E. S. TURNER: ABC OF NOSTALGIA (Published 1984)

'Wikipedia' says: Ernest Sackville Turner OBE (17 November 1909, Liverpool - 6 July 2006, London) was an English freelance journalist and author who published 20 books ... He specialised in writings on past times in England. And this is an example.

- British book of what has come to be called 'Trivia' by author born 1909 (year of Bleriot's first channel crossing); alphabetical order by unindexed, essentially collection of short and mixed quality articles; almost all boys' stuff rather than girls', incidentally.
- Interesting to speculate about omissions: the 'Panel' medical system's omitted; what about Peabody housing, almshouses? Board Schools get a single mention; what about matriculation, boys' and girls' separate entrances, school text books? Gas masks? Ration books? Music Halls?

- CONTENTS:
ABERDEEN JOKES [15: Note: city was Declared bankrupt in 1817; source of jokes?]
AEOLIAN HARPS [I.e. operated by the wind/ great plaything of the Romantic poets/ Coleridge and Schiller 'raided its performance for metaphors'/ 1795: 22 string model, based on two ladies of Llangollen who lived in Davidean friendship (i.e. Lesbians)]
AIRGUNS [Today's 'Airgun World', 'all weapons as powerful as legally permitted'/ BSA air rifle with muzzle velocity of 530 feet per second/ Daisy Gun which tended to wear/ Lord Roberts air pistol advertised in The Gem/ Prince Regent encouraged guests to practise in the map-room of Brighton Pavilion/ was himself potted as he rode through London]
APACHE DANCES [Imitation of French thugs who duelled and mugged tourists with knives etc; in 1909 four were guillotined/ cp Knuts etc]
ASPIDISTRAS [First brought back from China in 1820s/ became known as the cast iron plant/ middle class parlour emblem/ Orwell 1936/ Gracie Fields song]
AUDIOPHONES and CONVERSATION TUBES ['.. an age noted for bizarre dinner-table equipment.. .. 'receiver' placed at the centre of the table, which was suppose to draw in sound and redistribute it to the hard-of-hearing through conversation tubes..']
AUNT SALLIES [Black faced pipe smoking woman target in fairgrounds]
BIBLE IN SHORTHAND [Pitman and Pitman Book of Psalms/ Daniel Defoe helped his elders: 'if popery triumphed they would retain an uncorrupted text'/ 'Many young women learned shorthand in classes run by ladies with names like Miss Jelaby or Mrs Horsfall.']
BICYCLING (1) THE STEP [Projection from back wheel/ free wheeling/ back-pressure brake/ stunts/ saddles] (2) THE 'KUKLOS' WAY [the 1920s; a Daily News writer on bikes, who had an annual. Amusing stuff about shirts lasting a whole week, a view held by the army in World War Two, and boarding houses where Kuklos thought 6 shillings an upper limit]
BIMBASHIS [Anglo-Egyptian rank of British soldiers; presumably referring to British occupation of Egypt]
BIRD-NESTING [Oologists/ Manuals/ blowing eggs/ leaving a few; replacing by stones idea. I have a 1955 'Countryman' suggesting payment to boys for not egg collecting]
BLACK ASCOT [King Edward VII death on May 1910/ Silly, or concours d'elegance?/ Amusing account of sombreness, occasional bright touches, good excuse for not seeing people etc]
BLACK BORDERS [Mourning in newspapers; black edging reserved for Royal Family deaths. 1820 death of George III and The Times; kept up until burial
BONA FIDE TRAVEL [Note: cp Prohibition in USA/ Law to make Sunday drinking difficult: 'lodging house the preceding night at least three miles from the place where he demanded to be served with liquor..'/ 'encouraged the nation to lie and cheat on a heroic scale'/ also bona fide resident who bought drinks for 'guests', bona fide club members etc/ System stopped in 1923 in England, but continued in Scotland]
BOY WANTED (1) SMUDGING THE LETTERS [Telegraph boys in pill-box caps on red bikes/ army of boys at start of century to lick stamps, hold reins, .. sweep roads, shout news, lather chins (Chaplin), blow bugles.. scare birds/ Biggest division: office boys who filled ink pots, answered bells, worked switchboards .. copied letters from mimeographed flimsy (hence 'smudged')/ Letter delivery cheaper than postage cost of 12 letters a day/ H G Wells novel, The Dream, 1924: office boy as judge of rubbish [cp. Wodehouse on films/ newspaper offices employed dozens]
BOY WANTED (2) CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME [world war 1: did one tip telegraph boy who brought news of death? Wells' Mr Britling, yes/ 1890: London Messenger Company/ Note: 1890: Cleveland Street male brothel scandal where members of the nobility debauched messenger boys/ Air hostesses 1930s]
BRILLIANTINE [Macassar oil/ near 1900: powerful new rival; sleek crown like patent leather/ violet, honey, white lilac etc/ cp. cocoanut oil of fathers/ acquired bounderish, co-respondent Valentino image (cp white shoes)]
'BULLETS' [Horatio Bottomley Word game, started before First World War, continued sixty years; with competitor advice etc]
CELLULOID [First plastic/ early films/ 'imitation ivory'/ collars and cuffs/ campaigns against its inflammability/ cheap dolls]
CHILDREN'S NEWSPAPER [First appeared 1919, 'year after 21 March 1918, 'the darkest day ever known' when the German push for the Channel Ports seemed unstoppable'/ pi-jaws from Commander C B Fry, about Note: 'discy imps', abbreviation for 'discordant impulses'/ Ella Wheeler Wilcox/ Song about '.. bite my food slowly and breathe through my nose.. not close my window on going to bed.'/ Arthur Mee/ Bolshevism, reparations/ Note: compare Orwell on comics etc for boys; this paper seems completely ignored/ 1926 General Strike/ rare to find specific proposals. Easier to write.. '.. build up such a manhood and such a womanhood..'/ every week a heroine/ doctor denouncing some evil 'Dirty Powder Puff', 'How to Be Ugly Though Young' etc (poss. source of Private Eye's occasional doctor articles on silly subjects like navel fluff?]
CHLOROFORM [And crime stories.. used to send a cold ripple down the spine.. / mystery-writing between 1920 and 1940/ Chemists for seasickness, toothache 'cure', naturalists for killing bottle]
CHORUS GIRLS [Tiller girls/ 1st world war/ John Osborne/ tap dancing/ chorus boys in 1920s/ Cp BBC record titled 1914 which has 'thoughts' of one]
CINEMA (1) THE AMERICANS [Silent films: brash, over excited.. conversed in grimaces.. thin black rain.. night=blue, ghosts=green, fire=red.. charcoal eyes.. back-slapping men.. the 'hot foot'.. Note: conventions: women always ran to the door then gave up.. wheels initially revolved in the wrong direction..]
CINEMA (2) CAME THE DAWN [Titles for insultingly long time/ unnecessary titles for cheap film/ 1916 and 1926 films for poetic embroidery, Fortune, Fame, Destiny, .. nudging titles/ Humorous titles 'case for saying the silent film was the medium through which the wisecrack came to be properly esteemed in Britain'/ Unintentionally funny titles]
CINEMA (3) CAME THE TALKIES [Nasal ventriloquists.. buzz-saws.. Douglas Fairbanks Sr, Mary Pickford.. terrible drawls and twangs/ critics praise of silent 'film' as 'obeying the law of its own being'/ New forms of speech: Says you Says who? Says me/ You're telling me! etc/ Transition 1927 ff/ wiped out cinema organ]
COLUMNS [I.e. for monuments/ 1871 Paris Communards pulled down Napoleon's column from Place Vendôme/ Churchill proposal]
COUÉ [20 knots on a string/ Every day in every way../ Faith healing suggestion/ Gurdjieff]
COWS [K Mansfield, Gurdjieff]
CRYSTAL SETS
DAILY MAIL HAT [Competition in newspaper to replace the bowler hat. Sir Wiliam Orpen was one of the judges. Churchill was sent a free one but 'consigned it to his unused collection,which caused Northcliffe to take strong offence.'
DEATH RAYS [Post First World War; first headline in 1924 & two inventors, one at Sheffield University: cp with 'Star Wars': '.. an invisible anti-aircraft defence proof against all raiders']
DICKEY-BIRD CAMERAS
DUNCES
ELECTRIC HARES [History of dog tracks: 1876 trial at Hendon/ 1926 track at Belle Vue, Manchester with electric hares/ White City, London]
ELECTROPHONE [1895 - 1920s/ Alexander Graham Bell 1878 wired music to Victoria at Osborne/ 1883 Iolanthe wired to Prince of Wales/ 1881 Paris Exhibition/ 1891 Crystal Palace Exhibition/ Telephone companies welcomed the business/ but by 1915 only 2000 subscribers in London/ radio and gramophone killed off]
EURHYTHMICS [Lawrence's Women in Love/ And Gurdjieff/ Cult in 1920s/ started in Saxony by Jaques Dalcroze before World War One/ not dancing but gymnastics/ above the knee dresses, good deal of bare thigh/ 1930s: Women's League of Health and Beauty: Breathe, Leap, Think..]
EXPLETIVES [Swearing in books, magazines etc/ 1914 Shaw's Eliza 'bloody'/ Conan Doyle etc/ 'intercourse' in Baroness Orczy/ Foreigners/ Beau Geste/ Sacre Coeur as Sacre bleu joke]
EXPURGATIONS [Bowdler just omitted, didn't alter/ 1925 Nelson schools edition altered and omitted: 'Finger of birth-strangled babe..'/ 'I do smell all horse-piss'/ 'Miranda's virgin knot'/ Alfred de Musset poem]
EYES [1860s myth of retinal imprint - NOTE: I think idea coincided with photography!/ Various reports, novels etc inc Kipling story/ Bergen Evans]
FACTS OF LIFE [I.e. sex/ Amusing thing about other children, navels, Bible, Leviticus, Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis; Rape of Lucrece, Encyclopedias etc inc 'Details of the sexual act'/ Dr Stables 'was against long walks.. a boy could end up without enough nerve to look a tomcat in the face'/ babies born flat, inflated with red rubber tube/ dogs in street supposed to be frisky/ birth of author's brother was concealed; he was 15! Women did not go about with bulging frontages]
FERNANDO PO [And STAMP COLLECTING/ Stanley Gibbons/ Antioquia.. Stellaland.. Quelimane.. Oil Rivers Protectorate.. Van Diemen's Land/ '.. post-1918 years were confusing times for schoolboy philatelists. Stamps bearing portraits of Romanovs, Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns were fast becoming curiosities..'/ German stamps of 1918 overprinted for Belgium, Rumania, Poland, Russia/ 'Fiume.. became a free port of sorts under the poet D'Annunzio and is now the Yugoslavia port of Riyeka.. forgotten "lands" called Memel, Wenden, Courland and Lettland, .. absorbed in Lithuania or Latvia..'/ 'Forever hearing about George V's zeal for stamp collecting']
FIRE GRENADES [On sale in US to put out fires of women's clothes]
FIRESIDE FUN [Lighting fires/ chimney fires/ warming by fire/ pokers, poker work, fire-eating/ toasting fork/ roasting chestnuts and marshmallows, heating irons, warming water/ spills, not matches]
FIREWORKS [Home made/ Explosives Acts/ potassium chlorate, barium nitrate/ 'containers.. by taking leaves of old copy-books.. Occasional warnings about danger/ Pharaoh's serpents: all one needed was sulpho-cyanide of mecury mixed with nitre.. in tinfoil../ Less alarming versions included paper balloons which ascended when lit (cp Amaretti!)]
FIRST DIVISION [And second division: class distinction in British jails; 1901 Earl Russell, bigamy at Holloway, Note: 'before his peers'/ 1918 Bertrand Russell/ F W Pethick-Lawrence 'very small number of super-intellectual People..'/ Sir John Simon, Home Secretary,.. no special category for political offenders/ MPs got only a trickle of information/ Lord Kylsant 1931 case/ supposedly luxurious conditions of Mosleys 2nd world war, him joining her in Holloway/ Attlee in 1947: three divisions swept away, with hard labour and penal servitude]
FLYING (1) TRAILING THE ROPE [1905 and 1906 Ballooning articles]
FLYING (2) THE CIRCUS IS COMING [RAF destruction after 1st world war, 20,000 aircraft/ five-shilling flip/ Sky writing/ Cobham circus of the 1930s/ woman pilot/ 1962 aerial ads illegal in Britain/ example in US]
FOG [London fog/ T S Eliot yellow smoke nuzzling etc/ Dickens/ Good description of delight of going home in dark, perhaps glass crunching underfoot, leading horse]
FORE-EDGE PAINTING [Ladylike occupation; watercolour fans in books]
FORMICARIUMS [From Gamages as likely as not.. with queen ant../ Likely to end shoved in the attic with silkworm equipment]
FORMING FOURS [Two ranks, numbered, even numbers step back then right/ Hore-Belisha introduced forming threes on eve of 2nd World War/ shuffling with arms and clenched fist/ Attention]
FROST [Frozen railings/ Slides/ Dickens: Sam Weller 'feat of fancy-sliding which is currently denominated "knocking at the cobbler's door", Pickwick 'with a loud crack.. disappeared through the ice.']
FROTH-BLOWERS [Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers/ Anthem/ Membership card, cuff-links/ Moderation in Lubrication/ official organ the Sporting Times or Pink 'Un/ 1926-1930 surgeon Sir Alfred Fripp/ India, Chile, Dynamite Factory Club at Modderfontein/ Betjeman poem]
GADGETS [Egg-decapitator/ Table Blowpipe/ Lazy Tongs/ Port Tongs [to help remove neck of bottle with suspect cork]/ Bottle Lock, Tantalus/ ceiling Clocks/ Toe-straighteners, nose-straighteners, anti-rheumatic rings/ Railway keys]
GASLIGHT [Shadows/ fragility of mantles/ Veritas brand/ allowed to light a step in growing up/ raised temperature of room/ creepy murder play]
GRAMOPHONES [At first high pitched, scratchy/ later claims made for volume/ 'Put a sock in it' from gramophones?/ 1923 mag 'The Gramophone' founded by Compton Mackenzie; '1924 cry that that the gramophone was doomed by the wireless loud-speaker']
GRAND GUIGNOL ['Punch and Judy for adults/ José Levy in Summer 1914-> 1922 Little Theatre in the Adelphi, London, hired nurses.. Aubrey Hammond splendid poster.. Sybil Thorndike headed the list.. husband Lewis Casson produced.. some light, others satirical; but gruesomeness main attraction.. French imports: 'The Hand of Death' Frankenstein-like plot of electrical revival of daughter, killed in car crash/ Private Room No 6 'Nihilist.. Czarist ogre..'/ crushed by hydraulic press/ 'The Old Women' convent for the mad, girl's eyes put out by women with knitting needles/ 'To Kill', lover thrown to wolves by jealous husband/ 'The Regiment': Uhlan medical staff prepares to inoculate a regiment.. Polish anarchist switches serum tubes/ season ended in 1922 [sic; same year?]/ See Paul Theroux In 'Great Railway Bazaar' Japanese blood-and-sex shows]
GROCERS [Good description of the sort of shop in Punch cartoons]
GUINEAS [Last coined in 1817/ class thing attached to it/ survives in horse races/ couldn't survive decimalisation]
HEATERS [Body heaters with slowburning fuel/ muffs for ladies; muff warmers/ boot, foot, bed warmers]
HOME DISCIPLINE [Washing mouth with soap/ cold water down sleeve for swearing, scouts, from Capt John Smith of Virginia/ prayer book/ shoulder brace/ bitter aloes for thumbsucking etc/ bread before jam, cake/ hot drinks and saucers/ knots on parcels/ postcards 'arrived safely' each night]
HOME HEROICS [Tooth extraction by string/ cold towel or ice round head/ tonsils removed on kitchen table]
HYMNS [Inc Sons of Labour/ housing conditions- Jesus had nowhere/ Jesus did carpentry/ democratic hymn book/ circumcision of Christ]
INDIAN ROPE TRICK [And magic: Indian rope trick/ Maskelynes/ conjuror's suit/ under the shirt/ flash paper/ sword through body/ firing gun into mouth/ canary in cage trick/ 1921 enquiry into performing animals/ phosphorus and olive oil in dark appeared to be covered with blue flame, cp. Hound of Baskervilles]
IRISH SWEEP [Annoyed governments who didn't want to subsidise De Valera in Eire/ Fifth time lucky/ last State Lottery in London 1826/ Note: censorship, economics: 1934 Act forbidding British press to publicise sweepstakes and, I think, to sales of tickets/ Didn't apply to football pools]
JACK'S REFERENCE BOOK [Constipation/ castor oil before Hitler and Mussolini/ pencils up noses, lisping, hysteria/ children: habitual obedience by three years of age/ seaside and constipation, shellfish, meals, picking up measles from families in shelters, rooms infrequently aired/ drink/ delirium tremens graphically described]
JELLYGRAPHS [For cheap reproduction/ cp desk top publishing!/ Cockburn's Week used somewhat more expensive mimeograph]
JEW'S HARPS [Jaws harp, nose flute, kazoo/ 'most expensive Jew's Harp chromium plated with gilt tongue, 'as used in Henry Hall's Band']
JOURNALISM (1) CLICHE DAYS [1920s and 1930s newspapers: mealy mouthed, no ages etc, cliches weeded out: 'medical practitioner', 'sacred edifice', 'succulent bivalve', 'the fair sex'/ Note: King Sol and Jup. Pluv, Jupiter Pluvius ?rain god/ Sports pages: pile-driver past the custodian, rattled the upright, slammed home a sizzler; GLORY GOALS ROCK TOUSY SAINTS or DANDY OWEN SEALS RANGERS' JOY-DAY/ Times used to have headlines like DREADFUL DISCOVERY IN A BARREL AT DIJON and MOST SHOCKING AFFAIR AT SMYRNA]
JOURNALISM (2) REAL NEWSBILLS [1820: DEATH OF KING of Abyssinia in small letters/ 1930s: MPS said one could drive for hundreds of miles through an England emblazoned with nothing but Hitler Speaks/ Turner seems to have written newsbills: PEER'S NIECE SENSATION/ PRINCESS CANCELS ENGAGEMENTS/ DEATH OF FAMOUS STAR / Abolished during the war; returned 1953]
JOURNALISM (3) PIGEON POST [Horse racing and European market prices used pre-Telegraph days/ 'Quite recently' photographers from New York boarding incoming vessels at Quarantine, would photograph celebrities and attach their films to pigeons..]
KANGAROOS [Heyday perhaps 1890 Royal Aquarium in Tothill Street: 'Boxing Animals, Wrestling Bears, Dancing Elephants, Performing Bulls and the Missing Link (played by a gorilla)'/ 1934 Debate on Protection of Animals Bill]
LEAD SOLDIERS [Sotheby's 1980 catalogue/ William Britain in 1890s invented method of making light hollow cast figures; in 1965 went over to plastic/ amusing catalogue also of his civilians]
LEECHES [No longer in chemist jars/ Wordsworth leech-gatherer (cp Samphire)/ 1915 'Joffre, von Kluck, von Hindenburg and the Grand Duke Nicholas ... fighting over some of the best leech areas in Europe'/ not supposed to be used a second time, but in wartime London standards were relaxed.. sacrifices were expected of all..]
LIBRARIES (1) CLEAN HANDS AND MINDS ['Shrewsbury system' where book number looked up, board with blue or red checked, book obtained by application, so no security problem/ another system allowed spines to be viewed through wire mesh; you poke, librarian fetches/ piracy etc/ Glasgow depression library and reproduction, inked rollers on racing columns, crossword craze 1920s causing blacking-out of crosswords and dictionary rationing]
LIBRARIES (2) CRASH OF THE GIANTS [Higher bourgeoisie never seen/ Mudie's circulating library 1842, New Oxford St Headquarters, closed 1937/ Boots Booklovers Library started 1899 closed 1966; in 1945 nearly a million subscribers/ Smiths 1858 closed 1961/ cry from elderly women borrowers]
LIFE PRESERVERS and SHARPER WEAPONS [1915 catalogue/ Loaded sticks for officers/ sword sticks/ revolvers; Thomas Hardy, gun in 1913 and Katherine Mansfield pistol in 1921 in Montreux]
LIFTS [Rope lifts operated by water filling bucket/ 1880 Chicago Expo with deliberately cut rope, with air brake caused by tight fit/ Paternoster lift: 1945 Four Seasons Hotel in Hamburg still working after bombing]
LIQUORICE [Romans; shapes; Pontefract; Betjeman; sherbet]
'LOBBY LUD' [1904 stunt by Weekly Dispatch digging up public places in a search for buried medallions/ Lobby Lud from 1927 onwards; amusing account of what he did to evade persistent hunters]
MARBLES [Was an offence to play on steps of Bodleian/ Marble stoppers in bottles invented by Codd of Camberwell]
MECCANO [1979 sit-in in Liverpool/ Pile driver, derricking grab, flax cleaner, snow plough, manure distributing cart/ World War Two selection boards for REME/ H G Wells telferage system for Flanders rejected/ 1927 colours, red and green, introduced for first time as 'real engineers colours'; later blue and gold]
MILESTONES [Not many survived 2nd world war; see H E Bates, 'Country Life' for a note on this9]
MOTORING (1) ROAD HOGS [Chauffeurs Companion 1909/ dust, road hogs/ 'motorists were supposed to stop when a drover held up his hand'/ motor horns inc Klaxon/ Kipling as back seat road hog]
MOTORING (2) NAMES OF GLORY [Early cars/ their often double-barrelled names/ Model T hard to take seriously.. humiliated in Keystone film comedies/ 1914-18 military motors inc auto cannons, m/gun batteries, motor pigeon cotes, motor sheep buses, motor wire-cutters/ cars lorries buses converted to coal gas with huge balloons over them/ 1920s: hundreds of car manufacturers/ concours d'elegance/ dickey seat = US rumble seat]
MOTORING (3) THE DREADFUL CHARABANC [Working class, beer bottles, glass on roads/ 1st 1912/ by 1920 'set the nation by the ears'/ possible by spare capacity in war factories/ some lorries with deckchairs and crates of ale/ naked class war with private car owners regarding them as witless riffraff/ Brighton, Blackpool 1921 legal max speed 12 mph/ McGill: charabancs overflowing with red nosed roisterers/ by 1930s turned into roofed coaches]
MOTORING (4) A SLIGHT MISCALCULATION [Traffic lights/ 1930 'robots'/ Over-complicated indicator system for cars]
NOTICES [Post Office: THE POSTMASTER IS NEITHER BOUND TO GIVE CHANGE NOR AUTHORISED TO DEMAND IT/ BEWARE OF THE BULL and market towns -herds of jostling cattle along high streets/ 1913 tramcar notice: THE ATTENTION OF LADY PASSENGERS IS DRAWN TO THE DANGER.. OF WEARING HAT-PINS WITH UNPROTECTED POINTS 1913 apparently year of reckoning against hat-pins in London, Berlin, Paris, New York/ WILL THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN THE PROGRAMMe.. Cinemas, cinema pests, idea of 'Continuous Performance' dating from birth of cinema]
ODOURS [Poison gas associations: geranium, mustard, pear drops, musty hay/ easy to forget past stenches/ frangipani, patchouli, chypre, Ylang-Ylang, Phul-Nana/ ../ Byron English miss smelled of bread and butter/ wet fish and Kilvert/ 'ozone' myth as in Chambers Dictionary]
PAINT-BOXES [Names of colours; and Isabella, Henry Ford, the rag trade]
PALAISE DE DANSE [From US/ Hammersmith Palais 1919 old tram-shed 'sprung maple floor and Chinese lighting']/ professional dancers, m and f, in pens, and paying them/ A P Herbert 1922/ 'floor supervisors'/ 'dancing cheek to cheek' effect/ Mrs Whitehouse met husband]
PAPER CHASES [Now banned by Litter Act]
PASSING BELLS [In Wilfred Owen poem; cp Hemingway/ 65th Article of Canon Law/ 3,6, or 9 strokes on 'teller' bell for child, woman, man; then number of years on 'great bell' of life of dying or dead person - hence might infer from bells who'd died, as in Dorothy L Sayers/ In spa towns and gatherings of the moribund 'the monotonous striking of the passing bell did little to raise the morale of the survivors.']
PENS ['Excuse blot'/ Quills, from left goose wing, and pen-knife/ Lloyd George's Waterman for Versailles Treaty/ Amusing account of flexibility, hollows and depressions, a hair attached itself to the nib/ Copy Books and Kipling's Gods of the Copy-Book Headings; pot-hooks, hangers, loops/ Much ancillary equipment e.g. pen wiper, sealing wax, wax bars, lamps, seals required for writing/ Fountain pen improved since the days of Fanny Burney; when perfected eclipsed by Biro]
POGO STICKS [1921/ Sir Oswald Mosley guest broke jaw/ 1970s dance - he claims]
PONDS [Weed, wild life etc in ponds/ large sheets of water in London drained during war/ farmers mopped up/ aseptic concrete pondlets/ Orwell's boyhood passion for angling]
POST HASTE [Good description of c 1900 Post Office and head office at St Martins le Grand/ uniforms/ Royal Mail in front of house, not tradesman's entrance/ steam engine to puff pneumatic tubes/ post office guide/ postcard reading department]
PRIZE MONEY [Or 'blood money as it was once called' - i.e. payments for the Navy, and Air Force, but not the Army, for sinking or capturing ships. 'Shades of the days when an admiral could make a million pounds in a day by seizing the Acapulco galleon; when the loot of Mexico was marched in triumph through the City of London!' After World War One, ex-Navy were men invited by Post Office notice to claim their prize money. Last distributed after World War Two - 1948 House of Commons debate with marked lack of enthusiasm, but the Royal Navy expected it. Solicitors laid claims for U-boat 'kills'. Shares varied with seniority - list is reproduced here.]
PROFESSORS [I.e. in joke sense in fairgrounds etc/ 'boxing, cricket, phrenology, conjuring, ventriloquism, wire-walking, ballooning, ballroom dancing, Punch and Judy shows and flea circuses..'/ quacks .. professors.. advertising code discourage use of 'doctor'/ and who can say..?]
PUSHER-UPS [Shoved people together in seats in the 'Gods'; cp Japan]
QUIFFS [Baden-Powell disapproved/ Doctor on eye-brows which meet]
[RADIOACTIVITY attracted crank products; not in Turner]
RECITATION [Wavell's Other Men's Flowers/ learning by rote: tables, Catechism, heroic poetry of England, Horatius, Spain and Drake, Battle of Jutland, Longfellow/ metre/ 187: rhymes should be 'lost' or glossed over to avoid any tum-ti-tum effect (cp Belloc!).. What was the point of a poet racking his brains for a rhyme, and investing his lines with rhythm..?]
RESTAURANTS [Romano's, Gaiety, Cafe Royal, Trocadero/ Including private rooms for sex/ Wells' 1909 Ann Veronica and biology education/ Jean Rhys novel/ 1914-1918 memoirs/ presumably LCC put a stop with (prostitutes and) music-hall promenades from.. Belle Epoque]
RIDDLE-ME-REES [In children's papers before 1920s crosswords/ My first is in .. but not in ../ .. My whole is a .. and .. as well]
SHAVE, SIR? [Cut-throat razors and decline in shaving chins along with letting blood, lancing boils, pulling teeth/ Brideshead Revisited/ Chaplin was a lather boy in Kennington/ styptic pencil/ US barber shop quartets]
SHIPS' NEWSPAPERS [Amusing account of a week spent on board ship/ novelists, alcoholics, philanderers/ Marconi station/ Day's eating/ Piles of leaflets about National Socialism under foreign flags/ pre-release Cinema screenings/ public rooms cut off from outside world/ Passenger list]
SHOCKS [Note: ELECTRICITY: Lady Sackville, Edwin Lutyens, Pierpont Morgan and electric spark from nose/ shocks with a cat/ 'shocking coil' as 'aid to cure' for gout, neuralgia.. constipation/ between wars: electric combs, hairbrushes/ Dr Walford Bodie 'on stage.. showers of sparks and flashes of lightning']
SILLY ASSES [Chinless types/ death of Claude Hulbert in 1964; Times obit/ cartoonists in Paris, Berlin, New York/ 1904 Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel/ Wodehouse in 1937: episthognathous/ Pre-1914 Knut/ Between wars: Burlingon Bertie, Allingham's Peter Campion]/ William Joyce attempt fell flat - name for Lord Cardigan of Light Brigade/ 'bolted for their clubs if feminine nets looked like tightening']
SKIPPING ['Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper']
[SKITTLES popular in 1920s; I enclose Mensa clipping of 1992 on 'London Skittles']
SLANDER OF WOMEN ACT 1891 ['.. falsely calling a woman a whore, a slut, a trollop, a soiled dove, a demirep or anything else in that class would be liable to damages'/ 'Only modest women would be eligible to sue'/ 'Never a Slander of Men Act']
SLOT MACHINES [Railway station machines with roll of aluminium tape. 1920s: 22 letters 1d; 1960s 10d; 'tool boxes, dog collars, plant labels, plumbers' kits'/ Amusement machines on piers/ Between wars: cigarettes/ Contraceptive machines on streets in 1930s in Britain, says Turner/ fruit machines/ German 'automats' before 1914, and Holland from between wars/ scent/ Paris after 2nd world war, whiff of oxygen/ coin-box bed massage in American hotels]
SPECIAL TRAINS [Day trippers; nobility with retinue of servants; emergency appointments for persons of consequence/ 1844 Victoria's 4th child/ Churchill special trains during 1915 (and no doubt at other times)/ 'ill-fated financier James White' between wars/ Sax Rohmer Fu-Manchu story/ Sherlock Holmes 1890 'The Story of the Lost Special'/ 1897 popular story 'The Beetle' by Richard Marsh: Arab with kidnapped young woman in hypnotic trance]
STRAW ON THE ROAD [Or bark, sawdust/ For silences at funerals or childbirth/ Monica Dickens/ Burne-Jones/ Arnold Bennett, 1932/ how was it organised? Amusing speculations: how did the patient feel.. ominously muted]
STREET LIFE [STREET SELLERS ETC/ STREET MUSIC: Horse cabs; men who ran behind/ Muffin man/ Lamplighter/ Peep show man with box of scenic wonders, and 'Happy Family' cage of cat, dog, bird, etc in apparent amity/ horse-handlers ready at foot of hill/ 'colporteurs' who sold religious tracts; cp Army Scripture Readers/ Knife grinders etc/ Touts in tailor shops notably in Glasgow/ MUSIC: German bands; not too young men in peaked caps. 'Down at the Old Bull and Bush'/ August 1914 interned/ Italians other great music makers; barrel organs with monkeys/ Post 1918: British ex-Servicemen]
STRUWWELPETER
SUCKERS [Leather disk on string; as in Jerome's Three Men in a Boat]
SWEETS ['A Power to Annoy' - a satisfactory sweet must annoy adults/ radium super chocolate of early 1930s/ amusing account of powerful dyes, mysterious messages, Skull Crushers/ no nonsense sweets like barley sugar, butterscotch/ seaside rock/ 1951 sugar rationing and Times letters on sweets: Kallibonkers, Krugers whiskers, gobstoppers/ 1964 Beatles toffee records]
TAXIDERMY [I.e. existence of taxidermists' shops]
TELEVISION [1 Sept 39 1st TV service in worlds went off the air/ 20000 viewers/ 1930s fuzzy exhibitions/ 'visio' in US/ German lack of interest/ Large number of plays - cheaper/ Movietone news/ British service resumed 1946 - end of Mickey Mouse film cut off 7 years earlier shown]
TICKLING STICKS [Back scratcher, ladies' tormentors]
TIME GUNS [Note: decadent remainder of purposeful activity? e.g. one o'clock cannon at Edinburgh/ cannon on Janiculum Hill, Rome/ Fortresses of the British empire punctuated the day's rituals with gunfire.. Gibraltar.. Halifax, Nova Scotia.. Hong Kong.. 'In Hong Kong the bang a gong/ And fire off a noon-day gun' - Noel Coward]
TIPPERARY [In the song; why not say Tobermory?]
TOILET ROLLS [With words]
TOPS [As used by boys as toys/ Peg top]
TWO MINUTES' SILENCE [Taken very seriously at first, then as WW1 receded, less so]
UNDERGROUND [1914 tube map has about a dozen now-disused stations; inc British Museum, Dover Street, Down Street where Churchill spent nights during Blitz, Tower, Park Royal, Hounslow Town, South Kentish Town, Brompton Road, Lord's; some casualties of competition before lines brought under unifie control. Clapham Deep a quarter-mile network of galleries underground during World War 2, a transit camp. Peter Laurie's 'Under the City Streets'] [1993 'Notes & Queries' seemed to mention a disused 'Downing Street' station, but this must have in fact been Down Street. It's off Piccadily, away from Green Park, quite near Buckingham Palace]
VENTRILOQUISM ['Throw your voice' belief; why should we not have believed the advertiser? .. book.. and instrument .. produce bird trills, 'raspberries'. Historically invented by Victorian Henry Cockton, 'The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox' [not in OCEL; Times 'cure for melancholia'; preface exposing social evils of private lunatic asylums desperate for customers] Amusing examples of Mad dog! and ferocious growls, restaurant chimney-boys in a hot flue, skull of a murderer talking to a professor [Note: Tolkien and Trolls' talking purses etc influenced by ventriloquist stories?] 232: Patrick Campbell tried it at school - Dr Farvox - and had to repeat 'a pat of butter moulded into the shape of a boat' as 'a cat of gutter noulded.' Frederick McCabe, stage ventriloquist, blamed Vox.. secret in fact to direct the audience..]
WALL OF DEATH [1920s motorcycling spectacle. Inc 'globe of death' of steel lattice]
WATCHES [And visible trinkets: Gold watch chain; hunters, half hunters/ locket, silver box, seal, gadgets/ wrist-watch in 1st and 2nd world war]
WATER CARTS [Pink in Bloomsbury]
WEMBLEY [Eiffel-like tower begun 1890s; demolished 1907/ New Brighton on Mersey 1897-1921/ Blackpool: 1896/ British Empire Exhibition: Queens Dolls House and life in Park Lane and Kensington/ There was a coal mine, Ford car plant, rodeo, full scale reconstruction of Tutakhamen's tomb/ Prince of Wales carved from Canadian butter etc/ soon synonymous only with football and greyhound racing]
WHISTLING [Baden-Powell: 'A scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances']
WILL O' THE WISP [ignis fatuus/ i.e. decline of marshes, bogs, swamps]
X-RAYS [1890s; fears of scientists to direct his baleful ray .. X-ray proof underclothes for women/ 1930s shoe-shops; General Medical Council in 1956; 2 years later, announced 12 times/year.. finally dwindled in number]
YELLOW PERIL [Sax Rohmer 'did more than anybody'/ Dr Fu-Manchu appeared in 1913/ novels about Limehouse etc/ 1925 Shanghai/ Dr Legendre, 'a distinguished anthropologist']
ZION'S PROTOCOLS [World Jewry/ 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'/ exposed in 1921/ original 1868 novel/ traced to earlier 1864 work as satire against Napoleon III/ Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent recognised them]
ZOOT SUITS

Uploaded 21 Nov 2021 by Rae West