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CHAPTER VIII.
THE EMPLOYMENTS OF OUR FOREFATHERS

Nothing would be easier than to occupy a half-dozen chapters with a relation of the mode in which our forefathers led their lives. It is one peculiarity of nomenclature, that it reaches into every nook and crevice of English customs. What our ancestors specially favoured in the way of meat and drink, is set down with the utmost particularity in the London Directory of to-day, while, on the other hand, it is by the absence of certain names therein that we can form a safe judgment of what delicacies they lacked. No one would expect to see the potato commemorated in the Directory, for the simple reason that it was introduced into England after surnames had become established on a solid basis. There are no “Tatermans” or “Taterers.” But such names as Appletree, Appleyard, Plumtree, Pearman, and Peascod, exist. Why? Because apples, pears, plums, and peas, have been familiar to Englishmen for a dozen centuries. “Photographer” is not in the Directory for the same reason, but “Limner” is, the old “illuminator.” “Cabman” is also conspicuous by its absence, but “Carman” and “Wagner” (i. e. Wagoner) exist. Had tea, or umbrellas, or broughams, or balloons, or carpets, or potatoes, or croquet balls, or telegraph wires, or tinned meats, or steam engines, or churchwarden pipes, or Indian pickles, been introduced about five hundred years ago, every one of these would have left its mark on our personal nomenclature. Each would have found itself commemorated in our directories as well as our dictionaries. It is true the railway engine might seem to have been referred to in such fourteenth-century registrations as Richard le Engineur or William le Genour, but these men only wielded the great battering-rams, or catapults, or engines for hurling stones. Very destructive they were, of course, and so important a profession that no wonder there are thirteen “Jenners” in the London Directory alone. Sir William Jenner can satisfy himself with the reflection that if his progenitor was distinguished for the number of England’s adversaries he placed hors de combat, he and his father have been equally remarkable for the number of lives they have saved.

Let us spend a few moments in a consideration of this great matter of eating and drinking. And we will begin with drinking first. It is curious how easily misled we might be by the corruptions that have taken place in our nomenclature. The following surnames are in the London Directory (1870): Brandy, Sherry, Gin, Port, Beer, Porter, Stout, Claret, Portwine, Tee, and Coffee. Not one of these is what it seems to be. Not one of these has anything to do with the beverage each severally represents. “Portwine” is a mere modernisation of “Potewyne,” which in the fourteenth century denoted the Poict tevine settler in England. “Claret” was the pet name of “Clare.” “Stout” is of the nickname class, “Porter” occupative, and “Port” is found originally as “Charles le Port,” or “Oliver le Port,” showing that it was a sobriquet having reference to the portly bearing of the progenitor. Tennyson speaks of

 
“A modern gentleman
Of stateliest port.”
 

It is the same with “Aleman.” This has no connection with the public-house, but like “Almaine” and “D’Almaine” represents the old German trader. The word was once in most familiar use. Coverdale’s exposition of the twenty-fifth Psalm has on the title page, “Translated out of hye Almayne (High Dutch) in to Englyshe, by Myles Coverdale, 1537.” No one will require me to prove that James Tee and Peter Coffee do not represent our modern and favoured national breakfast beverages. At least the first, if he did, must have sprung from some “heathen Chinee,” who has immigrated to our shores. Such an elucidation, however, would neither satisfy myself, my reader, nor James Tee himself, I imagine.

But we have quite sufficient relics of the drinking propensities of the English people in bygone days without seeking for them in their corrupted forms. “Inman” and “Taverner” both represent the old keeper of houses of entertainment. Tavern is going out of fashion: Public-house is a modern term. Porson, the great Greek scholar, was unhappily given to drink; but drunk or sober he had ever a Greek or Latin quotation at the tip of his tongue. Reeling in the streets of Cambridge, he one day tumbled down a flight of steps into a cellar-tavern. As they picked him up, he was heard to mutter,

“Facilis est descensus t-averni.”

Our Church of England temperance lecturers could not take a better text than this clever pun; for, unlike most puns, it contains a most admonitory truth. An old tavern-sign in Cheshire, in the last century, bore the following inscription:

“Good bear sold here, our own bruin.”

This in the days of bear-baiting, for which Cheshire was famous, would be very misleading to those of the country bumpkins who could read. Brewer and Brewster need no explanation. Malter and Malster both exist, but I do not see them in the London Directory. There is Malthouse, however, and that is sometimes found as “Malthus”; just as loft-house, and kirk-house, and bake-house or back-house have become Loftus, Kirkus, and Bacchus. Viner and Vinter also stand in no fear of being misunderstood; but Tunman, Tonman, Tunner, and Tonner, who casked and bottled the wine that came from the Continent, would be less likely to be recognised. In the “Confessio Amantis” it is said of Jupiter that he

 
“Hath in his cellar, as men say,
Two townès full of love-drink,” —
 

where we must not suppose that the Thunderer had so capacious a cellar that it would contain all the liquor that two whole towns might possess, but that he had two tuns or barrels of love potions. In fact, “tun” was the universal term in use then, though barrel or cask has superseded it in common parlance. We still talk of “tunnels” or “tun-dishes,” the vessels used for transferring wine from barrel to bottle. “Beer-brewer” was once a familiar surname, but it has become obsolete. We all remember the old couplet —

 
“Hops, Reformation, baize, and beer,
Came into England all in one year.”
 

To make the bitter taste, wormwood had been the chief ingredient in earlier days.

While on this subject, it is worth while inquiring whether or no we possess in our directories any record of the drinking propensities of our forefathers. That they were ever great “skinkers” everybody knows who has studied the past with any degree of care. What the Water-poet said somewhat coarsely of one may well be said of the many: —

 
“Untill hee falls asleepe,
He skinks and drinkes;
And then like to a bore,
He winkes and stinkes.”
 

Even the “Friar,” according to Chaucer,

 
“strong was as a champioun,
And knew wel the tavernes in every toun,
And every hosteler and gay tapstere,
Better than a lazar or a beggere.”
 

In spite of these acknowledged facts, however, I am happy to say there is not a single “Drunkard” in the London Directory. Nevertheless, in our older registers the tale is not so assuring. There has been a tendency during the last two hundred years to shuffle off certain objectionable names, which our earlier forefathers did not seem to be ashamed of. Who of my readers would like to have been officially registered as “Maurice Druncard,” or “Jakes Drynk-ale,” or worse still, “Geoffrey Dringke-dregges”? Who of my readers would like to sign himself in a marriage record as “Robert le Sot,” or as “Thomas Sour-ale”? Even “John Swete-ale” would scarcely have relished the sobriquet if he had lived in this more punctilious age of ours. Where could the young lady be found who would forego the charms of spinsterhood to be wedded to an “Arnold Scutel-mouth” – (what a capacious mouth it must have been!) “Alice Gude-ale-house” may have been a thoroughly honest and respectable landlady, but I don’t think she would have said “no,” if some smart and worthy younker had offered her the refusal of his name.

Every one of these entries I have myself copied from authentic registers. Curious, and yet not curious, is it that not one of them has survived. So far as the Directory shows, we are the soberest and most temperate nation on the face of the earth. Thus do we throw a mantle over our great national vice. Even when we cannot get rid of the fact, we manage to smooth it over with a sesquipedalian gloss. A woman in the middle and higher ranks never gets drunk now-a-days. She is a suffering martyr to dipsomania! How thankful we should be for a Bible that says “Be not drunk.”

Who was the first English teetotaler? If we could find him, I suspect our temperance friends would erect a monument to him. There are seven “Drinkwaters” in the Metropolitan register; and I am glad to say that Camden’s statement is wrong – it was only a guess – that Drinkwater is a corruption of “Derwentwater.” In the first place it is an impossible corruption; for the corruptive changes that pass over words and names are not accidental, but follow fixed rules, so to say. In the second place, I have been able to discover the name in its present guise up to the very time when hereditary surnames were established. “John Drinkwater” occurs in the Hundred Rolls, and “Richard Drynkwatere” in the Parliamentary Writs. ¹⁰ No wonder their posterity has survived, no wonder their name endures, for they can boast that in their sobriquet lies the record of the first English temperance movement. In a word, Mr. Drinkwater number one must have been the forerunner of total abstinence. None of his neighbours could have pointed to him as a man who habitually, or occasionally upon days of festival, “got tight”; his name, whereby they had nicknamed him, was in itself a safeguard. His very title pledged him to the principles it professed. No, he never “got tight,” or if he did, like a good sailing craft, he was watertight. Some day I hope there will be a monument erected to “Drinkwater Number One.” It might be in the shape of a drinking fountain. What a heap of people there are buried in state in Westminster Abbey who ought to give place to “Drinkwater Number One”! But, alas! we don’t all get our deserts.

But enough of this. We have reminiscences in our directories of meat as well as drink. Chaucer, speaking of the “Franklein,” says, —

 
“Withoute bake mete never was his house,
Of fish, and flesh, and that so plenteous,
It snowèd in his hous of mete and drink,
Of allè deintiès that men coud thinke.
 

* * * * *

 
Wo was his cook, but if his saucè were
Poignant and sharpe, and redy all his gear.”
 

This short and piquant description is important because of the language used. We still use the word flesh in the alliterative phrase, “fish, flesh, and fowl;” but we should never ask for a “pound of flesh” in a butcher’s shop now, any more than we should talk of the importation of “American flesh.” We should say “meat.” The distinction, however, is preserved in this account, and we are reminded that before the Norman “Butcher” or “Boucher,” and French “Labouchere” came in, the seller of flesh-meat was called a “Fleshmonger” or “Flesher.” So late as 1528, William Fleshmonger, D.C.L., was Dean of Chichester. I fear the name is now obsolete. Our “Fleshers” still exist, but most of them have become absorbed in “Fletcher,” which represented the trade of feathering arrows: we still employ the word “fledge.” The Bowyers and Fletchers and Arrowsmiths always marched abreast in the old trades’ processions of London, or York, or Norwich. Harking back to Fletcher, however, I may add, that in Scotland a butcher is still a flesher.

So far for the butcher. But the old rhyme speaks of —

 
“The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker.”
 

We next turn, therefore, to the bread and biscuit department. We have all heard how that foolish and imprudent

“Miss Baxter,

Refused a man before he axed her,”

but few of us, possibly, are aware that “Baker” and “Baxter” and “Bagster,” all represent the same occupation, and that Baxter is only the old “bakester,” the feminine of Baker, just as Webster is the feminine of Webber, or Brewster of Brewer, or Blaxter (i. e. “Bleachster”) of Bleacher, or Tapster of Tapper. ¹¹ Langland, in his poem entitled “The Vision of Piers Plowman,” speaks of

 
“Baksteres and brewesteres,
And bochiers manye.”
 

It will not be irreverent to note the coincidence, that no firm in England have more closely associated their name with the printing of the Bible, “The Bread of Life,” than the Bagsters. It reminds us of that which was no accidental coincidence at all – namely, that Christ Himself, “that true Bread which came down from Heaven,” appeared first at Bethlehem, which literally means “house of bread,” i. e. “bread-shop,” or “bake-house.” “Bacchus,” as already noted, is a corruption of “bake-house,” while our Bullingers, Ballingers, Bollengers, and Furners, and “Pesters,” represent the Norman-French bakers. Our “Cokes” and “Cooks” represent the old public pie-shop, as well as the private cuisine, and this explains the large number of the fraternity immortalised in our directories. An old poem speaks of

 
“Drovers, cokes, and poulters,
Yermongers, pybakers, and waferers.”
 

There has ever been a great race in this matter between our “Bakers” and “Cooks” or “Cookes.” Nearly thirty years ago Mr. Lowe, in his Tables of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, gave the following analysis for one year in England and Wales: —

In the London Directory for 1871, there appeared 277 Bakers, 56 Baxters, and 2 Bagsters, as against 194 Cooks, 89 Cookes, 1 Coke, 2 Cookmans, and 9 Cooksons. This preserves the same proportion.

In the couplet quoted above occurs the trade name of “Waferer.” This may possibly sound an obsoletism to the reader. But if as a distinct occupation the making of bread wafers is gone, or has fallen into the hands of Messrs. Peek, Frean & Co., and other of our biscuit manufacturers, it has left many memorials behind. Our “Wafers” have fossilised its story in the Directory, and even in our Authorized Version of the Bible (Lev. ii. 4). I have known one or two sturdy Protestants who have objected to the translation: “And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil.” There can be no doubt this is one more relic of Papal days in England. I have seen an old will of the thirteenth century, in which the then Archbishop of York made a small bequest to two “waferers,” who for many years had honestly plied their trade of selling wafers at the Minster gate. Not that the “waferer” confined himself to these. The author of Piers Plowman, not to mention Chaucer himself, puts him among certain disreputable street hawkers, who sold small spiced cakes; but then we must remember that the “Malvern Dreamer” wrote his poem against the lewdness of the priesthood – in fact, he was a trumpeter of the Reformation to come – and he would not object to set down the humblest servitor of the papal establishment, even a waferer, in as low a scale as he could. It is this that to my mind makes the history of English surnames so interesting. If we visit Pompeii we see in the streets and chambers that have been cleared of débris the very accidents of life and thought well-nigh 2000 years ago. We have but to clear away the little corruptions of spelling or pronunciation which have befallen these old-fashioned names, and spell-bound we are gazing into the life – the every-day religious and social life – of our English forefathers four hundred years ago. The antiquary and the philologist alike may take up the London Directory with reverence, for therein lies a fund of information to his hand, which it might occupy months of pain and trouble otherwise to accumulate.

Having dealt with “the butcher” and “the baker,” there is yet the “candlestick-maker” to be considered. Our “Chandlers” and “Candlers” explain themselves. Our “Turners” turned out all manner of wooden gear, and doubtless candlesticks were amongst them. There are plenty of “Bowlers” in the Directory, men who made bowls or dishes of wood. The twenty-four “Spooners” ¹² set down in the same record, fashioned spoons. Forks being a modern invention, there are no “Forkers”; but “Cutler” abounds on every side in the metropolis, not to mention the “Cutlers’ Alms-houses,” and the “Cutlers’ Hall.” “Ironmonger” also is well represented. Those who manufactured crocks – that is, any glazed vessel of earthenware (whence our modern term “crockery”) – were called “Crockers,” or “Crokers.” There are over thirty Crockers in the Directory, and six Crokers. A hundred “Potters” figure in the same list.

Some reader may inquire, “Have we any relics of the medical practitioner in the Directory? Was there any one who was professionally employed to see children through the measles, to extract an obnoxious tooth, to lay a plaister, to open a vein, to mix a potion, or to generally repair a debilitated system?” The London Directory replies unhesitatingly in the affirmative; and yet look out Doctor, or Surgeon, or Physician, and all are conspicuous by their absence: although, to do the last justice, he has bequeathed us four Physicks. The reason of this is simple. These are new terms. The old practitioner went generally by the name of “Leech.” There are forty-seven Leaches, one Leachman, and eleven Leeches in the Directory. Bleeding with leeches was evidently no unfamiliar spectacle in old days, especially when we recall that our forefathers were wont to be very energetic with the knife and fork – or spoon, I should say, for they had no forks. “Chemist,” too, is a new sobriquet, – therefore he is unrepresented; but there is one “Pothecary,” and Potticary is fairly common in other parts of England. As for the Barber, the surgeon and dentist of former times, no wonder there is a whole column of his descendants. His custom was to hang a basin at the end of his pole, with a string of teeth, the longer the better, to show what a roaring trade he drove, – for he could not advertise his business in the newspaper as people do in these remarkable days. In the window were ranged cups or goblets with a few leeches in. These

 
“Did well his threefold trade explain,
Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein.”
 

In the latter decades of last century there was a celebrated surgeon in Manchester of the name of “Killer,” which is a corruption of “Kilner,” just as Miller and Milner are identical. But if this was an unfortunate name for a surgeon, what shall we say of “Kilmister” and “Kilmaster,” which may be found in and about the county of Gloucester! How bloodthirsty they look! – and yet the truer form Kilminster, in the London Directory, strips them, by the addition of but one letter, of their terrors, and shows them to be of local origin. In one of the earliest metropolitan directories appears a Mr. Toothaker! It was not an uncommon name, for in 1635 there embarked in the Hopewell for New England, Roger Toothaker and Margaret Toothaker! I do not think the name to be of German origin, as Mr. Lower supposes, but one of those local English surnames ending in “acre,” like Whittaker or Oldacre. The sobriquet, however, reads oddly enough, and looks as if the services of the barber were much required.

Turning to dress for a moment, we may notice that there are nearly 300 Walkers in the London Directory, almost 100 Tuckers, 80 Fullers, and 20 Tozers. All were concerned once with the combing, fulling, dyeing, and thickening of woollen goods. In Piers Plowman mention is made of “fulling under foot.” This refers to the practice of treading the cloth, before machinery was introduced. He who did this was a walker. Wycliffe, speaking of Christ’s transfiguration, describes Christ’s dress as shining, so as “no fullers or walkers of cloth” could whiten them. The “tozer” or “toser,” or “touser,” toused or teased the fabric, so as to raise a nap on it. We talk of teasing now in the sense of worrying people with attentions. This is the secondary meaning that has grown upon the other. “Tozer” and “Toser” are the favourite spellings of this occupation in the Directory. We are still fond of calling a pugnacious dog “Towser.” Tucker was a Flemish introduced term for a “dyer.” Many of the words connected with the manufacture of cloth came in with the Flemish artisans.

I will only mention one article of dress, and conclude. There is no “Cobler,” or “Cobbler,” in the Directory, but there used to be. As a mere patchwork business it has got into disrepute; so it has been got rid of by its owners. Christopher Shoomaker was burnt at Newbury during the days of persecution, and Foxe tells his story in his customary quaint fashion; but it has ever been a rare name in England, though common enough in Germany as Schumacher, or Schumann. The last form will be familiar to all musicians. Camden, in a list of occupations, inserts “Chaucer,” appending by way of definition, “id est, Hosier.” The chaucer or hosier of those days fitted to the leg from the knee downwards the strong leather legging. This was called a chaussure. Chaucer is obsolete in England, though not in France. Hosier and Hozier still exist. Every Londoner knows of the “Cordwainers’ Hall,” though perhaps he has never seen it. It is not more than forty years ago that you might not uncommonly see “cordwainer” over a shop door instead of the strictly modern “shoemaker”; while in our directories “Cordwainer,” or “Cordiner,” or “Codner,” is a customary name. Sir Thopas is described thus: —

 
“His hair, his beard was like safroun,
That to his girdle raught (reached) adown,
His shoon of cordewane.”
 

We have only to turn cordwain into cordovan, to see that this was a specially excellent leather, imported in early times from Cordova, in Spain, to make “kid-boots.” In fact, the cordwainer was the West-end boot-maker. But this is not all. In the Directory for 1871 there appear twelve Suters, three Sowters, six Soutters, seven Souters, one Soutar, and three Soustars. I need not tell any Scotchman what this means, because every shoemaker or cobbler on the other side of the Tweed, except in very fashionable quarters, is still a “souter.” Souster is but one more instance of the feminine (?) termination.

I might prolong this chapter to any extent, but I must refrain. I might have called attention to our many “Glovers” and “Ganters,” who sold gloves, or our Gantletts and Gauntletts, who were in the same business, but were known best by the gauntlet that hung as a sign over the door. I might have pointed to our Girdlers and Bracegirdles, who were busy enough when the modern suspender was unknown; or to our many Pointers, who manufactured the points or tags by which hose and doublet were protected from divorcement. I might have asked the reader to survey with me the rows of Cheesemans, Cheesmans, Cheesewrights, Cheeswrights, and Firmingers, reminiscences of the good old farmers’ produce, which was the first, second and third course of every peasant’s dinner. I might have shown that our Challeners and Challoners manufactured or sold blankets, made at first in Chalons; or that our Helliers, or Hilliers, or Hillyers, were thatchers or tylers; that our Shoosmiths forged shoes for horses; that our Wrights worked chiefly in wood, our Smiths in iron. I might have run through a list of rural occupations, such as Coward for cow-herd, Calvert for calve-herd, Shepherd for sheep-herd, or “Herd” or “Heard” or “Hurd” itself for the tender of cattle in general. From all temptations of this kind I must stay myself. I will only say that if my reader should be interested enough to wish to carry on such investigation, he can do so in my book of “English Surnames,” which I think I can truly say is quite exhaustive of those now forgotten and obsolete titles of mediæval occupation. I have mentioned Wright: let me quote a rhyming pun on his good old title:

 
“At a tavern one night,
Messrs. More, Strange, and Wright,
Met to drink, and their good thoughts exchange;
Says More, ‘Of us three,’
The whole will agree,
There’s only one Knave, and that’s Strange.’
 
 
“‘Yes,’ says Strange, rather sore,
‘I’m sure there’s one More,
A most terrible knave, and a fright,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister, and brother.’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied More, ‘that is Wright.’”
 

On the whole, Mr. More got the best of the argument.