Category: Victorian

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Snobstick and a lot of Snot

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

This is a great page of The Slang Dictionary.

First you’ve got Snob-stick – a worker who refuses to join in strikes, and what would now be termed a “scab”.

Then there’s Snooks-and-Walker, a number game I was certainly still playing in the 90s, except it was a drinking game called “Fizz Buzz” (and the entry also says “see Buz” so that variant is also an ancient one).

Then there’s a glorious variety of snot-based words. Snottinger for a pocket handkerchief is a good one. But Snotter or Wipe-Hauler is a peculiar one. In other slang books, these terms are simply referred to as meaning a pickpocket who has a particular fancy for the aforementioned snottingers (it takes all sorts). But here it goes into a little more detail:

Snotter, or Wipe-hauler, a pickpocket who commits great depredations upon gentlemen’s pocket-handkerchiefs.

Well, maybe that just means nicking them. But is that all it means? It sounds strangely fetishistic to me.

Lastly, my fave – Snooze. Obviously this slang stuck around and still means the same thing now, but just look at the vulgar pronunciation of it – Snoodge. Isn’t that wonderful? I’m planning to bring this one back, ideally as Rowan Atkinson would say it.

Anyway, it’s Monday morning and I’ve already pressed snoodge twice. Time to get up….

The Slang Dictionary, 1865
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Quockerwodger

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

One of my top ten best words this week – Quockerwodger. It almost doesn’t matter what it means, really. I’m appreciating the lip-exercising qualities of it right now. Go on, say it out loud.

It’s also good because you get to use it to insult politicians. It means a kind of marionette puppet, and, by extension, it came to mean a politician who was having his strings pulled by someone else.

The Slang Dictionary, 1865
The Slang Dictionary, 1865

And, in keeping with my personal theory that anything can be illustrated by a sketch from Monty Python, Fry and Laurie or the Armando Iannucci Shows, here is a demonstration of a Quockerwodger and Quockerwodgee (not sure what the puppet master was called. This seems as good a word as any).

 

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – B Flats and F Sharps

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Victorian musical slang for household creepy-crawlies – B Flats for bugs and F Sharps for fleas. Maybe they’re musical terms because you make a noise if you’re bitten? Or maybe it was just being funny. It does sound quite a music hall-y kind of thing.

I like that the word “Foxed” on the second page is included. It (still) means brown marks that develop on old books and the page itself is an illustration of it.

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Victorian Women

Victorian Childcare, 1891

The Mother's Companion, 1891

A subject close to home for me right now – childcare and nurseries. Today it’s my first day back at work as the beautiful dream that is maternity leave has come to an end. My baby daughter and I are beginning the wrenching apart process as she starts nursery for the first time and I inevitably spend the morning phoning up to check she’s ok.

But reading this 1891 account in The Mother’s Companion by children’s author Jennie Chappell about Mrs Hilton’s crèche, a day nursery that had been running in the East End of London since 1871, rather puts things in perspective. The highly emotive descriptions of poor, neglected babies is very Victorian in its sentimentality, but I’m sure also contains a good deal of truth. The crèche was catering for infants who would otherwise be left alone in the house while their mothers had to go to work, or were unfit in some way, or else perhaps left in the care of their only slightly older siblings.

A beautiful picture of the day nursery is included, which must have seemed a wonderfully warm and safe alternative to the overcrowded living spaces a lot of working class people lived in in the East End (apart from the one kid who’s alarmingly looking half throttled by a loop of material).

Mrs Hilton inspired people in other big towns across the country to start their own day nurseries and “public cradles”. And on her top floor she kept a kind of sanitarium for sick and dying children, where their parents could visit by night. I think she deserves to be better known than she is. We’ve heard of the big shot Victorian male philanthropists but some people like Mrs Hilton were also doing work than must have added immeasurably to peoples lives. I’m all emotional right now anyway, but I think I have something in my eye…..

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Bladder of Lard

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Another insult (seeing as a good quarter of The Slang Dictionary is insults).

Bladder of Lard – an affectionate term for the baldy man in your life.

Slang-Dictionary-bladder-of-lard

 

That Naked Video music is the 80s summed up in a sound for me.

 

 

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Ephemera Victorian Women

What Is There To Prevent a Woman From Enjoying a Good Book, 1891

The Mother's Companion, 1891

A woman after my own heart, sodding off the darning for a bit of a read.

A beautiful picture from The Mother’s Companion, 1891. I’m 40 and I bet she’s around that age too. Although with about 10 more children, I expect.

I feel like this should be my avatar for everything from now on.

The Mother's Companion, 1891
The Mother’s Companion, 1891
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Food & Drink Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang Word of the Week – Staggering-Bob

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

This week – a term for ancient or sick animals used for rather unwholesome food purposes. What with all the food scandals and randomly-named meat products of late, perhaps we are unknowingly eating rather more Staggering-Bob than we would like.

“Staggering-Bob, An animal to whom the knife only just anticipates death from natural disease or accident,-said of meat on that account unfit for human food.”

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Food & Drink Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week- Gallimaufry, Pudding-head (and Robot of Sherwood)

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Oh yes! Last Saturday’s Doctor Who, Robot of Sherwood, was so entirely up my street that I think I actually live there.

Robin Hood, Ben Miller, Peter Capaldi’s vibrantly grumpy Doctor, robots for the robot-obsessed small boy in my house, Clara continuing as my style icon with a magnificent red gown, (and getting a good part to play this week). All that and the use of slang…well, that was just the cherry on the cake for me.

I came across Gallimaufry a few weeks back, while putting together my post on Gander-month, as it’s on the same page of The Slang Dictionary of 1865 – https://skittishlibrary.co.uk/victorian-slang-word-of-the-week-gander-month/

Gallimaufry here means a type of jumbled stew of all kind of things chucked in the pot. It’s not quite the Doctor’s cheese sandwiches in cling film that Ben Miller’s Sheriff of Nottingham referred to in the episode, but at the time I was struck by its similarity to Gallifrey and how it sounded like something that Time Lords should eat. So I was overjoyed that someone else had found that word and also thought it suitably Timey Lordy.

Of course, that someone is Mr Mark Gatiss, writer of this episode, and frankly if anyone is also likely to own the Victorian Slang Dictionary, it’s him.

The Slang Dictionary, 1865
The Slang Dictionary, 1865

It’s followed by Gallipot, meaning apothecary (and also the pot where the ointments were kept), which isn’t a million miles away from “Doctor” either.

Oh, and there was also a mention of one of my favourite “head” insults – I’ve covered Cupboard-head, Chuckle-head, Buffle-head and Culver-head already, but here we had Pudding-head, still an excellent word to be used wherever possible today, I would say. Maybe this episode will bring it back to life? I hope so.

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – the Cove of the Budging-Ken

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

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.

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:

The Sydney Mail, May 10th, 1879
The Sydney Mail, May 10th, 1879
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Music Victorian

Portrait of the Duke as a Young Girl, 1894

The Strand Magazine, 1894

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.

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):