Category: Random Posts

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Cloak Twitchers

There’s a sense of vibrancy to this phrase, defined in the dictionary as “rogues who lurk about the entrances into dark alleys, and bye-lanes, to snatch cloaks from the shoulders of passengers”. They were listed as 33rd in the “order of villains”, which was a list of how criminals were respected within the canting community and the phrase dates from at least the late seventeenth century. The word twitcher is probably best used to describe bird-watchers now, but it was originally defined as “to give a sharp tug”. I can imagine this being a profitable exercise in the dimly lit and narrow streets that once existed in many towns and cities across the country.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Cleymes

There’s not much to be written about this word, which is defined as “artificial sores, made by beggars to excite charity”, although it’s of note perhaps that this practice has been going on for hundreds of years. The word origins are unknown, one dictionary says that it’s a London slang for ‘claim’, as in to make a claim on someone’s pity. The word was used between at least the mid-sixteenth and early-nineteenth centuries and a similar phrase used during the same period was “sham sores”.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Chummage

Another one of the dictionary’s longer definitions, “money paid by the richer sort of prisoners in the Fleet and King’s Bench, to the poorer, for their share of a room. When prisons are very full, which is too often the case, particularly on the even of an insolvent act, two or three persons are obliged to sleep in a room. A prisoner who can pay for being alone, chooses two poor chums, who for a stipulated price, called chummage, give up their share of the room, and sleep on the stairs, or, as the term is, ruff it”.

A guide at the time the dictionary was published gives great details about Fleet prison, which had 109 rooms and 89 of these could receive chums. Fifteen rooms were given away to the poor or large families (and as an aside, Fleet and King’s Bench had many debtors in who would have had little money), a practice known as Bartholomew Fair, whereas three rooms had no fireplace and were exempt from chummage and two were used for the blind, the mad or those it was probably just easiest to give their space.

The process was strictly regimented so that new prisoners were placed in turn around the rooms and the concept was that the existing prisoner in a room was the owner, the newcomer was the chum. However, neither could force anything on the other, they could only pay each other out and that process was overseen by the warden. It would cost 4 shillings to buy someone out of a room, with rent then payable to the prison warden and this charge would depend whether it was a furnished or unfurnished room.

As an aside, it’s far from the free for all I had expected in nineteenth-century prisons…. But, the above rules were for master’s side of the prison, whereas the common side was a different affair. Here people were dumped in larger cells and they didn’t pay fees, but were entitled to sit and beg at the side of the prison from people passing by. This might be handy for those who were debtors and who needed to buy themselves out of prison.

There were usually around 200 prisoners in Fleet, but there were also another 75 or so who lived in the area of the Liberty of the Fleet, located around the prison. Prisoners could stay here instead, usually choosing accommodation to suit their wealth, but they had to give a deposit to the prison warden as a security against them running off. This was less as the warden was worried they might escape and go on the run, it was solely to ensure that they received their money, as prisons were run privately as profit-making enterprises.

Another prison where chummage was common, and only debtors didn’t have to pay, was Marshalsea and the going rate in 1818 was half a crown a week to “make the roommate go away”, typically to a cold and bleak part of the buildings. It’s all a sign of how the rich and the poor certainly used to have different prison experiences…..

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Chuck Farthing

The dictionary defines this as “a parish clerk” and I have no idea how that’s supposed to have come about. ‘Chuck farthing’ is best known as a game that essentially involves getting a farthing coin into a hole. And, this was a big game, which one MP complained in 1839 was debated for three hours in the House of Commons, but that was required as it became quite a common gambling option and legislation was considered. In 1884, the Dean of Manchester Cathedral said that “it was not right to stop a boy playing chuck farthing”, a situation that had arisen because there remained fears of gambling.

Wikipedia has a nineteenth-century description of how the game, which existed since at least the seventeenth century, worked:

“Each competitor starts with the same number of coins. They pitch their coins one at a time from a mark at a given distance towards a hole in the ground. The competitors are ranked based on how close they come to the hole. The competitor closest to the hole receives all of the coins and proceeds to a second mark nearer to the hole, from which he throws all of the coins at once towards the hole. All of the coins that remain in the hole are his to keep. The remainder of the coins are given to the next closest competitor, and the process is repeated until no coins remain.”

It’s clear to see how gambling became a problem here, especially when the game was played for hours in pubs.

But back to the parish clerk definition of the term, this goes back to at least 1655 when ‘A Satyr Against Hypocrites’ was written by John Phillips. And, perhaps the hypocrites bit is important, maybe parish clerks played the game regardless of the betting issues related to it. But, who knows….

Judging from this, the game went out of fashion long before the farthing coin ceased to be used at the end of 1960.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Chop-Stick

The dictionary definition is simply “a fork”, with the first usage of the word in English being at the end of the seventeenth century. It’s too far back in history to work out, but it’s likely that the ‘chop’ meant quick and had been picked up from travellers to China.  At some stage, the word became an alternate name for a fork, before more recently returning to its original meaning.

The use of the word chopstick over time, a relative surge since the 1970s. I’m a little surprised though that people at the beginning of the nineteenth century would be freely using the word chopstick, I thought it was a word brought into the English language much later on.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Choak Pear

Quite a lengthy definition this:

“Figuratively, an unanswerable objection: also a machine formerly used in Holland by robbers; it was of iron, shaped like a pear; this they forced into the mouths of persons from whom they intended to extort money; and on turning a key, certain interior springs thrust forth a number of points, in all directions, which so enlarged it, that it could not be taken out of the mouth: and the iron, being case hardened, could not be filed: the only methods of getting rid of it, were either by cutting the mouth, or advertising a reward for the key. These pears were also called pears of agony”.

And the instruments that the dictionary refers to have since been created to show what they would have been like. They are though almost certainly a figment of imagination from the early author, F. de Calvi, who first mentioned them. It’s true that devices like this were used as gags in punishment, but there has been no evidence present for criminals ever using them.

If a criminal of the time wanted to steal something from someone, they could easily do that. The chances of them having some complex mechanical device which they then used to extort a ransom seem low, there must have been easier ways for them to manage to get money out of their victim. I’m blaming the grub street press again, keen to sell newspapers and scare people, this would be the perfect story to spread. A few newspapers reported the device, but they all referenced Grose’s dictionary.

So, the stories behind devices also known as Pears of Agony or Pears of Anguish are likely false, with the museum pieces mostly dating to the nineteenth century. But if they were true, this must have been a hideous thing to endure.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

Chirping Merry

A charming way to describe someone who has been drinking perhaps just a little too much, the dictionary defines this as “exhilarated with liquor. Chirping glass, a cheerful glass, that makes the company chirp like birds in spring”. The phrase was also linked with a regional term that was “cherry merry” meaning the same thing, the phrases were in use from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. It’s quite a polite term, there are much more vulgar ones in the dictionary.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

With the moving of server last week I got a bit behind on these, but I’ve caught up now and today is day 72 of this. This has lasted for considerably longer than I had anticipated.

Cherry-Coloured Cat

I had heard of this phrase in relation to PT Barnum, when he agreed to buy a cherry coloured cat for his circus and realised he had been fooled when he was presented with a black cat and the seller told him “you can get black cherries as well as red”. But, this dictionary pre-dates Barnum, and their definition is nearly identical, which is “a black cat, there being black cherries as well as red”.

The phrase has also been used to describe a confidence trick or scam and there was a report in a newspaper in the 1830s fondly telling the story of how a man in Scarborough enjoyed fooling the gentry who came to the town with the same trick. This then became a common jape in the late nineteenth century, but it’s perhaps through Barnum that this lives on.