the complete and utter disregard for taste, fashion and attractiveness of the frame makers. There's a display in Londons' Science Museum of glasses frames from the middle ages upwards. The examples for the 1920's - 1970's, especially the UK's National Health frames are some of the ugliest creations in the world! There's even an exapmple of Gary Larsons' "butterfly" frames!

LTS

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 02:18 AM

I can recall when I was in early grade school - 3d or 4th grade (about 7 to 9 yrs old, recollection's a little fuzzy) it was announced that the school would conduct "vision screening" of all of the students - but they needed parents' permission to do so.

I was surprised that several of my classmates could not get their parents to allow them to be tested. Discussion my parents had with the "elder generations" of the family generally brought forth the opinion that "it's a bunch of damned fool nonsense;" with comments about "meddlesome bureaucrats oughta let parents take care of their own."

Such general testing was apparently something new - in the mid to late 40s!

By the mid 50s, in-school testing was pretty much replaced by the requirement for a "health certificate" from each student's own physician. The "certificate" really did nothing but verify that the kid had (maybe) seen a doctor - or that the parents had called the doc and said "the kid ain't sick and he needs that piece of paper."

The mimeo form used by most doctors had a check box to indicate that the doctor had checked "vision," but if the exams I got were any indication that meant the kid was capable of opening his/her eyes. (If the doc was conscientous, it might mean the pupils "were responsive.")

My CD-ROM dictionary notes that the term "eye chart" dates to 1940-1945.

John

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: GUEST,Melani
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 05:30 PM

I got my first glasses at age 10; can't remember whether it was the school or my parents that prompted an eye exam. I too was thrilled to be able to see the LEAVES on the trees, never mind the veins, but had no trouble with vertigo. My husband is equally nearsighted, and got his glasses at 7; our daughter got her first glasses at about 12; her brother, at 14, still tests 20-20. We are beginning to wonder if he is actually related to the rest of us.

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 06:21 PM

"Certainly pictures of women in glasses are rare." That mightn't mean they didn't wear glasses at other times. It's still pretty common for young people of both sexes to take their glasses off for a photo, and to try to avoid them in other settings too.

I think there was also an idea around at one time that if you gave children glasses early on you'd make their eyesight worse, and turn a temporary stage into a lifelong condition. A bit the way that it's now thought by some people that orthodontic work on growing children can distort the final result more than leaving thigs to sort themsleves out. Whether either of these suggestions is actually true I have no idea.

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 10:30 PM

By the frivolous fifties Mr. Nash's couplet was already growing obsolete. We replaced it with the more functional
Men seldom jump hurdles
For girls that wear girdles.

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Jul 02 - 12:09 AM

Heya'll, thanks!!! I had thought along the general lines of what you all have opined, so I'll take that as I was on the right track...thinking back of what I knew of my grandparents (in the mid50's on) I found it hard to fathom they would be so remiss, but this has helped me to understand it much better. I do appreciate it!

Dick...I cannot believe I used to sneak into my mom's bedroom and try on her girdle; couldn't wait to get my own! Thank the gawddess that was mid-late 60's and it soon went the way of my bra!*bg*

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 31 Jul 02 - 01:22 AM

You are a continual a laugh...my little giggle-pussy.

!!!It was not sexist!!!

It was a matter of economics. The entire globe was in the throes of a world-wide depression. W (where WERE you edu-kat-ed?

Considering that this a MAJOR concern affecting YOUR immediate life......

..................... at THIS moment.... Lots of little girls TODAY, do not have the glasses THEY need..................................................................
..........................................will you, this WEEK, make a commitment to collect used glasses for the needy little children in other parts of the world?/////////////////??????????????????????????????????????

Won't cost you more than a hand-full of hours - - - - - - and it will help you - - - correct the wrong YOUR vision clearly sees through 20 20 hindsight.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 31 Jul 02 - 01:53 AM

Well Garg, if there were anywhere in my area (and I'm in London!) that had a collection point for my old specs I'd be only too happy to donate them. When my dad died, we cleared out 15 pairs of glasses that he'd acquired over the years. I hope someone else is using them now.

And I've asked - my optician won't take them... hasn't the space.

One of the other reasons is that I tend to use the same frames over and over. 2 pairs, one in the shop and one one, get the new ones, upgrade the old ones. It's only this last time, when my old glasses actually broke, that I got new frames.

LTS

Subject: RE: Help: non-music-1920-30's eyeglasses & need
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Jul 02 - 02:14 AM

We contribute glasses on a regular basis to the Lions Club. What do you do, Greg?