Category: Victorian

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Pharmaceuticals Victorian

Mappin & Company, Surgical Mechanicians of Birmingham, 1885

Mappin and Co surgical instrument catalogue, 1885

Today it’s a very special post – a guest post from Dave of the ace crime fiction blog http://whatareyoureadingfor.wordpress.com

It’s funny what you come across when you’re looking for something else. Hunting for references to an electric car company (don’t ask) in the library stacks, I came across this wonderful 1885 catalogue for Birmingham surgical instrument makers Mappin & Co. I’ve long been fascinated by surgery and pathology (my childhood hero was Jack Klugman, growling his way through Monday night episodes of Quincy M.E), so as soon as I cracked it open I was hooked.

The index at the front is enough to make even the strongest stomach flutter, with references to all manner of ‘bespoke’ items: Haemorrhoidal Clamps, Harelip Pins, Necrosis Chisels, Rectum Plugs, Gunshot Probes, Mouth Gags… You get the idea. But it’s when you get into the body (ahem) of the catalogue that the fun really starts. Many of the items are beautifully illustrated; who wouldn’t want a full dissection kit, complete with Brain Knife, Bowel Scissors and Spine Chisels, all presented in a strong mahogany case for the bargain price of £4 12s (equivalent to £300 in today’s money)?

And if that doesn’t paint a vivid enough picture, some of the products are shown in use. On one page, a sad-faced man is seen inserting one end of the nasal douche into his – well, nose, whilst a jet of unidentified liquid shoots out of the other nostril. According to the blurb, it’s good for ‘Hay Fever, Bleeding from the Nose, Offensive Discharges and Thickness of Speech’ – curing rather than causing them, I’d hope. I wouldn’t be first in the queue to try it out.

Should living patients not do it for you, how about a skeleton? £10 10s for the full body, or £1 15s for top half only. If your budget doesn’t stretch that far, maybe a skull is more tempting (£2 5s) or just a hand (linked with cat gut, a bargain at just 7 shillings). But the catalogue’s best surprise is left until the end. Mappin & Co didn’t just supply doctors – the general customer could also purchase their table cutlery from them. I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be with that – especially the ones with ‘white bone handles’. You’d always wonder who – sorry, where – they’d come from.

Mappin & Co continued to trade up until the early 1920s, at which point they drop out of the documentary record. Trade directories for the period suggest their premises at 121 New Street were subsequently taken over by a pianoforte showroom, and then a jeweller’s. The address is still there, and is currently (I swear I’m not making this up) a branch of The Body Shop. If history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes sometimes.

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Spunk-fencer

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Spunk-fencer. Go on, have a guess at what this slang is referring to.

Well, according to The Slang Dictionary of 1865, it’s a match seller, “spunks” also being the term for lucifer matches. Lucifers were rather unstable and prone to explosive reactions, and had been replaced by this stage with phosphorus matches. But the slang persisted for quite some time, until at least the First World War seeing as it’s mentioned in the song “Pack up your troubles”,

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag, smile boys, that’s the style….”

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang Insult of the Week – Cupboard-headed

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

I love Victorian insults, especially the “head”-based insults like “chucklehead”, as used by Mark Twain brilliantly in the below letter to his gas company in 1891:

“Dear Sirs: Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven’t you a telephone?”

And did you know the word “mutt” started out as “muttonhead”, and so was basically an insult used for dogs?

Here’s my top insult for today – “Cupboard-headed” from “The Slang Dictionary”, 1865 – for one who’s head is both wooden and hollow.

(There’s two for the price of one on this page – there’s also “culver-headed” meaning weak and stupid, which I presume is from an old word for pigeon).

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Victorian

This Reminds Me of our Wedding Night, 1894

Turnip, the Strand Magazine, 1893

Comedy vegetables. Never not funny. I see these as a staple of British humour. Medieval peasants surely found most of their laughs from rude veg, and thanks to Blackadder and That’s Life, they reached a certain cultural highlight in the 1980s. The Victorians, despite their dour reputation, were often as skittish as the next man, and they were no exception to the delights of the naughty tuber.

There was a series in The Strand magazine celebrating them. Baldrick would be proud of the turnip below. Especially the second picture of the same turnip with a hat on.

And here are some potatoes:

(Although I suspect Mr Fox’s “duck potato” is ever so slightly doctored.)

Categories
Future Predictions Victorian

Fashion Forward, 1893

future dictates of fashion 1893

Possibly my favourite thing in books is predictions of the future, when their future is your now. It’s a fascinating little insight into the minds of the time, extending on what surrounds them in their present. Sometimes this is strikingly insightful, sometimes it’s just bonkers.

And so here is a rather marvellous, not entirely serious, article from The Strand Magazine, 1893. “Future Dictates of Fashion”, predicted from 1893-1993. What I think it largely shows is that minimalism and simplicity were fairly unimaginable concepts to this particular Victorian. Also, god only knows what they would have made of the actual short skirts that came into fashion long ago themselves now. And the possibility of hat-wearing not being all-but-compulsory anymore.

Interestingly, there is a brief aside on tobacco which just might possibly have been the most ridiculous thing the author was intending.

Apart from that, pretty spot on. I know I was wearing something very similar in 1993. My favourite here would have to be the Mikado-style policeman’s uniform from 1960….

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Victorian

The Paternoster Gang and the Case of the Victorian Clickbait, 1891

Mothers Companion, 1891

A quick aside. If you’re a fan of Doctor Who (like what I am), old books have recently become a bit more exciting, thanks to Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax – aka the Paternoster Gang.

This is because a lot of Victorian (and later) publications were printed in Paternoster Row, which was a centre of publishing up until the Second World War, when it was destroyed in the Blitz.

The Paternoster Gang lived at No. 13 so (in a very real sense) the publishers of the Mother’s Companion were next-door-but one at No. 9.

Mothers Companion, 1891
Mothers Companion, 1891

The Mother’s Companion knew what it was doing with this article – “Hints to Wives” by an anonymous husband. This is a “helpful critique” of wives and their activities, and reminds me rather of the famous Victorian phrase “Children should be seen and not heard”, except applied to women. In short, this is Victorian clickbait that probably inspired a fury of correspondence.

I’m imagining the lady readership of this magazine having a little water cooler moment with this article (equivalent – teapot moment?). Perhaps trying to guess the identity of the author, who vowed never to tell anyone that he had written it. I find this quite cheering – at least he knows he’ll be for it if his wife finds out.

Reading this with slightly amused scorn as I was, I became uncomfortably aware of how little some things have changed though. Basically – men don’t want to go shopping and aren’t too interested in domestic minutiae? Well, plus ca change….

(Please excuse the n-word here, it’s rather an occupational hazard with some of these publications)

A gently elegant riposte came in a later issue. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, it’s game, set and match to her as soon as she makes the point that women’s lives were “imperilled” by having children. So stop moaning and bloody well hold the baby for a bit, eh?

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Victorian Women

Victorian Page 3, 1893

"Beauties" Strand Magazine 1893

The Strand magazine was an iconic, long-running magazine which was such an institution in its day that when it finally ceased publication in 1950, the news was announced on the BBC by a newsreader supposedly wearing a black armband.

I have a number of bound early editions from the 1890s and what strikes me is that they’re not only still an interesting read, but also they have really set a lot of the tone still seen in subsequent magazines. There’s the very Victorian serial short stories (the Sherlock Holmes stories were famously first published here) but also a lot of true crime, “celebrities”, humour, amusingly shaped vegetables, and this, the “Beauties” series. Dreamy pictures of young ladies (and also “Beauties – Children”) for the readers perusal. Note the subtly androgynous nudey drawing on one page – a subliminal way of emphasising what a lot of the male readers may have been thinking, perhaps?

Madame Laura Schirmer-Mapleson rather stands out. I love her confident grin at the camera but she’s not the standard slightly ethereal young lady. However, she was something of a celebrity – she was an opera singer (as was Madame Sigrid Arnoldson). Although, sadly, she died of pneumonia the following year.

Incidentally, if you’re interesting in reading more, there’s a great resource to look up huge numbers of public domain issues of The Strand here – https://archive.org/details/TheStrandMagazineAnIllustratedMonthly

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang and Rik Mayall’s Good Bottom

Rik Mayall died two days ago and it’s just the saddest thing. As a teenager mad about history, comedy and silliness, his turn as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder was just joyous to me.

We were right in the middle of rewatching the wonderful Bottom too, which was reminding me again of just how good an actor he was, both in delivery and in his incredible physicality and endless expressions. As we have watched the Tony Hancock box set recently as well, I suddenly realised just how alike Hancock and Bottom were – the delusions, the pretensions, the acting done half by expression alone. The importance, and lack of, women, TV, money and respect. Bottom is pretty much Hancock in hell.

And so this is my small tribute, an extract from The Slang Dictionary”, 1865.

“Bottom” – endurance to receive a good beating and still fight on.

Farewell sir, you had good bottom.

Categories
Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the week – We are the Dickeymen

Oh, The Slang Dictionary. I have so much to post from this Victorian beauty. It’s pretty much an 1865 version of Viz’s Profanisaurus with insults and phrases galore. The Victorians really had a way with words.

Slang-Dictionary-1865-cover

Definition of “Tootsies” below. Ha!

Tootsies

I’ve been in Liverpool for 21 years and, until I read this, I’d never heard the term “Dickey Sam” to mean Scouser, but it seems it was the common term up until mid last century – http://virtuallinguist.typepad.com/the_virtual_linguist/2008/10/scousers-and-dicky-sams.html

Slang-Dictionary-1865-dickeysam

Nb. “Look, the bulky is dicking!” [no comment]