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:
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
I love a spot of history surfing. Looking through some old book or piece of ephemera, coming across something I’ve never heard of, and then going investigating. (With extra points awarded if I somehow manage to cross-reference this with another old book I already have).
I was reading the problem page of The Young Ladies Journal from February 1870, which is enduringly interesting as problem pages always are, no matter if they’re from 100 years ago, or last week. This one is especially intriguing on account of the fact that only the answers to the questions appear, which sometimes involves a bit of imagination as to what the questions might have been – more of this in another post I’ll be putting up shortly.
One of the young ladies had asked about “The Grecian bend”, which elicited the following sensible response:
The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870
M.J.D.- Every age has its absurd fashion. The Grecian bend, as it is now called, is the present one. Avoid it, and anything else that has a tendency to deformity. You cannot walk too upright to widen the chest and give free play to the lungs.
It turns out that, much like wearing your trousers so low that you reveal most of your underpants (or like one bloke I saw, with his trousers belted right under his bum, all of his pants on show, and only able to shuffle along Pingu-style), the Grecian bend was a stupid fashion of the time. It involved pushing lots of skirt fabric into your bustle and bending your body forwards while walking. It was also known as a dance move. The reasoning behind the name is generally considered to be that it refers to the depiction of dancers on friezes from Ancient Greece, although historian David McCullough has a much ruder explanation – that it comes from “Greek” or anal sex.
This is what it looked like:
The Grecian Bend
There were even special corsets made to keep your back in the correct bent position, which must have been incredibly painful. It was widely ridiculed as an absurdity, and music hall songs were sung to much amusement.
Here’s a few verses of a song called “Grecian Bend’:
‘Tis fun to see a lass so tall,
Lean forward ’till you’d think she’d fall,
Or pitch against a tree or wall,
Because of her Grecian bend.
E’en bashful girls are forward now,
So forward that the people vow,
They’ve been all day behind a plow-
To give them a Grecian bend.
What next we’ll have we do not know,
For novelty is all the go;
And when designs begin to flow,
Where will the follies end?
Perhaps you’ll see them by the scores,
Down on their knees upon your floors.
To try to get upon all fours,
And cut the Grecian bend.
Interestingly, as with all good history surfing sessions, it also uncovered another unknown fact for me. Widespread cases of decompression sickness were first seen during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge – it was termed “caisson disease” in 1873, after the underwater structures used while building its foundations. But at some point during the project, caisson disease became popularly known as “the bends” because sufferers looked like they were doing the Grecian bend themselves.
If a person wearing advertising boards (or a “human advertising medium”) front and back is a “Sandwich” then what other food-based item are they called if the boards enclose them on all four sides? A “Toad in the hole”, of course!
“I’m going to see my aunt” was a phrase mostly used by women from around 1850 onwards – meaning to go to the toilet.
This entry can’t bring itself to talk other than entirely in euphemisms though, so instead of WC we get the wonderful “closet of decency” and “house of office”.
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
On this page, I Also love “My Lord” – a nickname given to a hunchback. And “My nabs” – the phrase “his nibs” still exists but the version referring to yourself is now very obscure.
But “My aunt”, though. What does it mean? Is it this…….?
[If you haven’t seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, this is Not Safe For Work]
So Joey Essex claims to have invented the word “reem”, does he? Well in the 1865 Slang Dictionary here, we have “ream”.
Spelt slightly differently, but meaning “good or genuine” which is pretty much what I imagine TOWIE mean by it. And there’s also “ream bloak” meaning “good man”.
It comes from “rum”, in the days when “rum” meant “good”, before it meant “bad” or “suspect”. Confusing this slang business, sometimes.
A classy riddle from “The Young Ladies Journal”, February 1st 1870.
The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870
Can you guess it?
My first is a vegetable well known to all;
My second’s an insect tiny and small;
My whole forms one of a large class in this nation;
Tho’ rather low down in the scale is his station.
