The Queen's English

[L Verge]

You've done your assignment very well, Eva.

Let's start with the last two questions first: The mainstays of a British meal throughout the first part of the 19th century were actually bread and beer. The latter is very full of nutrients (I was advised by our pediatrician to drink beer while nursing my daughter back in the 1970s). It was replaced by what we now assume is the national drink of England, tea, after the abstinence movement took hold.

I believe the original "pudding" was considered a meat dish similar to a sausage. It could be filled with all sorts of vile sounding things tied up in some form of clean, animal membrane, and boiled or steamed. Those with Scotch blood running through your veins, think Haggis. Yorkshire pudding is heavy with suet, as are many of the cake-like puddings that we see recipes for. I don't know if it were the Americans or the French - or maybe the Italians - who started removing the meat in sweet puddings and adding eggs to give it the needed consistency. It then became more custard than pudding. I remember years ago being curious about Spotted D**k Pudding and was a little disappointed to learn that the term referred only to the black currants in the concoction. My mother had some great recipes for various types of fruit puddings. One of my favorites is Persimmon Pudding.

Now, for the "weird" terms:

Knocker-uppers actually refers to an occupation. In the days before alarm clocks, people could be hired to walk the streets near dawn with a long cane and a lantern. They would use the cane to knock on designated windows in order to awaken the day laborers.

Assuming we all know what a privy is, we'll define a jakesman as someone who was hired to keep the privy pits clean. This was especially true in cities where privies were frequently close to the houses and could be shared by multiple families in the same slum areas. One report found fifteen families all depending on one privy. Jakesmen worked at night to scrape the pits clean and then transport their "products" to the great compost heaps (dung heaps) in the countryside.

Along the same subject, an earth closet was another term for water closet - except that it had a bucket of earth. When you pulled the lever, a certain amount of dirt would fall onto your dirt. It was regularly cleaned and taken to an outside shed that served as a composting heap.

There's one cute term that I forgot to include in the original list, but it fits in nicely here. Bum fodder was anything that one could use to clean one's self after using the privy. This generally meant printed matter such as newspapers, magazines, advertisements, envelopes, etc. These were cut into squares, a hole placed in one corner, and then they were threaded onto string and placed inside the privy for use. America actually started the practice of what we know as toilet paper being commercially produced (1857), and they developed a medicinal type. It was hard and shiny, however, because of the addition of medicine.

A bellyband referred to a soft, flannel scarf of sorts that was wrapped around a newborn's mid-section shortly after birth. Our ancestors did not worry about arms being exposed, but they sure worried about their baby's stomach and insides staying warm and in place. Once the umbilical cord was cut, it would be gently pressed down with a clean square of cotton or cotton lint - or even a coin - and the bellyband wrapped tightly around the torso. I actually found my mother's bellyband from 1914, and used it in an exhibit that we did at Surratt House decades ago on the stages of life (From Cradle to Coffin).

Dolly and posser refer to laundry utensils - long sticks with an agitator on one end (dolly) that was used to beat and swirl the clothes in the washtub, and the posser that looked like a long plunger to give you the up-and-down motion. There were also laundry forks, which were actually long sticks with a fork at one end for lifting the wet clothes.

Finally, dipping women earned their living at the seaside when public beaches and bathing became popular. Many beaches were segregated between men and women because men were often allowed to go into the water naked. Women, of course, had to maintain their dignity. Therefore, enterprising couples often rented bathing huts (or dipping huts) to the females so that they could change into their bathing suits in privacy and be wheeled to a suitable spot in the surf where they could alight from the hut and enter into knee-deep water for several minutes of therapeutic bathing. Dipping women came along with the rental of the hut, and would stand in the water to assist in dunking/dipping m'lady until the practice was reversed.

Thus ends our lesson on Victoriana for the day, week, month, or year...