I am Estelle, a small person who lives in Liverpool. I love all books apart from "The World According to Clarkson". Also very keen on comedy, cooking, octopods and other small people.
The Cove of the Budging-Ken – a Northern phrase meaning pub landlord.
But it sounds to me like the title of a 1960s cartoon film about Cornish smugglers who are also animals. Or a portentous song along the lines of “The Hall of the Mountain King”. But still! The cosy strangeness of it makes this my favourite Victorian slang so far.
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
See also – more of my favourite “head” insults with “Buffle-head” – meaning a stupid or obtuse person; from “buffalo”, rather than the American duck of the same name.
And “Who struck Buckley? – a common phrase used to irritate Irishmen”. This seems to have been a very common phrase with no agreement at all as to where it came from or what it really means. It also gets a mention in James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”.
Some theories here, from The Sydney Mail in 1879, about where it originated:
It’s the last hoorah of summer, it’s the weekend, and it’s probably raining. But if you’re planning some time in the great outdoors, here’s some advice on camping cookery and gathering wild food from the 1938 Weekend Book:
The Weekend Book, 1938
I can’t emphasise strongly enough – DON’T MAKE YOUR OWN MICE IN HONEY. That way madness lies.
Also remember “Don’t cook and attempt to eat young bracken shoots because the Japanese do. What suits the hardy races of the extreme East may not suit you.”
Can’t help thinking not only how delicious the breakfast section sounds, but how different the reality would be just a couple of years later.
I have The Weekend Book in two editions, one from 1938 and one from 1955 and I find it interesting to compare the changes between the two. 1938 seems a much more hedonistic time – by 1955 the joys of tobacco are expunged, the first aid section stops looking like the contents of Doctor Dee’s cabinet and turns into something recognisable to us, and most importantly, people apparently don’t eat mice in honey anymore. (That’s unborn mice in honey incidentally. Surely that can’t have been genuinely popular outside of the vendor in The Life of Brian’s wares?)
Just like today, Victorian magazines were interested in celebrities. The Strand Magazine had a series called “Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times in their Lives”, showing a range of paintings, photographs and biographical information over the person’s life. 1890s celebrities, however, seem to pretty much be either members of the nobility or clergymen, like some kind of Jane Austen fantasy.
I like seeing pictures of the children who would become Very Important Men. Infants had their own clothing styles which to us look extremely feminine – as seen here with The Duke of Wellington and the Bishop of Worcester in an issue from 1894.
The Duke seems to morph from Mia Farrow to Thomas Walsh of The Duckworth Lewis Method in 45 years.
The Strand Magazine, 1894
The Strand Magazine, 1894
Any excuse to link to the divine Duckworth Lewis Method, frankly! Here’s “Test Match Special”, a little cricket-pop treat for you (Neil Hannon 4 Eva):
Lobster – either a soldier (red uniform) or a policeman (dark blue like an unboiled lobster).
Lobster before and after cooking
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
This is also quite a Liverpool-y kind of page. There’s “lobscouse”, the local speciality dish of Liverpool still, although now just it’s just called scouse (of course). The old recipe differed a bit with the inclusion of “biscuit”, which as befits a port city, means ship’s biscuit, hard tack, made only from flour and water.
This was long before Liverpool’s love of scouse resulted in its people being known as scousers, which didn’t enter the lexicon until around the Second World War. I’ve previously posted about one Victorian nickname – Dickey Sam https://skittishlibrary.co.uk/we-are-the-dickeymen/. Here is (almost) the much better known one – “Liverpudlin”. But I can’t now find any reference to this particular spelling outside this book.
Going back to Lobsters for a minute, have a vardo at this Horrible Histories sketch that mentions this slang and much more:
Hydropathic Pudding is today’s title, but it was really a toss up between that and “Life’s too short to clean a currant”.
The Liverpool Training School of Cookery was a long established institution in Colquitt St in Liverpool City centre. It eventually turned into the Liverpool Catering College and is now part of Liverpool City College. I found a fascinating little article from 1893 on the way the School was run in an Illinois newspaper of all places, the “Western Rural and American Stockman” – http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=WRA18930304.2.20#
The School issued a thin volume of basic recipes for use in Elementary Schools, which is where I come in. I have the edition dated 1902, sponsored by Bird’s Custard (a classic brand, right there). I also own a very similar book called “The Essex Cookery Book” from 1930, so perhaps there were a few such regional variations on the theme.
Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902
Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902
Amongst the collection were the invalid recipes as were standard in cookery books of the time. Here’s an “invalid cake”, presumably designated as such because it’s fairly plain. A perk of being ill, you’ve got your own special cake at least.
Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902
But onto the Hydropathic pudding, the recipe which most caught my eye, sounding as it does like a medical treatment rather than dessert. Funny, I thought, (in Dudley Moore’s voice), the recipe only mentions “a little water” but the name of it sounds like it should be awash in the stuff. But no, this was another invalid recipe, or otherwise a health food, as the bread casing was lighter than pastry or suet-based puddings. And it was called “Hydropathic” because it was served in spas of the time.
It’s still a popular dessert now, but we now know it by the infinitely more appealing name of Summer Pudding.
And so to cleaning currants. I’m not sure how they came in 1902 but evidently they needed cleaning. Thank god this isn’t necessary now – presumably? Suddenly I’m worried, have I spent my life missing out a vital stage of food preparation? Do you all clean currants out there?
You need flour for this, water might re-hydrate them and sticky them up a bit. This does explain why currant wrinkles are sometimes a bit floury, I suppose.
Last recipe for now, and always the one I’m happiest to see in the vintage books – raspberry buns. Every old cookery book had a recipe for them, but you never see them these days. It was also the first recipe I vividly remember making in Domestic Science class and so it’s a hugely nostalgic taste for me. I think I’ll make some for a future vintage recipe blog post.
Last, but very definitely not least, this book contains Hidden Treasure. And my favourite kind as well, a scribbled recipe kept there by a previous owner. This one’s on an envelope from the Isle of Wight in 1949 and it’s for various delicious sounding caramel things:
Well, I was going to post up this interview with the relatively newly-Christian Cliff Richard this week anyway, but due to recent events, he’s rather more newsworthy at the moment than I was expecting.
This is from 1970 and featured in the weight-obsessed Pelham Pop Annual (see my previous post on the subject here – https://skittishlibrary.co.uk/cilla-black-likes-being-skinny/). This is a good fit for the “slimmed-down” Cliff, as he seems equally interested in dieting.
It sounds like he would be surprised to still be famous now – “…I mean, just how old can a pop singer be?”
Today, a slang phrase that actually rather shocked me. In 1865, what was good for the gander wasn’t good for the goose.
GANDER MONTH, the period when the monthly nurse is in the ascendancy, and the husband has to shift for himself.
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
This refers to the four weeks “lying-in period” following childbirth, when the new mother was kept in confinement to recover. And when the poor neglected husband of the house was allowed to go and seek his fun elsewhere for the duration.
Grose’s “Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” from 1811 also refers to it, describing it as the time when “husbands plead a sort of indulgence in matters of gallantry”.
Although later, elsewhere, E. Cobham Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable” from 1898 gives it a much milder description, as a time when the husband is ignored or, rather, – “…the master is made a goose of.” Possibly the meaning of the phrase had changed by that point and attitudes had changed.
This is The Young Ladies Journal from the 1st of February 1870:
The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870
It’s an early women’s magazine consisting of a very closely-typed few pages that includes fiction, puzzles and needlework patterns:
Crochet pattern, The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870
Crochet pattern, The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870
And (sexist) clips from other publications:
The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870
A little pop at Lydia Becker from “Fun” magazine, there. She was an inspirational early “suffragist” and I’d like to think that this perhaps goaded her on to change the title of her publication from “The Home” to the magazine she did go on to found in 1870 – the “Women’s Suffrage Journal”. At least, I can’t find any other reference to her “The Home” magazine anyway.
But by far the most interesting section is its problem page, as is usually the way with magazines. The young ladies would write in about all manner of things that we can still identify strongly with now – love issues, of course, but also how to pronounce words, general knowledge, information on fashion and tips on how to stop blushing. And the Journal would answer all these questions, and throw in some critique of the senders handwriting to boot – “Your writing needs firmness”. I always enjoy seeing Victorian references to using Rimmel products. It really bridges the gap in time even though the actual products are very different.
The most intriguing aspect of this is that they didn’t print the questions, only the answers. Some of the things asked are obvious, others remain forever a mystery. But across 144 years, I still find myself concerned about the woman writing about what happens if you drink eau-de-cologne…
Some examples here:
And the full, small-print pages here:
The Young Ladies Journal problem page, February 1870
