When The Ladies Field was founded in 1898 it was advertised as the most luxuriant example of high artistic journalism that has yet seen the light of day. The magazine focussed on women's sport, pastimes and fashions. It was published by George Newnes, who also published Wide World Magazine for which Blampied did some illustrations early in his career as an independent illustrator, as well as the cover of a cheap paperback novel. It is a rare magazine but the pages in colour are often removed and sold separately as fashion prints, which is how I obtained the pictures shown below.

Blampied provided eight large watercolour drawings of women's fashions for the London Season's Number in May 1913 and three more for the same number in May 1914. These were substantial commissions for a relatively new artist for magazines. I have one of the original drawings, which is shown left. It was cleaned for me by Lisa Oxenden-Wray of Baudains Art Conservation in Jersey. The yellow of the woman's dress has faded a little. I enhanced the colours using Skylum Luminar software.

I have searched all issues from January 1912 (volume 56, issue 721) to December 1915 (volume 72, number 936), a total of 215 issues.

Published: weekly from March 1898 (vol 1, no 1) to March 1922, (vol 96, no 1254)

Numbering: 13 issues per volume, numbered sequentially

Price: 6 pence in 1912

Pages: not recorded

Dimensions: 380 x 280 mm

Editor: not recorded

Printer: not recorded

Blampied issues: 4

◀ A Competition for Ladies

In January 1912 The Ladies Field ran a competition for its readers to list the 10 mostly commonly identified faults in man from a comprehensive list of masculine failings (see left). The first prize was any hat costing 15 guineas, an amount which is equivalent to about £1,500 in 2020 in terms of purchasing power, based on the retail prices index.

The probability of chosing the 10 most commonly identifed faults randomly from the list of 72 failings is equal to:

(1/72)*(1/71)*(1/70)*(1/69)*(1/68)*(1/67)*(1/66)*(1/65)*(1/64)*(1/63)

= 0.0000000000000000005

= 1 in 1,945,805,859,770,570,000, which is nearly 2,000 trillion to one.

Even getting five right by chance would be 17,000 million to 1. I know it's not a random process, but I wonder how many women got three on the list of 10 by chance alone, which has a probability of nearly 360,000 to 1.

There's one attribute that isn't listed: nerdiness.