THE ‘intellectual’ woman was less likely to marry than her ‘gay and frivolous’ sister, claimed the ‘lady correspondent’ of the Craven Herald, 100 years ago, in November, 1920 - but she did have one advantage over the less serious of her gender, she was less likely to make a poor choice.

Under the headline ‘learned women and marriage’, the writer mused on the subject of educated women and marriage.

It was commonly supposed, she wrote, that most men did not appreciate high intellectual qualities in women, and that there was ‘no doubt’ that it was better for a girl to be a ‘good looker’ than to be brainy if her whole scheme of life is marriage.

Records showed, she wrote, that about 40 per cent of the girl college graduates in America married before they reached the age of 35. While in the UK, the female population in 1911 census was 8,000,000 girls below 17 and a half years old, 8,000,000 married women and 7,350,000 single women. Thus, of women of all classes of marriageable age in the UK, more than 50 per cent marry, which was a higher proportion than is seemingly attained by the girl college students in America., she wrote.

“This suggests that the intellectual woman is slower to marry, but she has one advantage over the gay and frivolous types, namely that she is less likely to make an infelicitous marriage,” so, there you have it. I do wonder, if the ‘lady correspondent’ was in fact some old and crusty male reporter.

ALSO in the Craven Herald of 100 years ago, in the edition of October 29, 1920, the paper reported on the ongoing distribution of thousands of copies of Craven’s ‘war souvenir’ Craven’s Part in the Great War.

Compiled and edited by John Clayton, then editor of the Craven Herald, and assisted by Thomas Brayshaw JP of Settle, the cost of the books was covered by Walter Morrison JP of Malham Tarn.

The books were presented to each and every member of the armed forces who joined up from the Skipton parliamentary division, or to their next of kin as a ‘memento of the noble part that craven played in the great war and the heroic sacrifices made in upholding the honour and prestige of the British empire.

The books were given out in Gargrave by Mr Clayton with the help of Captain J Churchman, the voluntary organiser of the distribution. Further distributions were carried out in the next weeks.

CHRIS Charlesworth, who from 1964 to 1968 was a reporter on the Craven Herald and Pioneer, was a close friend of former Skipton man Chris (Twinque) Whincup, who, sadly, died recently in his adopted home of Amsterdam.

Chris has shared with us this great photograph (right) of him and Chris Whincup, plus others, in front of the New Ship pub in Skipton, now David Hill Estate Agents. He thinks it was taken in early 1970, after Twinque had left Skipton to work in the Shell Chemical laboratory at Egham in Surrey.

Chris (Twinque) is on the far left and Chris Charlesworth is on the far right. The older man in the centre is Jim Carberry, the landlord of The Ship, and behind him is John Turner, who Chris remembers had a farm on the road out to Draughton.

The others, says Chris, were friends of Twinque’s from Egham. “I brought them up to Skipton for a weekend to let them see what life in the North was all about,” Twinque wrote in an email to Chris. “They were tired out at the end of it. Couldn’t deal with our Northern hospitality!”

Chris recalls that The Ship was a regular drinking place for him, his fellow Craven Herald reporter Frederic Manby and a wide circle of their friends back in the 1960s. He writes: “In many ways this small, smoky, canal-side pub with its crowded rooms and genuinely archaic ambience became a meeting place for a floating community whose avbomembers, well some of us anyway, were unlikely to lead ordinary lives; fun-loving Skipton boys and girls with inquisitive minds who nursed ambitions beyond the town.

“I guess we drank there from around 1965 onwards. A pint of Tetley’s mild in the Ship was one and fourpence, fags a bob for ten, and being as how there was hidden back room the landlord wasn’t averse to the odd after-hours lock-in, so long as you bought his wife a rum and pep.”

WHO doesn’t like a good horror film - especially around Halloween time; even if October 31 was a few days ago. So, with that in mind, Pete Appleyard, a tutor at Ealing’s world famous MetFilm School has put together his top eight spooky films from the last 100 years.

It’s a mixture of classics, blockbusters and unusual but worthy finds, and his final choice – Host was written, shot, edited and released during the Covid-19 lockdown - it will make you think again when accepting an unexpected Zoom call invitation.

The oldest, Nosferatu, a silent film released in 1922, was played at the first Hinterlands Film Festival in Skipton two years ago.

An early, unofficial adaptation of Dracula by F.W Murnau still holds every bit of its gothic power almost 100 years after it was made. Its filled with iconic gothic imagery and features an amazing central performance by stage actor Max Schreck as the terrifying Count Orlock - whose name translates as Max Fear.

Also included in the list is Frankenstein (1931), starring Boris Karloff; Dead of Night (1945), with Michael Redgrave being menaced by an evil ventriloquist dummy, and Night of the Living Dead (1968) about flesh eating zombies.

Then we have the truly terrifying Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) which gave us Wes Craven’s ultimate boogie man Freddy Kruger, and a very young Jonny Depp - whatever happened to him? And The Ring (1999), the best of the late 90s explosion in new Japanese horror cinema.

Raw (2016) , which starts out as a coming of age drama but then turns into something far more sinister, and finally, this year’s Host - described as a haunted Zoom call film.

WHETHER imagined or not, there certainly seems to be more fly-tipped rubbish about - even now household waste centres have re-opened, many people still seem to be choosing to drive out into the countryside and dumping their rubbish wherever they like.

This pile of garden rubbish, pictured above, however, complete with plastic pond lining, really takes the biscuit, situated as it is, along the Pennine Way close to Pinhaw Beacon and just feet away from a Craven District Council sign warning fly-tippers are being filmed. One can only hope they failed to spot the sign and were in fact, caught on the camera.

THE wildlife charity, Butterfly Conservation has released the findings of its annual ‘big butterfly count’, which reveal some worrying statistics.

The count, which took place in July and August, showed a reduction in the average number of butterflies logged per count of minus 34 per cent in comparison with last year, and the lowest in fact since the event first began 11 years ago.

Dr Zoë Randle, Senior Surveys Officer at Butterfly Conservation said: “Unfortunately, this summer has not seen an abundance of butterflies, across the UK. We do see peaks and troughs of butterfly numbers each year (last year for example we saw a huge influx of migrant Painted Lady butterflies), so the data from the Big Butterfly Count is an important snapshot which, along with our other monitoring schemes, helps our understanding of the rates of decline of butterflies and moths”.