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
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).
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!
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.
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.
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….”
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?
“Beauties” Strand Magazine 1893
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.
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.
