On This Day, 16 March 1916

Birmingham Daily Gazette

Thursday 16 March 1916

THE WEAKER SEX.
BISHOP OF BIRMINGHAM SAYS IT IS MAN.

Discussing the problems of wartime morality, the Bishop of Birmingham told a Press representative yesterday that the ancient notion that woman is “the weaker vessel” has been completely disproved.
“Man is sexually the weaker,” said Dr. Russell Wakefield,” but it is perhaps not surprising if, as my clergy tell me, there is abroad in the land a certain moral laxity. Directly you take away the married men you set up considerable dangers and you do not lessen them by leaving the women at home fairly well off. We must all deeply deplore this state of affairs and labour to remedy it, always remembering that conditions are abnormal just now. Indeed, the normal person hardly exists.”