tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/samuel-pepys-34232/articlesSamuel Pepys – La Conversation2023-12-29T11:42:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192742023-12-29T11:42:50Z2023-12-29T11:42:50ZWhat COVID diaries have in common with Samuel Pepys’ 17th-century plague diaries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564815/original/file-20231211-21-68cd8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=319%2C275%2C5432%2C3328&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/halloween-holidays-leisure-concept-close-young-2023057376">Ground Picture/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People keep diaries for all sorts of reasons – to record events, work through difficult situations, or manage <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1994-38706-001">stress</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19783166_Disclosure_of_Traumas_and_Immune_Function_Health_Implications_for_Psychotherapy">trauma</a>. The ongoing COVID inquiry shows diaries also have important political and historic significance. The UK’s former chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/20/how-patrick-vallance-explosive-diaries-exposed-covid-chaos-inside-no-10">diaries</a> have been a key source of evidence, exposing the chaos within government at the time. </p>
<p>In my PhD research, I’ve been exploring the COVID diaries of ordinary people, as well as diaries kept during the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. Though centuries apart, these diaries are full of insight into how people react to crises, and have surprising similarities. </p>
<p>From the first lockdown in March 2020, media outlets, archive centres and researchers encouraged people to record their pandemic experiences. Even BBC children’s entertainer <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jsf3/at-home-with-mr-tumble-series-1-6-diary">Mr Tumble</a> urged young viewers to start a diary. </p>
<p>This has resulted in a large number of COVID diaries being made available in archive collections around the UK, plus many more online in the form of blogs or social media. I’ve been looking specifically at 13 COVID diaries donated to the Borthwick Institute for Archives and the East Riding Archives, both in Yorkshire. Most were originally private documents, offering a more spontaneous, honest and intimate portrayal of pandemic experiences than their online counterparts. </p>
<p>Diaries written during the Great Plague are not so numerous. Of the few available, the most valuable is that of naval administrator Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), whose exceptionally detailed and candid journals form by far the most comprehensive firsthand account of plague-stricken London.</p>
<p>I have been reading Pepys’s diaries alongside the modern COVID diaries, and have been struck by the common themes in how people navigated their pandemic experiences. </p>
<h2>Recording statistics</h2>
<p>Throughout the COVID pandemic, statistics of cases and deaths were everywhere, and were key to how we judged the impact of the virus. As diarist JF wrote on June 5 2020:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was time to watch the Corona Virus update and I was shocked to find that over 40,000 people have now died from the disease in this country and it’s not over yet!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Relatively accurate information was also widely circulated in 17th-century London via the “bills of mortality” – weekly lists of deaths according to cause and location. Pepys wrote on September 7 1665:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sent for the Weekely Bill and find 8252 dead in all, and of them, 6978 of the plague - which is a most dreadful Number - and shows reason to fear that the plague hath got that hold that it will yet continue among us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All of the modern and historical diaries I have looked at include these statistics – some sparingly, others with meticulous regularity.</p>
<h2>The blame game</h2>
<p>As cases rose, restrictions were enforced and the effects of plague and COVID loomed large in the lives of our diarists, narratives shifted to confusion and blame. Pepys was largely sympathetic to the government’s handling of the plague and, in February 1666, criticised those who flouted the rules and endangered others: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the heighth of it, how bold people there were to go in sport to one another’s burials. And in spite to well people, would breathe in the faces … of well people going by.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>COVID diarists reacted to those who didn’t follow guidelines in a very similar way, as DR wrote in March 2020: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not everyone is playing it very well, though, with panic-buying, one last night at the pub and a mass exodus to the coast. Stupid and selfish in equal measure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The response and actions of the UK government, and individual members of parliament, also afforded much attention. An anonymous diarist wrote in May 2020:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People are being allowed out more but the illness is still out there & there’s no treatment or vaccine yet … There are fewer deaths because of social distancing. If they let everyone get on with the ‘new normal’ surely more people will get sick?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Staying positive</h2>
<p>A more optimistic theme to emerge in the diaries was the ability to find positivity amid the chaos. Pepys and modern diarists were thankful for the blessings of health, family and security. They praised those who went the extra mile to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on those around them, despite the risk to their own health. An entry from New Year’s Eve in 1665 reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My whole family hath been well all this while, and all my friends I know of, saving my aunt Bell, who is dead, and some children of my cozen Sarah’s, of the plague … yet, to our great joy, the town fills apace, and shops begin to open again. Pray God continue the plague’s decrease!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>DW’s diary from April 2020 expressed appreciation for time out in nature, as well as sympathy for others living in more difficult situations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was lovely walking through the wood. The air was filled with birdsong. It made me realise how lucky I am to live in a village where I can walk from my front door into fields and woods along defined paths. It must be awful to live ten floors up in a high rise block with two children, and not be allowed out except for once per day. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young man sits on the ground in a forest writing in a journal" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keeping a diary can be good for wellbeing, as well as recording history.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/focused-man-writing-journal-ideas-enjoying-2240364251">Vergani Fotografia/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Comparing COVID with historical events such as <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-ancient-plagues-pandemics-lessons-society">plague</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200302-coronavirus-what-can-we-learn-from-the-spanish-flu">the Spanish flu epidemic</a> and the <a href="https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/25315/expert-comment-the-reality-of-blitz-spirit-during-covid-19">second world war</a> was a core element of the pandemic narrative, and for good reason. History connects.</p>
<p>It is easy to look around us and see the vast differences between the world we live in now, and that which Pepys traversed almost 400 years ago.</p>
<p>But by exploring the innermost thoughts of people with an element of shared experience, we see that fundamental aspects of the human condition endure. When faced with uncertainty and upheaval, our instincts are to record, find answers, and reclaim joy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Rehman receives funding from University of Hull Doctoral College</span></em></p>Keeping a diary has been a common pandemic pastime throughout history.Mary Rehman, PhD Researcher, School of Humanities, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2006462023-05-01T20:01:06Z2023-05-01T20:01:06ZPicking up a King Charles III coronation commemorative plate? You’re buying into a centuries-old tradition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521508/original/file-20230418-26-swntno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C17%2C3982%2C2976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dutch delftware with a double portrait of William III and Mary II, ca. 1690.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mugs and plates celebrating the coronations, marriages and deaths of British royalty are not unusual sights in the Australian home. With the forthcoming coronation of King Charles III on May 6, such memorabilia cluttering our cupboards are only likely to increase. </p>
<p>Guides to “<a href="https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/king-charles-coronation-memorabilia-2023">the best King Charles III memorabilia</a>” are already advising what souvenirs to buy, including commemorative coins, biscuit tins, tea towels, plates and, of course, mugs. </p>
<p>Yet the royal souvenir is not a recent invention. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/weve-been-collecting-souvenirs-for-thousands-of-years-they-are-valuable-cultural-artefacts-but-what-does-their-future-hold-189449">We've been collecting souvenirs for thousands of years. They are valuable cultural artefacts – but what does their future hold?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>History of the royal mug</h2>
<p>The tradition of celebrating royal events with a mug or drinking vessel dates to at least the 17th century when the current king’s ancestor and namesake, Charles II, was restored to the English throne in 1660-1. </p>
<p>Several mugs and cups produced at the time have survived and depict the “<a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/charles-ii-guide-restoration-why-merry-monarch-how-many-children-rule/">merry monarch</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521507/original/file-20230418-26-iczhu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cup, tin-glazed earthenware (delftware), with a bust portrait of Charles II, probably Southwark, 1660-1665.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Victoria and Albert Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The restoration of Charles II (after his father Charles I had been executed by order of parliament in 1649) was greeted with rejoicing throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. </p>
<p>The famous social climber and diarist Samuel Pepys embodied the general feeling of this time when he wrote that on the day of Charles II’s coronation he watched the royal procession with wine and cake and all were “<a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1661/04/22/">very merry</a>” and pleased at what they saw. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beheaded-and-exiled-the-two-previous-king-charleses-bookended-the-abolition-of-the-monarchy-190410">Beheaded and exiled: the two previous King Charleses bookended the abolition of the monarchy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Drinking and eating in celebration may account for why mugs and plates were, and remain, such popular forms of royal memorabilia; they were used to <a href="https://stuarts.exeter.ac.uk/education/objects/delftware-cup-c-1661/">drink loyal toasts</a> of good health to the monarch on special days of celebration. </p>
<p>While a strong ale was the preferred liquid for 17th-century toasts, as the British Empire expanded tea drinking became a common pastime. Teacups became popular royal souvenirs during the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521513/original/file-20230418-21-mdh86q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Commemorative teacup for Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">McCord Stewart Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fostering support</h2>
<p>The earthenware mugs made for Charles II’s coronation were relatively inexpensive, but not produced on a mass scale. </p>
<p>With the industrial revolution of the 19th century and the rise of souvenir culture, royal memorabilia in all forms became more <a href="https://theconversation.com/royal-family-why-even-a-charles-and-diana-divorce-mug-is-important-for-the-monarchy-176588">popular and widespread</a>. </p>
<p>Since 1900, royal births, deaths, marriages and coronations have been big money for manufacturers of royal memorabilia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522239/original/file-20230420-20-eguqhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mug celebrating the coronation of Edward VII in 1902.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Te Papa (CG000043/B)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The pitfalls of mass production were realised in 1936 when Edward VIII abdicated from the throne just months before his planned coronation in May 1937. Manufacturers were stuck with <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/178313173?searchTerm=%22coronation%20mug%22">thousands of mugs</a>, plates and other items celebrating the coronation of a king that would not happen. </p>
<p>Many of these mugs still made their way out to the market, while other manufacturers such as Royal Doulton <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_2012-8022-5-a-c">adapted existing designs</a> and used them for the coronation of his brother, George VI.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522238/original/file-20230420-14-55n4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mug commemorating the planned coronation of Edward VIII.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Powerhouse collection. Gift of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 1981. Photographed by Bob Barker.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>English monarchs were not the only royals to encourage the use of their image on objects collected, worn or used by their subjects. </p>
<p>Renaissance Italian princes popularised the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/renaissance-portrait-medals/exhibition-themes">portrait medal</a> and the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V, fostered support in his vast territories using mass-produced medallions <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/197126">bearing his image</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521515/original/file-20230418-24-ua1317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An enamel medallion depicting Emperor Charles V (1500–1558), ca. 1518–20.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Objects with images of royalty served similar functions in the 20th century. Australian school children were often <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/141777602?searchTerm=%22coronation%20mug%22">given medals</a> to commemorate coronations, while children in England were gifted pottery mugs to drink to the sovereign’s health. </p>
<p>When Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, <a href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/coronation-of-hm-queen-elizabeth-ii">English children</a> received mugs, tins of chocolate and a spoon or coin. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hkPyG-xbyg8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Measuring popularity</h2>
<p>Royal memorabilia don’t just foster support but act as a barometer of the popularity of the royal family around the globe. </p>
<p>Coronation mugs became popular in the reign of Charles II in 1661 because these objects captured the joyous feeling of a nation that had endured 20 years of warfare and political chaos. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521518/original/file-20230418-24-d6yi11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Delftware featuring Charles II and Catherine of Braganza, likely commemorating their wedding. ca. 1662-1685.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Victoria and Albert Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Support for the royal family has often been shown through royal weddings and marriages: plates depicting Charles II and his Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza, were made to celebrate their union in 1662.</p>
<p>Recently a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/metal-detectorist-discovers-rare-gold-pendant-celebrating-henry-viiis-first-marriage-180981557/">gold pendant</a> inscribed with the initials of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, likely worn by a supporter, was also discovered. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521521/original/file-20230418-26-gm1q8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gold pendant associated with Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ca. 1509-1530.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Birmingham Museums Trust</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Prince William and Kate Middleton’s highly anticipated wedding in 2011, thousands of types of mundane and wacky <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-royal-wedding-souvenirs-pictures-photogallery.html">souvenirs</a> were produced, such as plates, mugs, magnets, graphic novels, toilet seat covers and PEZ dispensers.</p>
<p>Over 1,600 lines of official merchandise were produced for the marriage of Princes Charles to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. <a href="https://issuu.com/accpublishinggroup/docs/june_july_2022_mag/s/15960301">Less than 25 lines</a> were produced for Charles’ unpopular second marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521468/original/file-20230418-24-g103gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles and Diana cup to commemorate their wedding on July 29 1981.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Charles may not be <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/03/01/celebrities-dont-care-to-perform-for-king-charles-iii/?sh=56487b7a20f8">as popular</a> as his mother, coronation fever has most definitely taken hold in the United Kingdom. Royal fans are set to spend £1.4 billion (A$2.6 billion) on <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/21911733/shoppers-spend-billion-king-coronation-may/">coronation parties and souvenirs</a>. </p>
<p>The availability of coronation souvenirs and party supplies in Australia is somewhat more limited – perhaps an indicator of Australia’s diminishing appetite for the royal family amid increased calls for another <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-24/king-charles-australias-head-of-state-alternative-republic/101470156">vote on a republic</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-king-charles-iiis-coronation-quiche-tells-us-about-the-history-of-british-dining-203362">What King Charles III's coronation quiche tells us about the history of British dining</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bendall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From lockets for Henry VIII’s wedding to tea cups for Charles III’s coronation, there is a long history of royal souvenirs.Sarah Bendall, Research Fellow, Gender and Women's History Research Centre, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1619452021-06-10T14:25:35Z2021-06-10T14:25:35ZFrom the great plague to the 1918 flu, history shows that disease outbreaks make inequality worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405628/original/file-20210610-19-4e9jj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=150%2C1525%2C1983%2C1245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two men discover a dead body in the street during the Great Plague of London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/v5q884pm">19th-century wood engraving. Herbert Railton/Wellcome Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May 2021, virologist Angela Rasmussen <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/human-tissue-preserved-world-war-i-yields-new-clues-about-1918-pandemic">reflected</a> how “if the last 18 months have demonstrated anything, it’s that we would do well to remember the lessons of past pandemics as we try to prevent future ones”. This includes ensuring we come out stronger.</p>
<p>Witnesses of past disease outbreaks can help with this. While they don’t offer definitive answers on what to do next, they warn us rising inequality is inevitable after a pandemic and needs to be actively confronted if it’s to be avoided.</p>
<p>Consider the great plague of London in 1665. As it began to abate, naval official and diarist Samuel Pepys <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1665/12/">noted</a> that his wealth had more than tripled that year, despite the terrible times many were experiencing.</p>
<p>Even so, he regretted the expense of leaving London to avoid the danger. Pepys had had to fund lodgings for his wife and maids at Woolwich and for himself and his clerks at Greenwich. His experience stood in stark contrast to those Londoners who lost their livelihoods – and the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/education/plague.pdf">100,000</a> who died.</p>
<p>We can see the same social and economic inequalities becoming more pronounced today. Amazon’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55793575">Jeff Bezos</a> and Tesla’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/billionaires-net-worth-coronavirus-pandemic-jeff-bezos-elon-musk">Elon Musk</a> have increased their net worth by billions of dollars during the pandemic, while many of their employees <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/12/jeff-bezos-amazon-workers-covid-19-scrooge-capitalism">have faced coronavirus risks</a> in the workplace for little extra pay.</p>
<p>Similarly, during and after the 1918 influenza outbreak – in which it’s estimated a third of the world’s population was infected and around <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm">50 million people died</a> – purveyors of medicines <a href="https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/going-viral/profiting">sought to make a profit</a>. In western countries, this was accompanied by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867839/">panic buying</a> of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/1918-flu-pandemic-coronavirus-drug-trials-scientists-treatments-evidence">quinine</a> and other products for treating and avoiding the flu.</p>
<p>Today, there’s controversy as wealthy nations stockpile vaccines and promising <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717394/">potential treatments</a>. Despite Covax being created to spread vaccines equitably, distribution has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55795297">strongly in favour</a> of wealthy countries. In modern ways, we’re replicating the problems of the past.</p>
<h2>Charity increases too</h2>
<p>Yet in such crises, alongside greed and inequality there’s also the chance for acts of charity. In Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year – a fictional account of the great plague, published many years later in 1722 and written in voice of someone who lived through the event – the narrator, H.F., <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm">comments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eyewitness of, and sometimes also of the charitable assistance that some pious people daily gave to such, sending them relief and supplies both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>H.F. notes that while private citizens were sending funds to the mayor to distribute, they were also taking it upon themselves to give “vast sums” to those in need.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hall of influenza patients in bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The US was keen to consign the horrors of the 1918 pandemic to the past.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_Funston,_at_Fort_Riley,_Kansas,_during_the_1918_Spanish_flu_pandemic.jpg">US National Museum of Health and Medicine/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And according to real-life accounts of the 1918 flu pandemic, this crisis also saw many <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/03/31/sisters-work-during-1918-flu-epidemic-seen-model-crisis-today">acts of charity</a>. Such kindnesses have also been found during this pandemic, with a surge in <a href="https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/donations-surged-800m-during-national-lockdown.html">charitable donations</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51908023">projects to support those in need</a>. Around the world, giving practices have become more <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/household_generosity_during_the_pandemic">local and expansive</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/mutual-aid-coronavirus-pandemic-rebecca-solnit">mutual aid</a> – the practice of helping others in a spirit of solidarity and reciprocity – is increasing.</p>
<p>Yet such practices risk dissolving after the current crisis.</p>
<p>After the 1918 pandemic, the US <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-great-forgetting/">quickly forgot</a> the disease that had killed about 675,000 of its citizens. The economic boom that became known as the roaring 20s erased memories. Few social and historical memorials exist.</p>
<p>Katherine Porter’s 1939 short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider is an exception. It describes Miranda’s experience of the 1918 outbreak, as she becomes ill and delirious with influenza, but recovers. Yet she finds that the pale rider, or death, has taken her soldier love Adam, who probably became ill from caring for her. It’s a reminder that the trauma of pandemics is deeply personal and shouldn’t be forgotten.</p>
<h2>Inequalities persist</h2>
<p>As economies today start to recover and <a href="https://www.ey.com/en_uk/growth/ey-item-club/why-the-uk-economy-looks-well-placed-for-a-post-pandemic-recover">growth is expected</a>, we need to remember both the individual suffering and social upheaval the pandemic has caused – and use this to make better decisions about moving forward. History suggests that inequalities so recently exposed and exacerbated will simply reappear again unless we make an effort to fight them.</p>
<p>Consider, for example, a long-unresolved inequality in pandemics: that women and children are especially hard hit. Defoe’s narrator H.F., when considering that poor women had to give birth alone during the plague, with no midwife or even neighbours to help, called it one of the most “deplorable cases in all the present calamity”.</p>
<p>H.F. also argued that more women and children died of the plague than records suggest, because other causes of death were recorded even when the plague was involved. The 1918 flu pandemic also hit under-fives and those aged 20-40 hardest, leaving many <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stories-from-a-past-pandemic/">infants motherless or orphaned</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman home-schooling her daughter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As with previous pandemics, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate effect on women and children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/side-view-mother-helping-daughter-doing-644960089">LightField Studios/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the current pandemic, mothers have too often had to give birth with far less support than desired. They have also borne a greater burden in terms of having to balance <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/17/upshot/women-workforce-employment-covid.html">employment, childcare and home schooling</a>. The number of children in poverty has also risen, with an estimated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/09/britains-child-poverty-exposed-by-pandemic-mps-children-commissioner">14% of British children</a> having faced persistent hunger at some point during the pandemic.</p>
<h2>Planning for the future</h2>
<p>Yet looking at the literature from the past does not mean being doomed to repeat patterns of inequality. Hopefully, it can inspire the opposite. The £20 weekly <a href="https://www.bigissue.com/latest/universal-credit-what-is-it-and-why-does-the-20-increase-matter/">universal credit uplift</a> introduced in the UK at the start of the pandemic is currently only extended until September. As we emerge from the crisis, perhaps it’s time to consider radical changes to the status quo, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/support-is-growing-for-a-universal-basic-income-and-rightly-so-161309">universal basic income</a> and heavily subsidised childcare.</p>
<p>Now is the time for policymakers and society to think big and be bold. Should we be so lucky as to have a swift and strong economic recovery as after 1918, let’s not forget that another disaster, whether a pandemic or something else, will bring the weaknesses exposed throughout history back to the fore.</p>
<p>Maybe we should not look forward to the day when normal is back, but remember the hope from early in the pandemic – that it might catalyse a new and better normal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Greenlees has received funding from the Wellcome Trust, Economic and Social Research Council, British Academy and various charities within the US and Great Britain. This piece does not directly relate to any funded projects.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Read has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This piece does not relate to any funded project.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Ford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Accounts of previous epidemics – by Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe and Katherine Porter – warn of mistakes that we risk repeating.Janet Greenlees, Associate Professor of Health History, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityAndrea Ford, Researcher in Medical Anthropology, The University of EdinburghSara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1581022021-03-31T16:10:36Z2021-03-31T16:10:36ZFive words that don’t mean what you think they do<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392889/original/file-20210331-13-gsd8o3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C0%2C5184%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-old-vintage-dictionary-showing-word-323174486">Benoit Daoust/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Articles of this kind usually assert that a word’s correct meaning lies in its earliest uses, while later developments are corruptions. Disinterested doesn’t mean “not interested” but “impartial” they complain. Decimate must refer to the destruction of precisely one-tenth of something they protest. Fulsome can only mean “insincere” rather than “very full” they cry. </p>
<p>While this may seem logical enough, in some cases it doesn’t quite work. Here we apply the principle of earliest meaning to five common words and we get some rather unexpected results.</p>
<h2>1. Pretty</h2>
<p>This word is from Old English <em>prættig</em>, “cunning”, from <em>præt</em> “trick” – unrelated to <em>prat</em> “idiot”, which originally referred to the buttocks (hence <em>pratfall</em>: a fall onto the backside). </p>
<p>By the 15th century, pretty described something cleverly made, artful or ingenious. This led to its use to describe someone attractive or good-looking – most commonly a woman or child, although the diarist Samuel Pepys <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/05/11/">refers</a> to one Dr Clarke as a “very pretty man”. </p>
<p>Ironic uses of pretty to refer to something unpleasant are the origins of phrases like “pretty pass”, “pretty state of affairs” and “pretty kettle of fish”; the latter more often found in the phrase “different kettle of fish”. The kettle here isn’t the kind we use to make tea, but rather a large cooking vessel (from Latin <em>catillus</em>).</p>
<h2>2. Tall</h2>
<p>Tall is from an Old English word that meant “swift” or “active”. By the 15th century, it had come to mean “handsome” or “elegant”. Its use to mean “skilful” gave rise to the expressions “tall of hand”, meaning “handy” and “tall of tongue”, meaning “good at arguing”. </p>
<p>The 16th century saw the emergence of uses relating to height; subsequent metaphorical extensions include “large”, as in “tall order”, and “exaggerated”, from which the phrase “tall story” emerged. These changes in meaning may seem surprising, but several common adjectives that describe our physical appearances began life referring to dexterity and pliancy. Handsome, as the name suggests, originally meant “easy to handle”, “clever” meant “dexterous”, and “buxom” meant “obedient” (from “bow” meaning “to bend the neck”).</p>
<h2>3. Silly</h2>
<p>Someone silly in Old English was “happy” or “fortunate”, and later “pious” or “holy”. Because the innocent are easily taken advantage of, it came to signal a person deemed “weak” or “helpless”. Further negative associations are apparent from its use to mean “rustic” or “lacking sophistication”, from which our modern sense of “foolish” emerged. </p>
<p>This process, whereby a compliment becomes a term of abuse, is known to linguists as “pejoration” (from Latin <em>peior</em> “worse”). Its opposite, “amelioration” (from Latin <em>melior</em> “better”), can be seen in the history of “nice”, which originally meant “foolish” (from Latin <em>nescius</em> “ignorant”).</p>
<h2>4. Naughty</h2>
<p>In Old English, to be naughty was to be poor, literally “to have naught” or “nothing”. It was later used to describe someone immoral and, in a weakened sense, mischievous or disobedient. The particular association with badly behaved children led to the “naughty corner” – a place of isolation to which a child may be sent as a punishment. </p>
<p>Perhaps it was the naughty corner’s Victorian associations that led to the invention of the “naughty step”, a form of discipline advocated by the British reality TV show <a href="https://www.supernanny.co.uk/Advice/-/Parenting-Skills/-/Discipline-and-Reward/The-Naughty-Step-%7E-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work.aspx">Supernanny</a>, whose transatlantic success led to its adoption in the US.</p>
<p>Its use to mean “indecent” survives into modern usage in phrases like “naughty but nice”. This phrase was promoted by adverts for cream cakes in the 1980s and was the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/29/salman-rushdie-tells-hay-festival-hollywood-phoniness-trump-best-box">brainchild of the novelist Salman Rushdie</a>, while he was working as a copywriter. “Naughty bits”, referring to the genitals, was first recorded in a Monty Python sketch in 1970. This euphemism was considered too explicit for American audiences and was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/03/29/naughty-bits">bleeped out</a> when the show was broadcast in the US.</p>
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<h2>5. Sad</h2>
<p>This word is from Old English <em>sæd</em>, which meant “full”, as the German <em>satt</em> still does. In English, it has been replaced in this sense by “satisfied” or “sated”, from Latin <em>satis</em> “enough”. </p>
<p>By the 14th century, sad meant “settled”, “firm” or “resolute” and from this the senses “serious” and “grave” developed.</p>
<p>The modern use of sad to mean “sorrowful” can be traced back to Old English, where the word already carried a sense of being weary or tired of something, reflecting the way that satisfaction quickly shades into ennui. Surprisingly, “happy” was brought to us by the Vikings who plundered the north of England and is borrowed from the Old Norse <em>happ</em>, which filled the gap created by the changing use of “silly”. It originally meant “fortunate” – a sense preserved in the phrase “by happy chance”. </p>
<p>To suggest that we are using words incorrectly, therefore, is to ignore the various ways in which meanings of words change over time. In the case of fulsome, “very full” is the earlier of the two senses. Its use to mean “excessive” arose out of “fulsome apologies” that were felt to be insincere – as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05mkl9x">Priti Patel found to her cost in her resignation letter of 2017</a>. </p>
<p>The looser use of decimate to mean “devastate” is recorded from the 17th century, so can it really be wrong today? And if we did insist on only sanctioning its earliest use - put to death one in every ten of an army of mutinous soldiers - how often would we use it? So feel free to be disinterested in this post, or to lavish it with fulsome praise. Attempting to constrain the uses of words is plain silly – in its modern rather than its medieval meaning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Horobin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How words are used change over time and insisting that their original meaning be adhered to is pretty silly.Simon Horobin, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1376582020-05-18T01:18:43Z2020-05-18T01:18:43ZBleach, bonfires and bad breath: the long history of dodgy plague remedies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335052/original/file-20200514-77230-1cq09sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C42%2C6960%2C5898&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hippocrates refusing the gifts of Artaxerxes. Engraving by Raphael Massard, 1816.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a future researcher compiles a list of sayings of US presidents, this one from Donald Trump in April 2020 about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/trump-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus-claims-reactio">using bleach as a possible treatment</a> for coronavirus will surely make the cut: “Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Trump’s words prompted panicky warnings from bleach manufacturers to people not to drink their product and a spike in phone calls to help lines.</p>
<p>Press outlets leapt to describe Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/trump-jordan-peterson-charlatans.html">as a “mountebank</a> – an itinerant quack doctor parading his wares from a platform (in Italian classic comic theatre, or <em>Commedia Dell’Arte</em>, the character is typically called Charlatano). In Ben Jonson’s 1606 comedy, Volpone, the eponymous hero dresses as Scoto of Mantua, purveyor of Scoto’s Oil. The original "snake oil”, it’s more expensive than bleach but neither harmful nor, indeed, beneficial if ingested.</p>
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<p>Perhaps the comparison is unfair. Trump has simply joined the long line of those who, desperately seeking real cures, have found fakes. In Athens in 430BC, an epidemic struck. The air was thought to be diseased and in need of cleansing. The ancient Greek “father of medicine” Hippocrates himself is <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/article/939/the-plague-at-athens-430-427-bce/">said to have come up with a solution</a> – light bonfires, throw herbs and spices on them, and wait for the infection to pass. </p>
<p>Two thousand years later, bonfires were still in fashion. At the onset of the Great Plague in 1665, the <a href="https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/blog/cure-plague">College of Physicians pronounced</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fires made in the Streets, and often with Stink-Pots, and good Fires kept in and about the Houses of such as are visited … may correct the infectious Air.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The college added that the “frequent discharging of Guns” would have the same effect – something that might appeal to the US president’s more ardent supporters. </p>
<p>But in 1665, not everyone could agree on what to burn. Should it be coal or wood? If wood, was it better to burn a more aromatic variety such as cedar or fir? The author of Golgotha (identified only as J.V.), one of a large number of plague books published in 1665, denounced as “a costly mischief” the burning of “sweet-scented Pomanders”. That did not stop him from <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/education/plague.pdf">recommending instead</a> “Wormwood, Hartshorn, Amber, Thime or Origany”.</p>
<p>But hang on. It was already a hot summer in 1665. Wouldn’t all those fires warm up the infected air and cause the plague particles to multiply? Not necessarily. There were two kinds of heat, according to the <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/e4vdp24g">1666 work Loimographia</a>, by 17th-century apothecary William Boghurst. There was the fierce, dry sort generated by fires in chilly northern climates, and there was the soggy, exhausting sort you found in the tropics. The former was cleansing. The latter opened the pores and made you susceptible to infection (as well as lazy and deserving enslavement).</p>
<h2>Smoke to your good health</h2>
<p>If this all seems like the effusion of bad science and worse ideology, consider tobacco. Recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-nicotine-protect-us-against-coronavirus-137488">it was reported</a> that smokers might be less prone to catching COVID-19 (although <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/05/417411/smoking-nearly-doubles-rate-covid-19-progression">other evidence</a> suggests smoking makes the disease worse).</p>
<p>The idea of tobacco as protective has a distinguished heritage. Another <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A47218.0001.001?view=toc">treatise of 1665</a> recommends tobacco as “a good Fume against pestilential and infected air”, said to be effective for “All Ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old … either by chewing in the leaf, or smoaking in the Pipe.” On <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/stuart-england/cures-for-the-plague/">June 7 1665</a>, the diarist Samuel Pepys was so unnerved by the sight of an infected house that he bought <a href="http://www.pepys.info/1665/plague.html">“some roll-tobacco to smell and to chew, which took away my apprehension”</a>. It would later be claimed that no tobacconist died during the Great Plague.</p>
<p>Like Trump – but without the benefit of modern science – the bonfire lighters and tobacco chewers grasped the shadow of reality. So did the professors of heat. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fleas carry diseases including the plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Janice Haney Carr via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since 1894 and the identification of the bacillus <em>Yersinia pestis</em>, we have known that bubonic plague was largely transmitted by fleas. Well, certain odours may deter some types of flea. And the bacillus can survive for up to a year given the right combination of warmth and humidity. </p>
<p>What about transmission? Physicians in 1665 struggled with distinct sets of symptoms and chances of survival. How was it that some people developed buboes over many days and had a 25% chance of recovery, while others without evident symptoms suddenly keeled over? </p>
<p>They named the cause “the fatal breath”. <a href="https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp">Pulmonary or pneumonic plague</a>, we say now. It is caught like coronavirus or a common cold: the only form of the disease transmitted directly between people and is 95% deadly.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-defoes-account-of-the-great-plague-of-1665-has-startling-parallels-with-today-135579">Coronavirus: Defoe's account of the Great Plague of 1665 has startling parallels with today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Still, it was not quite as lethal as some people imagined. Defoe’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-defoes-account-of-the-great-plague-of-1665-has-startling-parallels-with-today-135579">A Journal of the Plague Year</a> reports a stubbornly held belief. If a man so infected breathed on a hen, rotten eggs would follow. In really severe cases, the hen would just drop dead.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Design for an amulet to ward off the plague, 17th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The prize for bogus medicine, however, goes to the amulets and other trinkets people of 1665 carried to ward off the plague. Defoe dismisses them as “hellish Charms”, and claims they were often seen hanging round the necks of bodies in the dead carts. He captures their essence in a word the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “deceit, fraud, imposture, trickery”. The word? “Trumpery”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Roberts has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and AdvanceHE. </span></em></p>Bleach to defeat COVID-19 or fire to dispel plague, history is full of quack medicine.David Roberts, Professor of English and National Teaching Fellow, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1265332019-11-07T12:59:18Z2019-11-07T12:59:18ZMeet the raunchy dance teachers who helped shape the modern world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300617/original/file-20191107-10935-aofv3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lords of the dance. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/join_in/using_digital_images/using_digital_images.aspx?asset_id=174824001&objectId=1647493&partId=1">British Museum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Get ready for some romance on the dance floor as the second series of Flirty Dancing kicks off. For those that missed the previous outing, it’s the UK dating show where singletons learn one half of a dance for a week and then perform it with a stranger without saying a word. Viewers are <a href="https://www.channel4.com/4viewers/take-part/flirty-dancing">treated to</a> “just a few intense minutes of beautiful choreography” to see if sparks fly. </p>
<p>Reassuming the role of dancing master is Ashley Banjo of Diversity, the dance troupe that won Britain’s Got Talent in 2009. Flirty Dancing is also weeks away from <a href="https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/jenna-dewan-host-flirty-dancing-fox-dating-show-1203364915/">launching</a> a version in the US, so it looks set to become the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/14/entertainment/gallery/biggest-british-television-exports/index.html">latest</a> major British TV export following other successes like <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dA4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=idols+tv+franchise&source=bl&ots=8uz_FxluGy&sig=ACfU3U0gK8ppX54EvZjkZMNQL8KQVaOZyg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-1rSm_tXlAhURi1wKHcqCBg4Q6AEwDnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=idols%20tv%20franchise&f=false">Pop Idol</a> and <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/06/236671/love-island-cast-season-1-us">Love Island</a>. </p>
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<p>Modern viewers might think of Flirty Dancing as little more than a cross between <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m8dq">Strictly Come Dancing</a> and <a href="https://www.channel5.com/show/blind-date/">Blind Date</a>. But as music historians, we know that the idea of dancing masters – instructors who prepared pupils to dance at balls to find the love of their life – dates back hundreds of years. It is rooted in the 17th- and 18th-century fashion for formal dances as a means to court and marry. </p>
<p>There is a fascinating history of colourful dancing masters, most of them working class, who knew a route up the social ladder when it was staring them in the face. These men endured ridicule from some who sought their services, but they would shape the future in a way that is too often forgotten. </p>
<h2>You shall go to the ball</h2>
<p>Think of the 18th century and it likely conjures up images of BBC period dramas, of grand houses and gloved hands, of Mr Darcy and proper behaviour and peacocks on the lawn. At least for those with the means, it was a time when balls and dances became public events. They spawned the purpose-built assembly rooms that are still found in many of the UK’s cities today. These were the most fashionable places to be seen in the era – often built at great expense to welcome local and visiting gentry. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300606/original/file-20191107-10940-51zcg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pochette violins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pochette.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dances served as a form of speed dating. Just like in Flirty Dancing, many couples would meet on the dance floor for the first time. As one of few opportunities for the sexes to freely mix, it facilitated courting between unfamiliar families or across the class divide. </p>
<p>Dancing masters became the must-have tutors of the era – not only in Britain but across Europe. Dance lessons were mostly held at pupils’ homes rather than dedicated schools, at least until later in the period. Musical accompanists were usually too costly, so dancing masters would often play simple popular tunes on small violins called <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/505410?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=pochette&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1">kits or pochettes</a> – so-called because they would stow the instrument in the long pockets of their coats. </p>
<h2>Devil’s grasshoppers</h2>
<p>Yet if dancing masters were essential, they were not always held in high regard. They were disdained by genteel society for trying to emulate upper-class styles and mannerisms. They developed a reputation for seducing pupils, making many parents wary of inviting them into their homes, and there were many bastardy cases citing dancing masters as the presumed father. </p>
<p>The unease around these working-class men in close proximity to society women is famously documented in the diary of Samuel Pepys, where his suspicions of his wife’s tutor creep to the fore. On Friday, May 15, 1663, just four weeks after lessons began, Pepys <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/05/15/">writes of</a> returning home to find his “wife and the dancing master alone above, not dancing but talking”. Pepys was “so deadly full of jealousy” that he checked to see if his wife “did wear drawers … as she used to do” – though found no evidence of foul play. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300502/original/file-20191106-12481-1jkdbvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grown ladies taught to dance, John Collett c.1768.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3083220&partId=1&searchText=grown+ladies+taught+to+dance&page=1">British Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the words of the satirist Thomas Brown, from 1707, the dancing masters of London <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HXRMAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=%E2%80%98held+in+very+slight+Esteem,+for+the+Gentry+call+them+Leg-Livers,+and+the+Mob+from+their+mighty+Number,+and+their+Nimbleness,+call+them+the+Devil%E2%80%99s+Grass-hoppers%E2%80%99&source=bl&ots=KjMwRW-IGH&sig=ACfU3U11NnyOLZ_5Oaw-jdJ0tai0RqRzXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqp_rbjNblAhWxoFwKHYo8DxAQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%98held%20in%20very%20slight%20Esteem%2C%20for%20the%20Gentry%20call%20them%20Leg-Livers%2C%20and%20the%20Mob%20from%20their%20mighty%20Number%2C%20and%20their%20Nimbleness%2C%20call%20them%20the%20Devil%E2%80%99s%20Grass-hoppers%E2%80%99&f=false">were</a> “held in very slight esteem, for the gentry call them leg-livers, and the mob from their mighty number, and their nimbleness, call them the devil’s grasshoppers”. Edward Ward, a close friend of Brown, went one better in 1722 when he <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/dancing-master-a-satyr-canto-i/oclc/752525770">likened</a> them to “monkeys, baboons, and horrid grinning apes”, and “the dregs and scum of all the Earth”. </p>
<p>The engraving above, Grown Ladies Taught to Dance, shows a dancing master of slight build instructing an elderly and much taller woman, watched by two giggling young girls. In the background, on the wall, you can just make out a painting in which a monkey dancing master is tutoring a cat in a dress. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300505/original/file-20191106-12464-uf2oi4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The enraged dancing master.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=620717&objectId=1674414&partId=1">British Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dancing masters were still the butt of cruel jokes by the early 19th century. The 1803 cartoon opposite depicts a lesson being interrupted by the taxman, who was there to “collect duty on hops in which I’m told you deal very extensively”. To send up dancing masters’ fondness for faux-French mannerisms, this tutor is Frenchified with the replacement of “the” with “de”, as he threatens to make the taxman “hop to de Devils”. </p>
<h2>Pride and prejudice</h2>
<p>Despite their reputation, dancing masters were integral in constructing society as we know it today. They were essential employees of a household, and probably responsible for many marriages and business deals – some possibly highly influential. </p>
<p>One notable example was Abraham Mackintosh, born in Edinburgh in 1769, who made his name in Newcastle in the northeast of England. Mackintosh was particularly successful at schmoozing the well-heeled, shrewdly dedicating his compositions to notable members of society. </p>
<p>He specialised in bringing the latest fashionable dances to Newcastle from London, while taking advantage of the fashion for Scottishness at the turn of the 19th century by mainly publishing tunes in the style of strathspeys and reels. His work is the subject of <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dancing-on-the-tyne-registration-67524356167">an exhibition</a> that we are holding as part of the national <a href="https://beinghumanfestival.org/">Being Human festival</a>, which begins on November 14. </p>
<p>So when we watch Ashley Banjo in action on Flirty Dancing – or indeed the professional dancers that work with the celebrities on Strictly Come Dancing – it is fascinating to reflect on their lineage. The dancing masters who prepared the heirs of the Renaissance for the mating rituals of society balls may not always have got the thanks they deserved, but modern Britain might have looked very different without them. </p>
<p><em>Flirty Dancing starts on Channel 4 on Friday, November 8 at 8pm</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126533/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Butler received a small award from the Being Human festival for the exhibition on Abraham Mackintosh.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Durkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Channel 4 dating show Flirty Dancing is a reminder of the 18th century men who endured endless abuse to get Britain moving.Rachael Durkin, Senior Lecturer in Music, Northumbria University, NewcastleKatherine Butler, Senior Lecturer in Music, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/695972016-12-13T13:20:12Z2016-12-13T13:20:12ZBoxing Day’s journey from Pepys to shopping petitions and parliament<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149836/original/image-20161213-1605-igvqll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=187%2C39%2C3028%2C1763&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-530611384/stock-photo-london-november-16-2016-red-double-decker-bus-reflects-with-twinkling-holiday-lights-as-pedestrians-crowd-the-sidewalks-of-the-oxford-street-shopping-district.html?src=dmkXF9zvAztk6feA5ln1cA-1-46">lazyllama/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>British members of Parliament have been debating whether shops should remain open on Boxing Day. Some 30 or 40 years years ago, shops stayed closed for longer during the holiday season – and on Boxing Day family time was the focus and leftover turkey the star of the show. But in recent years Boxing Day has fired the starting gun for the January sales, created (yet another) key moment in the British retail calendar and forced retail staff into work.</p>
<p>This growing commercialisation has created a backlash. In 2015, a petition on the government’s website to ban shops from opening on Boxing Day gathered a modest 27,525 signatures, but 2016 has seen the campaign gather greater momentum. Two similar petitions have been active this year. The first, also <a href="https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/168524">on the government’s official website</a>, calls for all retailers to close on Boxing Day, claiming: “Some things are needed over the festive period, retail isn’t one of them.” It has received more than 140,000 signatures, easily meeting the required level of support to warrant the parliamentary debate. A similar petition on the website change.org claims has gathered more than 230,000 signatures. </p>
<p>So what is the historical background to Boxing Day and why are we so attached to it? Is it possible that this recent groundswell of support could begin to loosen the grip of consumerism during the Christmas break?</p>
<h2>Pepys show</h2>
<p>The Oxford English Dictionary claims the earliest use of the term “Boxing Day” is from 1830s England. It was “the first weekday after Christmas Day, observed as a holiday on which post-men, errand-boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box”. This relates to a seasonal British custom for tradespeople to collect boxes of money or presents after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. </p>
<p>This is actually linked to an even older English tradition, mentioned by Samuel Pepys’ in <a href="http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/12">a diary entry from December 19, 1663</a>, when servants of the wealthy, who would have to wait on their masters on Christmas Day, were allowed the next day to visit their families. Employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses and sometimes leftover food. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149735/original/image-20161212-26070-1623vaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stony-faced. A statue of Samuel Pepys in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-286600082/stock-photo-a-sculpture-of-english-naval-administrator-and-member-of-parliament-samuel-pepys-situated-outside-guildhall-art-gallery-in-london.html?src=TGnHjtpAaVP3B_BOr6Styg-1-6">chrisdorney/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38286794">2016 parliamentary debate</a> about the modern nature of Boxing Day did not involve a vote and so there will be no immediate change in the law. However it was a chance for MPs to demonstrate whether it is an issue with much parliamentary support. In response to the petitions, the government has said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We do not believe it is for central government to tell businesses how to run their shops or how best to serve their customers. Therefore we are not proposing to ban shops from opening on Boxing Day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even if there is general support in Parliament, I don’t believe the UK government will amend the current trading laws and so prevent large stores from opening on Boxing Day any time soon – for several reasons.</p>
<h2>Ker-ching</h2>
<p>First, and most importantly, the retail sector is a critical part of the UK economy – and in fragile economic times it would be a brave government indeed that took any action that might damage it. Sales in the sector were <a href="http://www.retaileconomics.co.uk/library-retail-stats-and-facts.asp">£339 billion in 2015</a> (generating 5% of the UK’s GDP) and, with almost 3m working in retail, it was the UK’s largest private-sector employer. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149736/original/image-20161212-26077-100qmhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An easy choice for retailers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevensnodgrass/4032258317/in/photolist-79jnV8-ikXzEj-6jqzHA-d2CRcW-9gAKEo-dmJds5-nsUYhB-djkkPw-64fGf6-26o1UE-bk8p1d-8B5H37-5HT19b-79wyWc-e4kDGd-9PSLHY-9DFwT4-5oUxrw-D4X9Tj-79oeK5-fp36U7-tPDeD-8rxdU7-9UE2MU-7AEXhD-79js1K-awFTZS-9D6exc-eMgmMV-pExbhh-9STc7B-p7VcuH-4eoHvk-8Rqdha-BEZn5Z-8B2APk-cghb4Y-qqM6aQ-hcQGS5-qhKf7w-iyZPRT-eMsJD5-6oBB1X-9EkFj1-asraK-aANmED-8N4QJT-aaQ24z-8SXTgm-KZbms">Steve Snodgrass/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is also an important international dimension. The UK’s in-store sales on Boxing Day are boosted by an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/26/shops-prepare-for-busy-boxing-day-as-high-street-sales-commence">influx of foreign shoppers</a>.</p>
<p>The second key factor reflects the radical changes seen in consumer habits as a result of online shopping, a point also acknowledged by the government in its response to previous Boxing Day petitions: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Consumers are now used to the freedom to buy what they need at any time that suits them. The government believes that all businesses should be allowed flexibility to meet their customers’ needs and offer consumers choice about when and how they want to shop. This will help drive competition, productivity and the local economy, as well as helping create jobs</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unsurprisingly, this is a view echoed by the <a href="http://brc.org.uk/about-brc">British Retail Consortium</a> (BRC) the trade association whose members represent 70% of the turnover of the UK retail sector. </p>
<h2>Sacred time</h2>
<p>That leads onto a third factor behind the government’s decision making. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/27/online-christmas-sales-shoppers-new-record-store-frenzy">According to the Guardian</a>, shoppers last year were more willing than ever to interrupt Christmas Day itself for some online bargain hunting.</p>
<p>Online sales in the UK on Dec 25, 2015 <a href="https://www.retail-week.com/analysis/data/high-streets-bounce-back-on-boxing-day-as-shoppers-shun-etailers/7003377.article">were the highest ever</a>, up 21% on 2014 according to web services group PCA Predict – whose founder Jamie Turner highlighted the “convenience of being able to browse online throughout the entire Christmas period to find deals and discounts”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149834/original/image-20161213-1629-1pes2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘No shopping at the dinner table please.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/xelcise/5293566070/in/photolist-4dAaBj-qx37ff-91SDi2-4fAcXE-b3euVx-7pLP7F-ahtBgj-7rE5rV-4cng6D-959mPZ-ahtA7w-94LULw-91bw4E-4cr9Ka-959mhX-968dHH-959jFa-isZ7cj-25EPBF-vK1jd-CuRkzH-7oX4k7">Jamie Henderson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, there is one thing that seems to remain sacred. Experian and online <a href="https://www.imrg.org">retail trade association IMRG</a> reported a dip in online between 1pm and 4pm on Christmas Day as families enjoyed Christmas lunch together (and perhaps even watched the Queen’s speech), then rising again in the evening as people sat down to relax and watch television.</p>
<p>At the heart of this debate lies the fear of missing out. For the government, for retailers and their shareholders, and for millions of bargain-hunting consumers. According to the BRC, the UK retail market is the “<a href="http://brc.org.uk/news/2016/from-shelf-stacker-to-data-scientist/">most competitive in the world</a>” and in that context it becomes almost unimaginable that any large retailers would now make a voluntary decision to close on Boxing Day and so lose sales and market share to rivals.</p>
<p>The British <a href="http://www.retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php">boom in online shopping</a> – the UK has the <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21710271-britons-do-more-their-shopping-online-almost-anyone-else-move-cyberspace?">highest level of penetration in the world</a> – has also brought with it the “click-and-collect” phenomenon. In other words, both parts of the UK retail industry work hand-in-hand – there will be millions of UK consumers who want to order products online over the Christmas holiday period and collect from a store on Boxing Day. More, you have to conclude, than the 140,000 petition signatories who long for a Christmas free from the ringing of the nation’s cash registers (or the sound of clicking on the pay now button).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nelson Blackley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Back in 1663, it was all about staff getting the day off, now it’s all about boosting the coffers of the major stores.Nelson Blackley, Research Associate - National Retail Research Knowledge Exchange Centre, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.