Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

[ReignetteC]

(12-29-2012 02:34 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  It's called a stock. I had never heard of this term and neither had my wife. I looked it up, and a stock was a single band worn around the neck with the ends tied up in a bowlike configuration. Lincoln paid $1.25 for the one in the picture I posted, and he was wearing it at Ford's Theatre.

The article is here.

Roger,

"The Art of Tying the Cravat," published by Brooks Brothers in 1921, provides a fascinating history of "Stocks."

"Stocks were first introduced as military costume about the commencement of the eighteenth century. Choiseul, minister of war under Louis XV, presented them to the troops in lieu of the Cravat.

"These stocks were made of black horse-hair, tolerably hard, moderately wide, and were only injurious when fastened too tightly. In many regiments, the officers wishing the men to appear healthy, obliged them to tighten the stock so as almost to produce suffocation, instead of allowing them more nourishing food, or treating them with more kindness; or, in short, of giving them an opportunity of acquiring that health, the appearance only of which was produced by the tightened stock.

"The Stock has ever since formed a part of military costume. Invention has been racked to diversify it as much as possible; and as appearance alone was consulted, each change has rendered it more injurious; it has been transformed into a collar as hard as iron, by the insertion of a slip of wood which, acting on the larynx, and compressing every part of the neck, caused the eyes almost to start from the spheres, and gave the wearer a supernatural appearance often producing vertigoes and faintings, or at least bleeding at the nose. It rarely happened that a field-day passed over without surgical aid being required by one or more soldiers, whose illness was only produced by an over-tightened Stock. As the same kind of Stock was used for necks of all sizes, whether long or short, thin or thick, it rendered the wearer, in many cases, almost immovable; he was scarcely able to obey the order, "right face-left face," and was entirely prohibited from stooping.

"Stocks have lately been much improved, and these objections no longer exist. The best Stocks for general use are made of whalebone, thinned at edges, with a border of white leather, which entirely prevents that unpleasant scratching of the chin so produced by the whalebone penetrating the upper part."

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