We all use them. We all know what they mean. But where do these phrases come from and how did they get their meanings that we assigned them today? This article will examine the origins of some of the more common English phrases which we know and love.

“Square Meal”

To have a ‘square meal’ means to have a full, satisfying, nutritious meal. The phrase originated in the Royal Navy of the 18th century. Sailors were served their food on square, wooden plates (so, literally a ‘square’ meal). The plates were made in the shape of squares, probably because they would be easier to store on a ship rocking and rolling around at sea.

“In the Clink”

To be “in the clink” or “in clink”, means to be in prison. This comes from the old Clink Prison, once located on Clink Street, in London.

Queer Street

Not one you hear very often these days, more something your parents or grandparents might use. To be on Queer Street means to be in financial difficulties. This comes from CAREY STREET in London, where the city’s bankruptcy courts were located. How exactly ‘Carey’ became ‘Queer’ was never firmly established.

Kick the Bucket

To Kick the Bucket means to commit suicide. This comes from standing on a bucket to put a noose around your neck. Kicking the bucket away made your body drop, hanging yourself in suicide.

Petered Out

If something is said to be “Petered Out”, it means that it’s exhausted. This term originally applied to mining (probably more specifically to gold-mining), where rock-faces were blasted away with old-fashioned blackpowder explosive gunpowder, in the days before dynamite. The three ingredients of old-fashioned blackpowder were Sulphur, Charcoal and Potassium Nitrate…or…Saltpetre, as it was once called. Therefore, if a mine was ‘petered out’, it meant that you had blasted it with gunpowder so many times that you had mined out as much gold or silver, diamonds or other precious things, that you possibly could, and that further explosives were not needed. Alternatively, it could mean that you had done so much mining that you had run out of gunpowder, which was essential for breaking away the rock-faces which picks and chisels alone, could not do.

“Cop”/”Copper”

Originating in the United States in the late 19th century, a word meaning ‘policeman’. The likely origin of this term comes from the copper badges which policemen wear, to identify themselves. A similar, British origin states that it was underworld slang meaning “Constable On Patrol”.

The Daily Grind

‘The Daily Grind’ means something that you have to do every day, day after day, day in, day out, every day of the year…it’s boring, it’s tedious, it’s repetitive…but what is it?

The term ‘the daily grind’ actually comes from Anglo-Saxon England, after the fall of the Roman Empire (although it may have existed before then). It actually refers to the grinding and crushing of grains, specifically corn kernels or kernels of wheat. Grinding the grains up like this produced flour, which was used to make bread, which was the staple food of Roman, and later, Anglo-Saxon society. Without the ‘daily grind’, you had no flour. No flour meant no bread. No bread meant that you starved to death. You wouldn’t be able to go out and BUY your flour to bake your bread like you would today; it all had to be done at home with your own grindstone and it was something you had to do every single day.

Top Dog and the Underdog

The ‘Top dog’ and the ‘Underdog’, two two people who we either love or hate. But where did this term come from? Someone who’s a ‘top dog’ is someone who’s in charge, who’s powerful, who had a position of prestige. The underdog is a downtrodden, inferior sort of fellow who is nothing but a slave to the top dog. But who are these two people…and why dogs?

The dogs are actually lumps of wood, believe it or not, and the two men are actually sawyers, that is, people whose job it is to saw. Saw what? Wood, of course. Specifically, to saw logs of wood into planks for shipbuilding. In the old days, this was done inside a rectangular pit with two men and a massive saw. One man climbed into the pit, while another man put down wooden blcks above the pit, going across it widthwise. These blocks of wood supported the log which the two men were to saw into planks. It was these wooden support-beams that held the log above the pit, that were called the ‘dogs’. The man ‘under’ the dogs, in the pit, who had all the sawdust raining down on him was called the ‘under’-dog, that is, literally ‘underneath’ the support-dogs. The man on top, the ‘top dog’ got his name because he was literally ‘atop the dogs’, and out of the way of the falling sawdust. Also, he had more control of the saw which was used to cut the wood.

Flash in the Pan

Something described as being a ‘flash in the pan’ means that it’s a momentary idea. Something foolish and poorly thought out. But what is the flash and where is the pan?

The pan is the flash-pan of early, flintlock muskets. When the trigger was pulled, the hammer fell forward, struck the frizzen (steel, sparking-plate), forced the frizzen open and sent sparks into the flash-pan. These sparks set off the gunpowder which ignited in a massive flash of smoke and sparks. It was quick, bright, dazzling…and over in a second.

Going off Half-Cocked

Going off half-cocked means doing something without being properly prepared. This comes from the ‘half-cock’ safety-position on flintlock muskets. To gain access to the flash-pan, to fill it with gunpowder, you opened the frizzen (steel striking-plate) and you pulled back the firing-hammer. Pulling the hammer back to ‘full cock’ (all the way), meant that if the gun went off unintentionally, you could shoot yourself (or someone else) by accident. Having the hammer on ‘half-cock’ prevented this (as the hammer would not fall fast enough to create the sparks to set off the gunpowder).

Thereby, going off ‘half-cocked’ meant to fire your gun without first pulling the hammer back all the way, which eventually came to mean doing something without being fully prepared, first.

Hold a Candle to

If you can’t hold a candle to someone, it means you’re not worthy to be compared to him, to be in his presence or to assist or replace him in any way, shape, or form.

The origins of this phrase are disputed, but it is believed to have come from 17th and 18th century England. In the Stuart and Georgian eras, street-lighting did not exist as we know it today. If you had to go out after dark, you either had to provide your own light-source, with a lantern, or, you could engage the services of a fellow known as a ‘link-boy’. A link-boy was a poor, beggarly street-urchin who wandered around with a flaming torch. It was his job to walk beside you, holding this torch, to light your way. As being a link-boy was possibly the lowest job in the entire world (half the time they didn’t even get paid, and if they did, it was a paltry tip, maybe just a ha’penny), saying that you couldn’t hold a candle…meaning that you couldn’t light someone’s way in the dark…implied that you were lower than even the lowest class of labourer…the impoverished link-boy…which was a pretty big insult back in the Georgian period.

These days, people worry about swine flu, avian flu, flu-flu, AIDS and HIV. 90 years ago, there was a disease which put all these worries to shame. They called it The Spanish Flu. It made its mysterious and deadly premier on the world stage in 1918, lasted for four seasons until the curtain closed on it at the end of 1919. By the end of its lethal performance…tens of millions of people would be dead…in what was probably the most deadly pandemic of modern times, and almost certainly the most deadly pandemic in recorded history, surpassing even the Black Death of the 1340s.

What was Spanish Influenza?

“Spanish Influenza”, as it was called, was brought back to the USA and to other countries around the world, by troops returning from Europe after the end of WWI. The large numbers of men travelling great distances around the world helped spread the fledgling virus so that it could infect several thousand people. Despite the name, there’s no actual proof that the disease ever came from Spain itself. Modern scientists and doctors believe that ‘Spanish Flu’ was originally an animal virus, much like modern avian or swine flu and that it mutated to a form which was infectious and deadly to humans. Spanish Flu was incredibly contagious and thousands of people died. It’s believed that approximately 75 million people died of the Black Death, while anywhere from 20 to 40 to 50 to as many as 100 million (estimates vary wildly from source to source) died from Spanish Influenza.

The Symptoms

Spanish Flu was a horrific disease. It was less like influenza and more like a hardcore version of pneumonia which was, in the 1910s, completely untreatable and fatal. People catching the Spanish Flu, first came down with cold-like symptoms: Dizziness, fevers and shortness of breath. Doctors encouraged people to sleep and take it easy like any doctor today would encourage a patient, who has a cold. However, the symptoms soon got a lot worse. From ordinary cold-like symptoms came difficulty breathing, coughing, chronic shortness of breath and eventually, vomiting. The shortness of breath and the vomiting was a result of the pneumonia-like qualities of the Flu, which caused internal bleeding, and the buildup of fluid in the victim’s lungs. For a while, you could cough and vomit the stuff out…but eventually, your lungs filled with pus and blood and you literally drowned from all the fluids inside you. Any pus you vomited out was slimy, off-white and sometimes flecked with blood from the internal bleeding.

The First Signs

Spanish Influenza was discovered in mid 1918, while the First World War was still being fought. It’s likely that soldiers being shipped back to America on leave, or who were invalided home, brought the virus with them when they left France. The first outbreaks happened in an army base called Fort Riley, in Kansas. From there, it spread rapidly throughout the USA, aided by the movements of troops around the country in the final months of WWI. Spanish Flu was incredibly contagious, and it’s believed that upwards of 25 million people had died within just 25 weeks.

Handling the Pandemic

It was soon obvious that serious attention had to be given to this new ‘Spanish Flu’. But there were several problems. To begin with, when the flu was first noticed, the world was still fighting WWI. This meant that there was a serious lack of professional medical staff to handle the outbreak, as many doctors had gone over to France to care for wounded soldiers. Microbiology was only just being understood in the 1910s and science had not yet discovered viruses. While people understood bacteria and how they worked and how to avoid them, viruses remained unknown to medical science at this time. To combat the spread of disease, it became mandatory for all people to wear face-masks while out in public. This proved useless, as the virus could easily penetrate the masks which people put on. A popular public-health slogan was:

“Obey the laws,
And wear the gauze,
Protect yourself,
From septic paws”.

While people tried to obey the laws, these health-precautions did little to stop the spread of the disease. As many as 675,000 people died in the USA; 200,000 in the UK, 400,000 in France and, right on the other side of the world, as many as 10,000 people died of the ‘Flu in Australia. At its peak in the USA, funerals were shortened to fifteen minutes each, mass graves were being dug to bury the dead, and doctors and scientists struggled to find a cure. Some scientists tried to develop vaccines to protect still-healthy people from the ‘Flu, but this backfired when the vaccine proved to be as deadly as the ‘Flu itself!

One puzzling thing about the ‘Flu was that, instead of attacking the young or the elderly, it attacked people who were in the prime of life. Young men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s succumbed to the virus more readily, while the people at the extremes of the age-scale remained largely untouched.

There were actually two waves of Spanish Flu, something that not many people realise. The first wave came in early/mid 1918 and died out around the end of the year. The second wave came a few months later in late 1918/early 1919, and lasted until the very end of 1919, when it began to disappear. This second wave was what caused the most deaths It was more virulent and infectious and caused more deaths than the first wave ever did.

Controlling the spread of the disease was difficult. Public officials largely ignored the advice of the medical profession, which encouraged quarantines and the dispersment of large crowds early on in the outbreak. The First World War had whipped up patriotic fervor in the USA and other countries and people gathered in large numbers for speeches, rallies, marches and functions in support of the war, which caused infections to rise. The end of the war in Europe in November of 1918 meant that people wanted to have parties celebrate the end of the conflic, and this only helped to spread the disease even more.

An emergency hospital set up in the military base of Camp Funston, Kansas.

When the War was over, the American government was able to concentrate its efforts on handling the Spanish Flu. But by then, it was too late. A full-blown pandemic had started and it was gaining speed rapidly. Hospitals, clinics and sick-wards were soon overwhelmed with the dead, sick and dying. Any and every large, public building was turned into an emergency ward to house the sick. Theaters, cinemas and schools were closed to the public and were instead transformed into makeshift hospitals where overworked medical staff tried their best to care for the infected.

The Oakland Municipal Auditorium in Oakland, California, transformed into a temporary hospital. The women are volunteer American Red Cross nurses. If you look closely, you’ll see the white, facial masks that the nurses, doctors and orderlies had to wear, to try and prevent infection.

Throughout the world, people took extraordinary precautions against the ‘Flu. They kept away from each other, they wore masks and they prayed for a miracle. What had once been bland indifference to a ‘cold’ was now turning into a panic against a deadly killer. If people had taken more notice of the ‘Flu when it was an insignificant threat in early 1918, it is unlikely it would have spread as quickly as it did. The refusal of people to believe, however, that another ‘mega-pandemic’ such as those which they had read of in their history-books, had actually returned to wreak havoc on mankind, allowed the virus to spread more rapidly, causing a great deal of pain and suffering later on.

In this photograph from Seattle in 1918, a streetcar conductor denies access to two men who aren’t wearing protective face-masks.

Public-health notices were put up in all major cities, warning against the outbreak of Influenza and for people to observe proper precautions and sanitary measures. Posters such as this one, could be found all over the USA and beyond:

If you can’t read it, it says:

“EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA (SPANISH)”.

This disease is highly communicable.
It may develop into Severe Pneumonia.

There is no medicine which will prevent it.

Keep away from public meetings, theatres and
other places where crowds are assembled.

When a member of the household becomes ill,
place him in a room by himself.

The room should be warm, but well-ventilated.

The attendant should put on a mask before
entering the rooms of those ill of the disease.

Issued by the Provincial Board of Health.

For two years, Spanish Flu affected everyones’ lives. They talked about it, they sang songs about it, they put up posters about it. It was all people worried about or thought about. Children playing jump-rope used to sing the song:

“I had a little bird,
It’s name was Enza,
I opened up the window,
And In Flu Enza”.

The Effect of Spanish Influenza

The effect that Spanish Influenza had on the world was both great and small, significant and insignificant. Today, almost nobody remembers that it ever happened at all, and yet it could lay claim to being the deadliest pandemic in the world, stealing the gold medal from the Black Death of the 14th century by a mile. It struck quietly, ravaged entire communities and then vanished just as quickly. By early 1920, cases of Spanish Influenza were few and far between, and over the following decades, its mark on world history was largely forgotten. It exists today, only as a fascinating, historical case-study for people learning about infectious disease, controlling pandemics and how history dealt with large outbreaks of lethal but invisible killers.

One of the most famous of British institutions was its currency. Prior to 1971, all British currency was Imperial, and this led to confusion and misunderstandings by people who were not natives of the United Kingdom. We often read old books which tell us that something cost a half-crown, a shilling, a florin, a groat or a guinea…what were all these coins and how much were they worth?

Welcome to the confusing world of pre-decimal British currency. After 1971, British currency was decimalised and revalued so that a hundred pennies equaled one pound sterling. But before that, the British people had a whole array of coins at their disposal. So, what were they?

Pre-Decimal British Coinage

1. Farthing – The smallest coin in pre-decimal currency, a farthing was 1/4 of a penny.

2. Ha’penny – Or ‘Half penny’, it was 1/2 of a penny in value.

3. Penny – Still around today, a penny was 1/12th of a shilling and 1/240th of a pound.

4. Tuppence – ‘Two pennies’.

5. Thripence – ‘Three pennies’.

6. Sixpence – ‘Six pennies’, also known as a ‘tanner’. This was half a shilling.

7. Shilling – Also known as a ‘bob’, a shilling was 12 pence and 1/20th of a pound.

8. Pound Sterling – A pound sterling was 20 shillings, or 240 pence. Colloquially known as a ‘Quid’. Five pound notes and ten pound notes were popularly called ‘Fivers’ and ‘Tenners’ respectively (and still are, today).

9. Sovereign – Another name for a pound.

10. Crown – A crown was five shillings, or a quarter of a pound.

11. Half-Crowns – A half-crown was…half of a crown, or two shillings and sixpence (half a shilling).

12. Guinea – One pound and one shilling (21s).

13. Florin – Was two shillings (24 pence) or 1/10th of a pound.

14. Double Florin – Was four shillings (48 pence) or 1/5th of a pound.

15. Groat – A groat was fourpence, or four pennies, in value. 1/3 of a shilling. Also known as a ‘Joey’.

The justification for minting a four-penny coin came from the fact that back in the Victorian era, London cabbies started rates for transport at four pence. Usually, passengers gave the driver sixpence for tuppence change. This was deemed inconvenient and slow by some, so the fourpence was introduced for speed and convenience. Fourpence was also the price charged by some doss-houses (cheap boarding houses) in London’s disreputable East End for the use of a bed for the night.

L, S, D

“…Oct. 4th, rooms 8s., breakfast 2s. 6d., cocktail 1s.,lunch 2s. 6d., glass sherry, 8d…” – Sherlock Holmes, reading a hotel bill, “The Noble Bachelor”.

LSD. What’s it mean and what do the letters stand for? First, you can forget about drugs, that’s not what it’s referring to. The letters actually stand for “librae”, “solidi” and “denarii”, which stand, in-turn, for Pounds (A loopy ‘L’ with either one or two lines through it, make up the Pound Sterling symbol), Shillings (The “S”) and Pence (the “D”, later changed to “P” in 1971 with the decimalisation of British currency).

Therefore, the bill, as an example, reads as:

Rooms: 8 Shillings.
Breakfast: 2 shillings and sixpence (or half a crown).
Cocktail: 1 shilling.
Lunch: 2 shillings and sixpence (or half a crown).
Sherry, one glass: 8 pence.

Monetary Slang

Two and six, three and four, and so on and so forth. As we have seen, currency in pre-decimal Britain was a maze of coins, banknotes, values and names. Here are some common phrases or slang-terms for old British currency…

‘Ha’penny’, ‘Tuppence’, ‘thripence’, ‘fourpence’ and ‘tanner’.

Stand, respectively, for a half-penny, two pennies, three pennies and four pennies. ‘Tanner’ was a slang-term which referred specifically to the silver sixpence coin.

‘Bob’ was slang-term for a shilling.

‘Two-and-six’ referred to two shillings and sixpence, or a half-crown.

‘Quid’ was (and still is) slang for a pound sterling.

‘Fiver’ and ‘tenner’ referred (and still do refer) to five and ten pound banknotes.

History is all about the origins of things…where did it come from? When? Why and How? People are fascinated with the origins of things and they’re constantly trying to find out more. People are fascinated with the origins of their families, which is why they draw up family-trees and hire geneologists to research their family past. Historians are interested in the origins of great events and archeologists are fascinated with the origins of great societies, which is why they go on archeological expeditions to find out more.

But here I’ll be looking at the origins of some of the more obscure, everyday things which we see every day, which we think about every day…but of which we probably have no idea where they came from.

The Christmas Tree.

The festive season is nigh upon us and it is at this time of the year that we have presents and crackers and roast meat and parties and booze and…of course…the family tradition of…decorating the Christmas tree. Awwww.

…It may surprise you to know, then, that the Christmas tree is actually fairly recent addition to the traditions of Christmas celebrations! Prior to the mid 1800s, very few people had Christmas trees and it had never entered upon many peoples’ minds to have them, either! So where did they come from?

The Christmas tree originated in Germany, of all places, where it had been a Christmas tradition since the 1500s, to chop down a tree, haul it home and decorate it in a manner similar to what we know today. Originally a fixture of nothern Germany, the tradition of the Christmas tree spread through Germany and Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Visiting noblemen were impressed by these trees with decorations and candles and other frilly things on them; they decided they looked pretty and that this was a fitting way to celebrate the season of giving. At this time, however, the Christmas tree was still largely unknown to the English-speaking world, remaining very much a continental European tradition. So…who brought the Christmas tree to England? And by extension…the English-speaking world?

The Christmas tree was a tradition in the British Royal Family from the early 1800s. The family had a branch in Germany, you see, so when the English married the Germans, the Germans brought their own traditions to England. A young Princess Victoria mentions the Christmas tree in her diary as a child. But for nearly half a century until the 1840s, the Christmas tree remained strictly a royal family tradition. Who was it who made it popular for everyone to do it?

Interestingly enough, this can be traced to one man. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He was known as His Royal Highness, The Prince Consort…better known as Prince Albert, wife of Queen Victoria. There is a belief that Albert brought the first Christmas tree with him to England when he married Victoria…he didn’t. It was a well-established tradition in England by that time. What HE did was make it fashionable for everyone ELSE to have a tree. A woodcut picture of the British Royal Family standing around the Christmas Tree, which was published in the Illustrated London News of December of 1848 was what spread the tradition through England, and later, the rest of the world (given England’s vast empire at the time). It was Albert’s wish that his children should enjoy some of the German Christmas traditions which he had grown up with. This had ensured the survival of the Christmas tree in England and by extension, its introduction to the masses.

Thanks, Bertie! See? It pays to be a good father. You might be remembered for something.

It was this picture (though, black-and-white in its original publication), that introduced the Christmas tree to the masses and started a tradition that lasts to this day.

The Olympic Flame

Aaah, the Olympic Flame. Nothing like seeing athletes running around carrying a big, flaming pole, the world’s biggest matchstick. Nothing like watching them clmb the steps of the podium or the dais, to light the bowl and start the Olympic Games with the ancient and mystical ceremony which started centuries ago with the ancient Greeks…right?

Wrong.

Well…partially wrong.

The Olympic flame does indeed have ancient origins. It supposedly commemorates the theft of the gift of Fire, from the god Zeus, king of the ancient Greek gods. In the ancient world, a fire was lit at the start of the ancient Olympic Games and was kept burning throughout its duration. When the Modern Olympic Games started again in 1896, the flame had long since been forgotten. It was reintroduced in 1928 for the Games of that year…but what about the famous relay-run which goes from Greece, around the world to the location of the Games, to symbolically light the bowl which starts the games!?

Sorry folks. That has no ancient or fantastical origin whatsoever. It was a propaganda stunt organised by the Nazis in 1936 during the Olympic Games in Berlin. It was supposed to look cool and amazing…and it was…but it wasn’t an actual, ancient Olympian tradition…So Hitler made it so! Or rather, Carl Diem, the man who came up with the idea, made it so. He must’ve had some pretty good marketing sense, because over 70 years later, it’s still an Olympic tradition today.

Traffic Lights.

Traffic lights. They regulate traffic movements and they keep us safe. They frustrate us and mock us when we’re in a hurry. But where do they come from? Why is it that Green is Go and Red is Stop? Who on earth thought this was a good idea?

Traffic lights have maritime origins, would you believe it? They originated from the bow lamps of ships at sea. When travelling at night, ships needed to be aware of other ships out on the oceans. Before the days of radar, the only way to spot other ships was to see their lights. Ships hung a green lamp on the starboard side of the bow (right) and a red lamp on the port side of the bow (left). Two ships sailing together head on would spot each others’ lights and be able to turn away from each other. Having different coloured lights meant that there was no possibility of it looking like two ships sailing side by side.

A pair of ship’s navigation lamps, from the turn of the last century. The green lamp goes on the Starboard side, the red lamp on the Port side.

If two ships were sailing closer and closer together, perpendicular to each other, the lights indicated right of way. Two ships are sailing east and north respectively; they meet at a point. The ship sailing north would see the starboard side of the ship sailing east and would spot their green lamp. They had right of way, and could sail on northwards. The ship sailing east, which would spot the other vessel’s port side, and by extension, red lamp, would be obliged to stop and give way. This is the origin of traffic lights, and how it was established that green was Go and red was Stop. Ships still have red and green bow lights today, and they still serve the same purpose.

Port and Starboard

Port and Starboard are Left and Right onboard a ship. Most people know this. But why are they CALLED ‘Port’ and ‘Starboard’?

Back in ancient times, when early ships were powered by sails, they had no rudders. Instead, they had a large paddle, strapped to the stern of the ship, which was called the ‘steerboard’. The steerboard was strapped to the RIGHT side of the ship, which gradually became known as ‘starboard’. Because it was dangerous to dock a ship against a wharf with the right side, which would possibly cause damage to the steering-paddle, ships were tied up on the left side, which gradually became known as the ‘larboard’ side, which was later changed to ‘Port’, since ‘starboard’ and ‘larboard’ sounded too similar and might have been misheard during a storm or other occasions when loud noise might cause an instruction to be heard incorrectly.

Dalmations and Fire-Stations.

In the United States, at least, fire houses, station-houses or fire-stations, are famous for many things. Big, red, flashy firetrucks with those old-fashioned air-sirens, big, burly firemen, the object of many women’s sexual fantasies…and…dalmation dogs…firehouse pets and mascots since time immemoriam.

But…Have you ever wondered WHY dogs are associated with station-houses? And why Dalmations of all breeds? Why not Rottweilers or terriers or Great Danes or German Shepards?

This is one of the more obscure origins, that goes waaaaay back to 18th century Europe. Back in the Georgian period, and probably before that (although I’ve read nothing which stated that specifically), wealthy aristocrats would ride about town in grand carriages. These carriages were usually pulled by a pair of horses and would have a coachman and footmen to drive them and attend to them. They also had an animal known as a coach-dog or a carriage-dog. The coach-dog, an ancestor of the modern Dalmation breed, was there to protect the carriage against thieves and to protect the carriage’s two horses, in the event that the footmen or the coachman had to leave the vehicle unattended.

A Dalmation carriage-dog running alongside a horse-drawn fire-engine on its way to a fire, in this plate painting showing a scene, supposedly from 1910.

With the rise of professional firefighting in the early 1800s, station-houses needed to be protected at night from thieves and pranksters, who might want to damage or steal the station’s valuable firefighting equipment. When a fire was reported and the horse-drawn fire-engine was sent out to combat it, the station’s dalmation, the descendant of the 18th century coach-dog, went with it. Usually, one or two dogs would run alongside the fire engine, or out in front of the carriage, to clear the way for the horses. Once at the fire, their job was to protect the horses and the firefighting carriage, much like their ancestors did, as well as to keep people back from the blaze, or to go into the structure as rescue-dogs, looking for survivors.

It was damn hard, but…I finally found a photograph! Dated 1901, it shows firefighters and their horse-drawn fire-engines outside a station-house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. And what’s that sitting in the middle of the photograh? It’s the station’s dalmation carriage-dog! At the time this photograph was taken, the carriage-dog was becoming a thing of history, but until the introduction of actual modern firetrucks, it was common for carriage-dogs such as the one pictured, to follow the horse-drawn fire-engines to the scenes of major emergencies.

While dalmations no-longer run alongside fire-trucks on their way to an emergency, they have remained a fixture of fire-stations for the past 200-odd years in a tradition that continues to live on to this day.

Most people grow up thinking that slang or colloqiual expressions are something totally modern. Nobody had alternate names for things before they came along. Before they came along, a girl was a girl, not a ‘chick’ or a ‘ho’ or a ‘slut’ or a ‘looker’. A car was a car, not a ‘ride’ or a ‘hummer’ or a ‘lemon’. But slang has been part of humanity and part of the English language for decades, indeed, even centuries. The 1920s and 30s, the Jazz Age and the Age of Depression, gave us many of our most famous, and at times, still-used slang-words. Some of these have fallen out of regular use, some are still used as frequently today as they were 80 years ago when our grandparents were still children. Words like ‘soused’, ‘spiffed’, ‘Ritzy’ and ‘ciggie’ or ‘smoke’ are probably just as easily understood now as they were in 1925.

The 1920s were a colourful time in world history with its own, unique brand of colourful, suggestive language to go along with it. The 1930s were dark times where even more language, brought on by the problems of the Depression, started to make an appearance. Maybe you’ve watched old movies or listened to Old Time Radio shows? Perhaps you’ve seen modern movies set in the 1920s and 30s, like “Road to Perdition” or “Once Upon a Time in America”, and you’ve heard period-slang which you don’t understand? Some of the words are pretty easy to figure out, some, not so easy. Here are a few slang-words from the 20s and 30s, which you may or may not recognise…

23 Skiddoo.
Meaning: To leave in a hurry.
Possible origin: From 23rd Street, Manhattan. The famous Flatiron building is located here, and the underground ventilation-grilles had a way of blasting up hot air from below which lifted up women’s skirts as they walked over them. Men wanting an impromptu peepshow would hang around here to get a gander. If a policeman showed up, the men would leg it sharpish, or else be arrested for loitering or inappropriate behaviour in public. This quick departure became known as doing the ’23 skiddoo’.

Bootlegger.
Meaning: A smuggler of alcohol.
Possible origin: Comes from large, old-fashioned cowboy boots or gumboots, the sides of which went right up to the wearer’s knees. Crafty smugglers would slip slim, easily-concealed bottles down the loose sides of their boots so that they would not be found if a policeman or other lawman decided to frisk their person.

Torpedo.
Meaning: Henchman.
Possible origin: Honestly not sure, probably because they got to the point really quick!

Chopper.
Meaning: Thompson submachine-gun.
Possible origin: Well…when you see what a Tommy gun can do to the human body, you’ll understand. At 600rpm, the Tommy gun delivered death in a quick and messy way which could leave a human body totally butchered and pumped full of holes.

Flatfoot.
Meaning: Policeman, usually a beat-cop.
Possible origin: Fallen arches or the pedal condition known as ‘policeman’s foot’, which some officers were prone to contracting after hours pounding the beat on the streets.

Certifiable.
Meaning: Looney, mad, crazy, insane.
Possible origin: From the phrase ‘certifiably insane’, meaning that someone was clearly nuts and this qualified for their swift and probbaly permanent placement in a lunatic asylum.

Sore.
Meaning: Upset, resentful.
Possible origin: Unsure. Generally used in a reproachful way. Eg: “Hey bud I didn’t mean it! Don’t be sore on me…”

Sugar-Daddy.
Meaning: Older boyfriend (or just a boyfriend) who showers his girlfriend with gifts in exchange for sex.
Possible origin: Rather obvious. A boyfriend who acts as sweet as sugar in order to get what his girlfriend can naturally give him.

Slang from the 1920s lasted for a surprisingly long time in popular speech. TV shows and radio-shows from the 50s were still using terms created up to 30 years earlier, as if they never went out of style. Some terms from the Jazz Age are still used today…like…Gold-Digger, Sugar-Daddy, Killjoy, knock up or fag (meaning either a cigarette or a homosexual…this term started being used interchangably around the early 20s).

In time, I hope to start a small index of archaic slang-terms. Slang is part of our language and our history and how it changes mirrors how society and vlaues have also changed over time. A hundred years ago, if you were ‘gay’, you were happy. Today you’d be a homosexual. Eighty years ago, a ‘bimbo’ was a real tough-guy. These days, a ‘bimbo’ is a derrogatory name for a stupid, air-head blonde.

“Dr. Mortimer?”
“Mister, sir, Mister! A humble MRCS!”

And so…’Doctor’ James Mortimer is introduced to the reader at the start of one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous cases: The Hound of the Baskervilles. But what’s all the fuss about ‘doctor’ and ‘mister’ and what the hell is an ‘MRCS’, anyway?

Anyone who’s spent enough time around the medical profession, either as a medical professional themselves, or maybe just someone who spends a lot of time visiting doctors, surgeons and hospitals, will probably know that physician is addressed as ‘doctor’, while a surgeon is always addressed as ‘Mister’. Why is this? A surgeon deals in medicine as well, so surely he deserves the title of ‘doctor’ along with his other colleagues, right?

Well no, actually. From the earliest days of medical history, right up to the 21st century, surgeons were not, could not, still are not, addressed as ‘doctor’ and are not awarded or given the title of ‘doctor’. This article will explain why.

Titles

To begin at the beginning, with titles. A medical doctor is given the prefix “Dr.”, which stands for “Doctor”, or the suffixes “M.D” or “G.P”, which stand, respectively, for “Medical Doctor” or “General Practicioner [of medicine]”.

By contrast, a SURGEON is always given the title of “Mr.”, that is, “Mister”.

The reasons for this are several, and they come from traditions started centuries ago.

The Doctor

The job of a doctor, or a physician, was to prescribe medicines. A doctor’s job was to examine, diagnose and treat illnesses and to cure the sick. This was considered a respectable and honorable occupation. The saver of people’s lives was therefore given the title of “doctor”. A physician was above the level of a surgeon. He had a greater degree of medical knowledge and skill. He was not the one with the dreaded hacksaw, forceps, tonsil-knife or the red-hot poker which was used to cauterise bleeding stumps after the completion of an amputation. A physician was an entirely different kind of person. One with REAL medical knowledge.

Sherlock Holmes’s friend and colleague, John Watson, M.D., graduated from the University of London 1878 with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. This grants him the title of “Doctor” before his name and he was, by the standards of the day, a fully-qualified doctor, who could prescribe medication, treat injuries and diagnose ailments. Back then, to call a physician ‘mister’ was considered an insult, as it implied he had not the proper medical kowledge or skill to hold his title. On the other hand, calling a surgeon ‘doctor’ was to suggest that the surgeon was standing above his station and expertise.

The Surgeon

The job of a surgeon in the Victorian era (1837-1901), and even before then, during the Regency and Georgian eras, was to perform surgery. While the job-description may not have changed, the manner in which it is carried out, certainly has, and when you see how surgery was carried out, you’ll understand why nobody thought a surgeon should be called a ‘doctor’.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the mainstay of the surgeon’s occupation, was performing amputations and removing foreign bodies from injured persons. Such things could be bullets, arrows, lead shot and splinters of wood (which caused a great deal of injuries onboard wooden battleships at sea). Another job of the surgeon was to remove various stones from the kidneys, bladder and liver.

While operations such as these are perfectly safe today, in the Victorian Era and Georgian eras, surgery was risky, uncertain and extremely painful. Anasthetics had not yet been discovered, and any operation would have been incredibly painful, with the patient wide awake. Imagine, if you will, being fully concious while a surgeon dug around in your ribcage with a pair of tweezers, trying to pull out a bullet, or had a tourniquet tied around your arm while he sawed your limb off at the elbow, with you being as just awake as he is. Amputations were what surgeons were ‘famous’ for. Sawing off infected, broken or gangrenous limbs with hacksaws, when recovery or treatment had proved ineffective. The only painkiller you would have would have been laudanum or morphine, both of which were of questionable effectiveness in alleviating the considerable pain of having the teeth of a hacksaw slicing through your arm.

Because of the painful and dangerous nature of their work, it’s probably not surprising that surgeons were greatly despised by society. People would not look the same way at a surgeon that they did with a doctor. Surgeons caused pain and suffering, even though they were medical people. Their operations, even if successful, would cause death by infection. And if unsuccessful, would cause the patient to die a painful and fully-concious death, still lying on the operating table.

While these days, a surgeon may be seen to be on equal footing with a physican, one must remember that once upon a time, “surgeon” was not the person’s full title. In medieval and early modern times, they were called “barber-surgeons”. A barber, then, as now, is a person who cuts your hair. Only back then, it wasn’t just hair that they cut off you. The famous “barber-pole”, of red and white diagonal, spiralling stripes, which are sometimes found outside barbershops, are descendant from this time. They represent the white of bandages and the redness of dripping blood, from the days when a barber-surgeon would just as likely saw off your arm as he would give you a shave and a new hairdo. The slang-name for a surgeon, a “sawbones”, comes from the days when a surgeon’s main occupation was chopping off limbs.

It is for these reasons that surgeons, such as “Doctor” Mortimer, were denied the rank of “Doctor” before their names. Such men were seen as being unworthy of holding the rank and title since, while they worked for good, they caused so much pain and suffering to their patients. By the way, ‘MRCS’ stands for a MEMBER of the ROYAL COLLEGE of SURGEONS. This is why Mortimer cannot actually be called a ‘doctor’, because he is in fact a surgeon.

Amputation-kit, possibly belonging to a ship’s surgeon. Note the presence of the two hacksaws, used for sawing off patients limbs and the knives and probes for removing bullets and other foreign bodies from patients’ bodies. The two long knives at the bottom of the medical case are Liston knives (invented by Dr. Liston in the Crimean War of the 1850s). They are used for cutting through flesh and muscle. Hacksaws are used for cutting through the patient’s bones.

These days, telephone numbers are just…numbers. A sequence of digits which, when entered into your phone correctly, should bring you in contact with the owner of number who should be the person you want to speak to. Simple, isn’t it? And yet, some of us may remember a time, perhaps not too long ago, when a telephone-number didn’t start with a number, but rather a series of letters or a word. Welcome to nostalgic and at times, confusing world of alphanumeric telephone numbers.

The telephone was invented in the 1870s, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that its use really took off, once all the little kinks and kooks had been worked out, transforming this newfangled contraption into a practical communication-device. In the early days of telephone-usage, numbers were small – 1, 2, 3 or 4 digits long. It was easy for telephone switchboard operators to connect the leads left and right and remember everything. As time went by, however, and as more people started being hooked up to the machine which gradually entered popular culture being called the ‘bell’ or ‘pipe’ (such as ‘give me a bell!’ or ‘tell me over the pipe!’, which I suspect is a holdover from the days of old-fashioned speaking-tubes), numbers needed to be longer and longer to accomadate the extra customers. And with telephone-usage growing in big cities, it was obvious that one main switchboard wasn’t enough to handle everything.

A page from a telephone directory for Canning, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1958. Note how the numbers are set out and how they’re listed. Here, the exchange-name is ‘JUniper’. Mr. Arthur Caldwell’s number, (top left) is JUniper 2-3404, or 582-3404.

To overcome this, extra telephone-exchanges were set up to cope with the traffic. Each one was given a different name and number so that more telephone numbers could be assigned and used. For example, the number 49312 could only ever be assigned to one person, but with multiple exchanges, you could have REdbrook-49312 and perhaps SYcamore-49312, allowing people to use the same number without messing up the telephone-lines.

Telephone Exchanges.

As numbers grew longer and longer and more exchange switchboards were set up to handle them, each exchange was given a number to identify it by. Exchanges were given special names so that people could remember them easier. The names were determined by the numbers which identified a specific telephone-exchange. For example an exchange assigned the ID numbers ‘944’, would spell out ‘WHI’ on a lettered telephone dial. A word starting with those three letters would then be assigned as that exchange’s name. This is a real example, by the way. The exchange-name is ‘Whitehall’, which is a suburb in London.

By the way…if you’ve ever wondered why telephones today HAVE those letter designations:

0 Operator
1 –
2 ABC
3 DEF
4 GHI

etc etc etc…It’s a leftover from the days of alphanumeric phone-numbers, when people needed to know which letters were covered by which numbers, so that they could be assured of dialling the correct telephone exchange switchboard.

A typical rotary telephone-dial of the period, showing which letters were covered by which numbers. ‘0’ was used to contact the switchboard operator. The original number for this phone was OLympic 4-6753, or 654-6753.

The amount of letters at the start of the exchange-name which stood for the exchange’s ID-number, varied from country to country, and even from city to city within a country! The number of letters was usually the first two or first three in any given exchange-name. In the United Kingdom, three letters followed by four numbers (3L-4N) was the rule. So ‘Whitehall 1212’ would be “WHItehall 1212”, or 944-1212.

In the United States, by comparison, phone-numbers followed the 2L-5N (two letters, five numbers) rule. This meant that the first two letters of the exchange-name stood for numbers. Notable exceptions to this rule were cities of New York, Philidelphia, Boston and Chicago, which followed the British example of 3L-4N. This brought up exchange-names like ‘PENnsylvania’, ‘TREmont’ and ‘ELDorado’. Since the rest of the country did 2L-5N, this could create some understandable confusion to people who weren’t from the US. East Coast. Eventually, these cities conformed with the rest of the nation, altering their phone-numbers so that instead of the above, they had numbers like: ‘PEnnsylvania 65000’ or ‘ELdorado 51234, to avoid confusion.

If you’re wondering why I’m typing the exchanges like ‘LAMbeth’ or ‘KLondike’…this is how they were actually printed, ‘back in the day…’. The capital letters in the exchange-name told you which numbers to dial to get the exchange, by reading the capitalised letters and dialling the corresponding numbers on your phone-dial (which had numbers assigned to specific groups of letters).

A typical telephone-exchange switchboard, ca. 1943. When you count how many leads and cables and sockets there are, it’s no wonder people wanted short numbers so that you didn’t clutter everything up!

The end of Alphanumeric Telephone Numbers.

Alphanumeric phone numbers began to die out in the 1960s-1970s when it was recognised that there were more telephone-numbers than exchanges to handle them and in the 1960s and 70s, communications companies started switching to all-digit numbers, the kind we know today. Few people today still use alphanumeric phone numbers and even fewer people would understand them. If you had to suddenly leave from a coffee with a friend and you told him to call you back on ‘CAstle-38742’, he probably wouldn’t have a damn clue what you were saying! Eh…incidently, that’s 223-8742. Today, the numbers remain as an interesting bit of cultural and telephonic history, if nothing more.

Alphanumeric telephone numbers used in this Article:

WHItehall-1212: This was the number for New Scotland Yard, London, England. 944-1212. The number has changed slightly over the years, but as of 2009, it still ends in ‘1212’. An old 1950s British radio program dealing with the cases of Scotland Yard, was called ‘Whitehall 1212’.

DEAnsgate-3414: This was the number for Kendals department store in Manchester, England. That’s 332-3414.

ELDorado-1234: This was the (fictional) phone-number of the office of Richard Diamond, the famous NYC private detective, the main character of a highly popular 1950s radio show (see ‘The Golden Age of Radio, below). Sticking to the 3L-4N format, this would be 353-1234.

PEnnsylvania-65000: Originally ‘PENnsylvania-5000’, it was changed to PEnnsylvania-65000 when New York switched to the 2L-5N format. This number remains the oldest, continuously-used phone-number in New York City. Issued in 1919, it has belonged to the Hotel Pennsylvania in central Manhattan for the past 90 years! Dialling that number today (736-5000) still gets you the Hotel Pennsylvania, just as it did 60-odd years ago when Glenn Miller wrote his song! It’s usually spoken or written as ‘Pennsylvania six, five thousand’, because ‘Pennsylvania sixty-five thousand’ sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?

The current header for the Hotel Pennsylvania’s website. Note the phone-number on the bottom right: 736-5000.

CAstle 3-8742: I admit I made this number up on the spot. Whether or not it ever really existed, I’ve no idea!

To most people born after the 1950s, it’s hard to imagine life without that box in the living-room with the flashing pictures and sounds and the big, clear screen the size of a billiard-table, but what about life before television? While it first appeared in the 1920s, television would not become a practical reality until after WWII in the late 1940s. So, before the family gathered around the box every night to watch the news and eat dinner and watch stuff like Ed Sullivan, the Dick Van Dyke Show, Dragnet, the Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island or Bewitched, how the hell did people pass the time?

A picture showing something that would soon become as much a part of everyday life today as unwanted teenage pregnancies…television!

“Well uhh…they read books or…wrote or…um…went for walks?” someone might uncertainly suggest.

Well…yes. But they also did something else.

They listened to the radio.

“Oh come on! A bunch of opinionated jackoffs talking about world affairs or dial-in shows where the hot topic is: ’embarrassing places you fell asleep in’ can’t be THAT interesting, can it?” you might say.

Haha!! No.

What most people seem to forget these days is that before television came along, there was another, immensely popular electronic entertainment medium that existed for nearly 40 years until TV finally put it out of business in the late 1950s. That medium was radio. Not music radio, not talkback radio like we’re used to today, playing jazz, rap, rock, or ‘the Top Ten Hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s!’ or discussing funny things your pet kitten did when grandma came to visit, but actual radio serials.

That’s right. Before TV serials such as The Simpsons, House, Jeeves and Wooster, Poirot, Midsomer Murders and Two-and-a-half Men ever came on the air, radio was already producing its own serial shows. Or rather…programs, since there was nothing ‘show’ on the radio. Radio programs covered everything that TV shows would cover today. Action. Crime. Drama. Comedy. Horror. Popular Music. Anything you can think of.

The Impact of Radio.

The radio was born at the turn of the last century and mankind marvelled at the ingenuity of a man named Guglielmo Marconi, who showed everyone that wireless telecommunications was possible…if only through Morse Code at the time. Within 25 years, Marconi’s invention…wireless radio…would have revolutionised the world. Radio did great things to mankind. In 1912, it sent ships racing through frigid Atlantic waters to an ocean liner in distress. In 1937, it spread the news of a catastrophic aircraft disaster, in 1939, it announced the start of a great conflict which would consume the world…and from the mid 1920s until the mid 1950s, it would bring such classics as ‘The Shadow’, ‘Dragnet’, ‘The Abbott and Costello Show’, the ‘Jack Benny Program’ and ‘The Whistler’ into people’s living-rooms every night.

During the Great Depression and throughout World War Two, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt used the radio to broadcast his ‘fireside chats’ to the nation, a series of radio broadcasts in which the president personally explained his policies, ideas and concerns to the nation in a series of speeches which ordinary people could listen to in their homes.

The Golden Age of Radio Begins.

Marconi can’t possibly have known the impact his innovations had, but they were huge. For the first time in history, people all over a city…all over a country, could listen to the same thing at the same time, all together, and be informed or entertained by the smart, wooden-cased electronic gizmo in their living-room, which by then was called the ‘radio’.

Once practical broadcast radio, of the kind we know today, was developed in the mid 1920s, people were quick to recognise the entertainment-possibilities of a machine that could send music and voices all over the country. The radio-serial was born! Once distribution of home radio-sets was started, it was soon realised that people would want something to listen to on their new doohickies, otherwise they’d soon lose interest. So people started scripting and producing radio-serials.

The Radio Serial.

A radio-serial is a regularly-scheduled program of a specific genre, much like popular TV shows today. They’re scripted, rehearsed, broadcast, recorded and sent out all over the world at a specific time. The first radio-serials came into being shortly after the invention of the electronic microphone in 1925 and less than a year later, people were able to listen to a whole new kind of entertainment.

A Zenith ‘tombstone’-style radio, typical of the wood-cased household radios of the 1920s-1950s.

The very first shows were ones like ‘Sam’n’Henry’, written, produced and acted out by a pair of white men trying to be black, who soon became infinitely more famous for their next attempt at radio comedy, a little-known show called…um…’Amos and Andy’? The men were, of course, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. Starting in March of 1928, ‘Amos and Andy’ was one of the first hugely popular radio-shows ever created. So popular in fact that it lasted nearly 30 years on radio and when TV came along, it jumped onto the new medium like a fly on honey.

Radio serials were as varied as TV serials are today. Programs covered almost everything imaginable, from…

Comedy (Amos & Andy, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Fibber McGee & Molly, Life with Luigi).
Action (Rocky Fortune, Richard Diamond Private Detective, The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, The Falcon).
Suspense & Thriller (The Shadow, The Whistler, the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes).
Police-procedural (Dragnet, Gang Busters).
Popular music (Grand Ole Opry, Bell Telephone Hour, and live broadcasts of popular big-bands from famous hotels).
News & Current Affairs (Hear it Now).
Movies and Literature (Lux Radio Theatre, the Mercury Theatre on the Air).

“Regularly-Scheduled Programming”

The impact of radio-serials was immense. From 1925 until 1960, people all over the world gathered around their radios to listen to their favourite programs or to the news, and sat back to laugh, gasp and giggle, groan, grind and grimace at the events unfolding in their minds as they listened to the music and words coming out of their Wurlitzers, Zeniths or Philcos. How many of these popular phrases do you recognise?

“Now cut that out!”
“Oh the humanity!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the story you’re about to hear is true…only the names have been changed, to protect the innocent”.
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY ABBOTT!!”
“Who knows what evil…lurks in the hearts of men?”
“2X2L calling CQ…2X2L calling CQ…Isn’t there anyone on the air?…Is there…anyone?”
“Yesterday…December 7th…1941…A date which will live in infamy…the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked…by the Empire of Japan”.
“I have to tell you now…that no such undertaking has been recieved, and that consequently…this country is…at war…with Germany”.

Maybe all? Five? Four? Two or three? At least one?

Great things were broadcast over the radio and many great events were brought home to ordinary people thanks to the power of the radio. If you don’t recognise any of those quotes, they were…

1. Jack Benny.
2. Herb Morrison, commenting on the crash of the airship Hindenberg in May, 1937.
3. The opening to the famous radio police-procedural show ‘Dragnet’.
4. Lou Costello.
5. The opening to the famous radio program ‘The Shadow’.
6. A line from one of the most famous radio broadcasts of all, the 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio-drama by Orson Welles.
7. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt making a speech about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, December 7th, 1941.
8. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s speech, announcing the British Declaration of War against Nazi Germany. September 3rd, 1939.

The Golden Age of Radio brought all kinds of things to people for the first times in their lives, in a startling and amazing clarity that you could never get from a newspaper or a book. The comedy of Jack Benny, the fight-scenes and shootouts in westerns, the harsh interrogations in ‘Dragnet’ or the emotional and grief-stricken report made by Herb Morrison when the airship Hindenberg crashed to the ground outside Lakehurst, NJ, in 1937.

A massive, console radio, typical of the kind seen during the 1920s and the early 1930s. Smaller, tabletop radios (see above), would soon replace these big, bulky units which were the size of filing-cabinets!

Radio serials remained popular for decades. Most episodes were done 100% live-to-air, being recorded as they were broadcast, onto transcription disks or audio-tape. A typical radio-episode lasted from 30-60 minutes and was usually rehearsed a couple of times beforehand. Any mistakes made during broadcasting could be heard all over the country! In later days, radio broadcasts could be done in front of live, sudio-audiences or at the scenes of major disasters, much like how TV camera-crews would do it today. Yeah…nothing is new. If you think it is, take a look at history.

Radio-serials often required special-effects men, to simulate the sounds of whistles, car-horns, gunshots, doors slamming, doorbells, footsteps, telephones ringing and a million other sounds. Most programs had one, two or probably three sound-effects men. Jack Webb’s program ‘Dragnet’ needed no less than five! Some generic sounds were pre-recorded and stored on playback records, but other than that, they’d all have to be done, live-to-air, right on cue. You needed incredibly good timing to be a sound-effects man! When sound-effects men working on the Jack Benny Program forgot to plug in the power-cord for the phonograph to play the audio for an old, 1926 Maxwell automobile, vocal artist Mel Blanc was forced, in the middle of a live broadcast, to jump to the microphone and improvise on the spot, vocally-produced automobile engine-noises! Jack Benny liked it so much, he made Mel do it for every episode thereafter.

It wasn’t unknown for radio shows to be interrupted for important announcements. When the Pearl Harbor attacks happened in 1941, radio-listeners all over the USA had their listening pleasure interrupted by a message that told them that the US. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was being bombed by the Japanese.

Radios remained incredibly popular even though by the late 1940s, television was beginning to peep up over the horizon. What was it like back in the 1930s and 40s to listen to the radio? Well for one thing, you had to make sure the radio was working. Most of the early radios were all battery-powered. To get the batteries working, you had to take them down to the local drugstore or car-garage to get them charged up. Once they were working and charged and put back into the radio, you turned it on. Don’t expect an immediate response…old radios worked through vacuum-tubes, and these required time to heat up and get going properly. The muffled, slightly dull tone which is synonymous with Old Time Radio was the result of the technology available at the time, and the natural muffling caused by the cloth-grilled speakers which most radios of the period had.

Once the radio was turned on, you had to know what program you wanted to hear. Much like TV guides today, newspapers published regular radio-guides, listing what shows were broadcast that day or week, what station or frequency these programs could be heard on, and the time which they were to be broadcast at. Once you knew the date and time, and your radio was charged, on and working, all you had to do was sit back in front of the set, put your feet up, close your eyes…try not ot fall asleep..and listen.

The End of an Era.

Radio’s dominance of the entertainment industry ended in the late 1950s, when television was finally being accepted as the new entertainment medium. Some shows such as Dragnet, The Jack Benny Show, Richard Diamond Private Detective, Amos & Andy and Life with Luigi transferred to television in the 1950s; Dragnet did radio AND television for nearly a decade! But in the end, television won out, and the family tradition of sitting around the wireless listening to two men saying:

“Hey Abbott! Did you hear the news? Hitler’s just invented a brand new weapon that’ll end the war in five minutes!”
“A new weapon? What is it!?”
“A pole…with a white flag on the end of it!”

were soon to be a thing of the past. Radio vanished quickly from the public remembrance and imagination, to replaced by ‘Dancing with the Stars’, ‘Survivor’ and ‘America’s Next Top Model’ and a unique and incredible form of entertainment was lost forever.

Invented in the 16th century, the pocket-watch lasted an astounding 400+ years as the timepiece of choice for mankind, well into the 1960s when the last mass-produced pocket-watches were made and when they finally succumbed to the wristwatch.

What is the point of this article?

I’m sure some folks here would wonder why there would be an article about watches in a site which isn’t about watches. The reason is that it’s about a specific kind of watch. To many people, pocket-watches evoke images of times gone by. Grandparents, family-heirlooms, priceless antiques and hand-cranked veteran cars. The pocket-watch is one of those items, which, like Model T Fords, typewriters, tombstone radios and fountain pens, forever makes people think of times gone by. This article exists to provide information on those quiet, quick, ticking pocket watches, one of the most enduring objects of the “Golden Age”.

Before the 1900s

From the 1500s until the 1850s, pocket watches were gigantic chunky things. Early pocket watches could be the size of tennis balls and no more accurate than a water-clock. The pocket-watch as we know it today (and indeed, the modern wristwatch itself), did not exist until the 1850s. Before then, all pocket watches were wound with watch-keys and were incredibly bulky and heavy.

In the 1850s, a company known to the modern world as Patek-Philippe, created the world’s first stem-wind, stem-set pocket watch. This was revolutionary – people didn’t need to carry around watch-keys to wind and set their watches anymore, because the watch could be wound and the time could be set, simply by moving a little round, knurled knob! We owe a lot to the Patek-Philippe boys. Thanks to them, the modern watch was made a reality. The first ‘keyless’ watches (as they were then-called), were exihibited to the world at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, England.

The pocket watch as a status symbol

Today, if someone owns a gold pocket watch, most people would assume the person is fairly wealthy, even if the watch is just a cheap, quartzy piece of junk. This isn’t always true. But still, the pocket watch remains a big status-symbol. And this has been true for centuries.

From the 16th-18th centuries, all pocket watches were made by hand. This made them frightfully expensive, and only the richest of the rich could afford to own them, as all the parts were made and cut and shaped by hand. In the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, it became possible to mass-produce machine-made pocket-watch parts and for the first time, a timepiece was available to the common man. Or at least, that was the theory.

Unfortunately, the pocket-watch still remained very expensive and for many people in the 1900s, owning a pocket-watch was still a status-symbol and a possession completely beyond their financial reach. Even the cheapest watch that you could buy at the turn of the last century would have cost you one American dollar. If that sounds cheap today, remember that in 1900, a bottle of Coca Cola cost 5c. A film-ticket cost 5c. One whole dollar could buy you and your date dinner and a movie in 1900. So even though it only cost a dollar, the cheapest watch was still expensive.

An advertisment for ‘Ingersoll dollar watches’ around the turn of the century. The Ingersoll company envisioned a cheap, functional watch which any man could buy. It was the Henry Ford of the watchmaking world.

In the 1910s, 20s and 30s, pocket watches became more stylish, better quality and naturally, more expensive. A decent pocket watch cost you anywhere from $10-$50, which was a substantial amount of money in the 1920s, but for that, you could get a watch which would last for decades.

Chop and Change

One fact not widely known about pocket-watches is that until fairly recently, pocket watches were not all made in one place. Watch-companies only ever made pocket-watch MOVEMENTS (the mechanics inside the watch). Another company made the watch-case and both the movement and the case was sold to the jeweller. A customer came into the jeweller’s shop and picked the case and movement individually and the jeweller joined the two together. A wealthy customer might pick a solid gold case and a high-quality movement. A man who needed a watch for work might pick a high-quality movement and a cheap, nickel case. A person who needed a watch outright might just buy a cheap case and a cheap movement.

When dating a pocket-watch, it’s important to look at the MOVEMENT instead of the CASE because the case is just a case. The movement is the watch itself.

Railroad Chronometers

This part of the article is covered in greater detail in “Keeping your eye on the Ball – The History of Railroad Chronometers”, further down

One famous kind of watch was the “railroad chronometer”. A ‘chronometer’ is the designation given to a watch capable of VERY precise timekeeping. The railroad chronometer was just such a watch. Railroading in the USA boomed in the years after the Civil War of the 1860s and by the turn of the century, the USA was linked by thousands of miles of railway tracks. To keep trains running on time, extremely precise pocket-watches were needed. A conductor standing on the platform of a station and shouting: “ALL ABOARD!” and waving his flag might seem like a pretty scene from a movie, but the truth was that trains HAD to stay on schedule to prevent life-threatening accidents.

If trains left their stations too soon, or too early, they risked crashing into other trains. Don’t forget that there are no CCTVs, there’s no radio-communication, no GPS. The only way to get from one place to another safely, was to leave ON TIME. Railroad pocket watches had to keep very precise time. Any more than +/-4 seconds a day meant the conductor, engineer or fireman was sent back to the watchmaker and his watch required an overhaul. And this wasn’t cheap. A railway pocket watch cost about $30-$50 in the 1910s, and the railway man had to pay for it out of his own salary. He had to pay for the repairs, too. Railway pocket watches had to keep such accurate time because if it was so much as a minute (and I mean literally ONE MINUTE) off time, it could mean a catastrophic train-wreck.

The Waltham ‘Vanguard’ was typical of the pocket watches used by railwaymen from the 1890s until the 1950s.

Pocket watches needed to be large and easily read because the engineers who used them were often confined to dark, lightless locomotive-cabs and needed to be able to tell the time accurately. The adjustments to the timekeeping were necessary because trains rocked and vibrated a great deal. Temperature-compesations were necessary because of the vast differences in temperature – It oculd be freezing cold outside but boilng inside the locomotive with roaring coal fires and smoke and steam everywhere.

Watches in the Wars

Until the 1910s, a man…a REAL MAN…wore a pocket watch. Only pansy homosexuals wore a wristwatch. A wristwatch was akin to a bracelet, a wristwatch was feminine. A wristwatch belonged to a woman, but even then, not many women wore wristwatches either! In popular culture, the First World War has been credited with popularising wristwatches with men. Soldiers fighting in the trenches realised that it was easier to tell the time with a wristwatch than a pocket-watch when your hands were full trying to kill the enemy. Despite this, the pocket-watch remained in popular demand in the civilian market for several years after the end of WWI. Some men had their pocket-watches converted to wristwatches by having lugs soldered onto the cases and having straps put on.

The interwar period saw a rise in both wristwatch and pocket-watch design, production and distribution. Pocket-watches continued to be used on railroads as railway officials did not trust these newfangled “wrist” watches to keep proper time. Plus, wristwatches are small, and a key factor in railway pocket watches was that they were big and easy to read. Pocket watches continued to be made by commercial watch companies well into the mid 1960s, when the market for pocket watches well and truly did dry up. But until then, pocket watches moved with the times, and the 1920s and the 1930s, with the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties and the rise of the Art Deco movement, saw several fantastic and stylish new pocket watches being made.

When World War Two came along in 1939, one of the big things on the list of things to buy, for allied armed forces…was pocket watches! Twenty-odd years before, a war had caused pocket watches to be phased out in the military and yet a generation later, they were ‘back in style’, so to speak.

The reason for wanting POCKET watches in the army, navy and airforce during WWII had its roots in practicality and quality. Military pocket watches were high-grade, big, black beasts of timepieces. A typical military pocket watch was large, jet black, with glow-in-the-dark hands and numbers with a 21-jewel count (or higher). The size and glow-in-the-dark numbers were crucial. It was easier to tell the time during night-attacks and you didn’t have to light a match to read the time, which might give away your position to the enemy. Similarly, when flying in an airplane, big bold pocket watches were easier to read. Most pilots bought pocket watches, put them in special boxes and had them fixed to the instrument-panels of their fighter-planes.

A typical military pocket-watch. Big, black and bold. Its white numbers and hands contrast easily against the black for clearer legibility. This watch has a twenty-four hour dial.

Watch-Chains

The pocket-watch’s primary accessory is the watch-chain and no pocket-watch should be worn without one. Apart from the aesthetic side of it, pocket-watch chains have a practical purpose as well. The chain serves as a fob, that is, an item for grasping and removing the watch from one’s pocket. But it also serves as a safety or security device, and prevents the watch from falling and breaking on the ground, should it come out of one’s pocket.

There are three main types of watch-chains…

The Double Albert is characterisd by having two equal lengths of chain hanging from a central T-bar. In days gone by, the Double Albert was used to hold a watch-key and pocket-watch. In more modern times, a Double Albert was used to hold a pocket watch and…a compass, a pocket-knife, a fountain pen, match-case, cigarette-case and several other little accessories which could be clipped onto the other end of the chain to be placed in the opposite watch-pocket.

Courtesy of Dalvey (http://www.dalvey.com/timepieces/pocket-watches)

The Single Albert or Half-Albert was the descendant of the Double Albert. This kind of chain became popular in the latter decades of the 19th Century, when keyless watches were invented. Both styles of Albert chain are designed to be worn with a waistcoat and with the T-bar going through a buttonhole. They are called “Albert” chains because they are named after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria.

The spring-ring or ring-clip watch-chain is another common design. Spring-ring chains are usually longer than Albert chains (apart from maybe, Double Alberts), and they are attached to watches which are worn in the watch-pocket of your trousers. The ring is clipped around the belt-loop of your trousers and the watch goes into the watch-pocket.

“Trousers don’t have watch pockets!”, I hear you say. As a matter of fact, yes they do. The watch-pocket on your trousers or blue-jeans is the “fifth pocket”:

How many times have you put on your jeans and wondered what that pocket was for? It was created in the 1870s by Levi Strauss, the jeans manufacturer and its original purpose was to hold a pocket watch. Despite the fact that the pocket-watch has largely disappeared from public use, the fifth pocket remains as an enigmatic and puzzling leftover, an addition to legwear which now provides an inconvenient place for cellphones, keys, condoms and loose change, none of which are easily extracted from the watch-pocket when they’re actually needed.

To “keep your eye on the ball” means to pay attention and to be weary of things around you. There are three origins to this phrase. The first comes from ball-games such as soccer and basketball, obviously, where not keeping your eye on the ball could mean losing a game. The second origin comes from ‘time balls’, which were spheres placed on top of towers built near coastal seaports. At noon each day, the time-ball would drop, indicating that sailors onboard ships were to synchronise their watches to maintain correct time.

The third supposed origin of this phrase comes from the Ball Watch Company (and this claim is mentioned on their website*). According to the Ball Watch Company, to ‘keep your eye on the Ball’ (capital B), meant to be aware of the time. And the watches which the Ball Watch Company sold had very good reason for being looked at regularly. They were all railroad chronometers.

What is a chronometer?

A chronometer is a very accurate mechanical timepiece, from the Greek words ‘Chronos’ (time. From which we also get ‘chronology’), and ‘meter’, meaning ‘measure’, therefore – the accurate measurement of time. The first chronometers were invented in the late 1700s and a century later, accurate timekeeping was assured in almost all high-quality mechanical timepieces. For several hundred years, accurate timekeeping has literally meant the difference between life and death. At sea, inaccurate timekeeping meant not knowing your co-ordinates (see “Shipboard Life during the Age of Sail”) and losing your way. In battle, correct timing of attacks meant the difference between victory and defeat. In the second half of the 19th century, accurate timekeeping meant the difference between a train arriving at the station on time, or becoming the front-page disaster story in the newspapers the next day. Railroad chronometers were one of the most crucial and strictly-monitored timekeeping devices ever made. Today, a watch may only be called a chronometer if it passes the strict, timekeeping tests carried out by the Swiss organisation known as ‘COSC’, that’s Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres, The Official Swiss Control of Chronometers. No mechanical watch may hold the title of ‘chronometer’ if it has not first been passed by this organisation.

What is a Railroad Chronometer and Why are they Needed?

Also called ‘railroad watches’ or ‘railroad-standard watches’, a railroad chronometer was a pocket watch capable of keeping time accurately enough to be used on the railroads (usually in the United States and Canada, but also in countries such as the UK and the various countries of Europe and elsewhere around the world). Railroad watches were important because they ensured that all trains left their stations on time, arrived at their next stops on time, and prevented any two trains being on the same track at the same time, which could (and did), lead to catastrophic train-wrecks.

In a day and age before radio, before CCTV cameras and before mobile phones, the only way to literally keep trains on track was to ensure that their crews all knew the correct time. Not knowing the right time (and thus leaving the station too late, or too early), could be a disaster. Trains back then all played a dangerous game of locomotive Russian Roulette, switching railway lines all the time in a delicate dance of precision, service and speed. One stumble and two trains could collide head on. In the small (just 265 people in 2000!) town of Kipton, Ohio, USA, in 1891, two trains crashed because one engineer’s watch stopped for four minutes and then restarted again. The collision was so severe that both engineers and several passengers were killed in the impact. This accident drove home the necessity for accurate timekeeping on railroads in a day where getting from A to B on time was the only way to reliably stay alive in a steam locomotive going upwards of 90mph.

Photograph of the 1891 Kipton train-crash which changed timekeeping forever.

What made a watch a railroad watch?

If you were a railway engineer or a conductor onboard a train back in 1900, you had to have a railroad chronometer. This was the law. It was illegal to board a train and do your job without one. There were strict accuracy checks carried out on all railroad watches and they could be done at any time, any day, anywhere, completely randomly. So you had to make sure your watch kept absolutely pinpoint precision time…all the time. So how was a watch made to be so accurate?

Amongst the several design-features, was the provision of at least 17 jewels. ‘Jewels’ were rubies which acted as jewel-bearings, to cut down on friction inside the watch and allowed it to run smoother and keep better time. As time passed, jewel-counts went higher and higher, finally stopping at 23, for a fully-jewelled watch.

It also had a micrometic regulator. The regulator is the little needle inside the watch which regulates its speed, by compressing or relaxing the hairspring. The micrometic regulator could be moved by turning a screw built into the modified needle-housing. Turning the screw like this allowed for absolutely microscopic adjustments to the mainspring, allowing for more accurate timekeeping.

A Micrometic regulator. The two knurled wheels either side of the regulator-needle which wrap around the threaded rod underneath, allow for the smallest movements of the regular-needle, making tiny adjustments in timekeeping possible.

Apart from these two (and other mechanical design-features) inside the watch, there were also numerous design-features outside the watch which had to be present, before the watch would be permitted to be used on the railroads.

The original guidelines for railroad chronometers were as follows:

* only American-made watches may be used (depending on availability of spare parts)
* only open-faced dials, with the stem at 12 o’clock
* minimum of 17 functional jewels in the movement, 16 or 18-size only
* maximum variation of 30 seconds (approximately 4 seconds daily) per weekly check
* watch adjusted to at least five positions : Face up and face down (the positions a watch might commonly take when laid on a flat surface); then crown up, crown pointing left, and crown pointing right (the positions a watch might commonly take in a pocket). Occasionally a sixth position, crown pointing down, would be included.
* adjusted for severe temperature variance and isochronism (variance in spring tension)
* indication of time with bold legible Arabic numerals, outer minute division, second dial, heavy hands,
* lever used to set the time (no risk of having the stem left out, thus inadvertently setting the watch to an erroneous time)
* Breguet balance spring
* micrometer adjustment regulator
* double roller
* steel escape wheel
* anti-magnetic protection (after the advent of diesel locomotives)

Railroad watches had to keep time perfectly under some of the most trying conditions available in the early 1900s. Freezing winter and boiling summer temperatures, the rocking, rolling and vibrations of early steam locomotives, dim light available in the locomotive’s cab and the magnetism generated by early diesel locomotives (which might make a watch keep inaccurate time). The big size of the watch, hands and numerals was important because it helped engineers (who were confined to dark locomotive cabs at night) to read the time clearly. Having every minute marked out allowed them further timekeeping accuracy.

Adjustments and Positions.

All railway watches had to be able to keep time in various ‘positions’, that is, under various conditions and scenarios. There were eight possible ‘adjustments’:

* Dial up.
* Dial down.
* Crown up.
* Crown down.
* Crown left.
* Crown right.
* Temperature (From 34-100 degrees Fahrenheit).
* Isochronism (The ability of the watch to keep time, regardless of the mainspring’s level of tension).

Railway watches had to be adjusted for temperature, iscochronism and all the positions, with the exception of ‘Crown down’, which basically means the watch is put upside down and checked for accuracy. As you might have guessed, a railway pocket watch was a very expensive timepiece. A significant amount of this expense came from the adjusting. It took several days, even weeks, to adjust a railway watch to railway standards of timekeeping. A watch had to keep the ‘+/- 30 seconds a week’ rule in ALL of those adjustments and positions and this took weeks of testing.

Railroad Chronometers Today.

The necessity for super-accurate pocket watches (wristwatches were not allowed until the very last years of railway chronometers) on the world’s railroads steadily declined after the 1950s, with advancing technology. Today, a really accurate watch isn’t necessary for railroad safety, but to this day, railroad chronometer pocket watches are amongst the most accurate (and most prized) of all mechanical watches and they can sell for hundreds of dollars. They are highly collectable and prized posessions. Here are a few of the more famous railroad pocket-watch models:

Waltham Vanguard.

Hamilton 992B.

Waltham Riverside.

The Illinois Bunn Special.

The Elgin Father Time.

Last but not least…

An actual Ball Watch Co. railroad chronometer pocket watch. This is actually my own watch. It’s a Ball model 435C; it was made in 1960 and it was used on the Canadian Pacific Railroad during the very last years of railroad watch use.

Each of these watches was made to, and was expected to, keep time to the ‘railroad standard’ of +/- 30sec a week (Max. variation +/-4sec a day).

* “…BALL watches came to be known as “the cadillac” of the watch industry and the phrase “get on the ball” refers to using a BALL watch to keep time…”

– Ball Watch Co. USA website. Cited Friday, 22nd Jan., 2010.