Ripper-Related Victorian Vocabulary

[Trevor Marriott]

I'd dearly love to know how this phrase started. Was slapping and tickling a woman what passed for foreplay in the c19th? I can't say it would get me going!

Helena

Well you can have my jump leads if you are having difficulty. I have never had need of them

[Robert]

Hi Bunny

"Area" is pronounced "airy." When I was a boy I heard a ditty which ran something like :

One, two, three o-lary
My ball's gone down the area
Don't give it to sister Mary
Give it to Charlie Chaplin

You can see an area approx 16 mins into this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybd2KflxtxQ

[Archaic]

Goulston Street "Areas"?

Hi Robert.

I had no idea "area" was pronounced "airy", thanks for posting that.

I was wondering if the recessed spaces that were in front of the site of the Goulston Grafitto in the 1880's would be termed "areas"?

I don't know if they had steps going down or any kind of entry into the building below street level; my impression was that they were created to provide a little daylight for the dark basement-level rooms.

Does anyone know?

Thanks,
Archaic

[Archaic]

Vict. Slang Article: 'Menace, Mayhem, & Moriarty! Crime in Victorian London'

Here's a link to an interesting article called 'Menace, Mayhem, and Moriarty! Crime in Victorian London' by William A. Barton.

It covers a number of crime-related slang terms, including those for prostitutes and various types of criminals. There's also a section on Jack the Ripper.

http://surrey-shore.freeservers.com/VicCrime.htm

Archaic

[Archaic]

News Article: 'Jellied Eels & Slang, Let the Cockney Games Begin'

There's some great Cockney rhyming slang in this recent news article:

http://www.firstpost.com/sports/jellied-eels-and-slang-let-the-cockney-games-begin-384625.htm

Archaic

PS: What do Jellied Eels taste like?

[Cogidubnus]

What do Jellied Eels taste like?

It's a three-part confection consisting an inedible hard piece of bone, (the eel's spine) surrounded by the eel itself with a flat, slightly muddy almost metallic fishy taste, then the jelly which is (to my taste anyhow) just slightly fishy...

They are, I would say, very much an acquired taste, but at one time I had an almost endless free supply (oh the advantages of having four daughters who dated interesting men, this one a sea-food vendor who often brought home the days surplus!) I've grown to love them...

All the best

Dave

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

It's a three-part confection consisting an inedible hard piece of bone, (the eel's spine) surrounded by the eel itself with a flat, slightly muddy almost metallic fishy taste, then the jelly which is (to my taste anyhow) just slightly fishy..

.

Wow-and where does the jelly come from ? I mean, I have made jelly from boiling up a pig's head several times and filtering the liquid and then cooling it...how do you make 'eel jelly' ? (just in case I ever invite you round to my place...! ).

[Archaic]

[QUOTE=Rubyretro;230001]

...how do you make 'eel jelly' ? (just in case I ever invite you round to my place...! ).

Hi Ruby.

Will you be making your famous Peanut Butter and Eel Jelly sandwiches?

Hmm, the consistency of that combo might require a beverage to wash it down with... Like whiskey, or maybe a shot of drain-cleaner.

Archaic

[Rubyretro]

Will you be making your famous Peanut Butter and Eel Jelly sandwiches?

Not at all, Bunny.

I was going for the rather more staid recipé of sticking it on top of some stale
biscuits steeped in the ends of yesterday's party, a can of tinned peaches, a bit of that whippy pressurised 'cream' ET VOILA !

(how does THAT sound to you, Dave ?).

[Cogidubnus]

Slightly less palatable than the eels!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellied_eels

Dave

[Archaic]

"Dead Certain", etc.

An explanation of the slang term "dead", as in "dead certain", from an 1889 dictionary:

Death is a natural metaphor for completeness, for exhaustion or exhaustiveness; dead is a common prefix, expressing the same idea in "dead on," "dead-nuts," "dead certain," "dead beat," "dead heat."

Dead right!
Archaic

[Archaic]

"Dead To Rights" = Detective Speech

1889 dictionary:

Dead to rights (police slang), employed by detectives when they have quite convicted a criminal, and he is positively guilty. "I've got him dead to rights." It is often employed in a more general sense to indicate certainty of success. It seems to have originated in America.

[martin wilson]

Victorian Slang.

This caught my eye in The Victorian Dictionary, from All The Year Round,October 17 1874.
Kidney; Of the same kidney i.e. alike,resemblant.
All the best

[Cogidubnus]

Dead Reckoning

Beware the (controversial and at times heated) "dead reckoning" debate...As "dead reckoning" was used in navigational terms as early as the 17th Century (and deduced reckoning can only be factually referenced back to the early 1930s) most people reckon the origin is a comparison of positions deduced by currents/speed of sailing from a theoretical object laying dead in the water...

With landsmen assuming it related to complete accuracy (it didn't - just the nearest they could get before Harrison's horological work) it could indirectly be the origin of all the other "dead" phrases above!

Dave

[Archaic]

"Of The Same Kidney" + Kate's Kidney = "One Dead Whore Is the Same As Another"?

Hi Martin.

Thank you for that contribution, it's a really good one!

'All The Year Round' was published by Charles Dickens. Here's the full entry from All the Year Round, 1875:

Kidney.—Of the same kidney, i.e. alike, resemblant. "Two of a kidney," says the Slang Dictionary, "means two persons of a sort, or as like each other as two peas, or two kidneys in a bunch." Gaelic, ceudna (pronounced kidna), identical, the same, similar. Ceudnachd, similarity.



- Perhaps by mailing Kate's kidney to George Lusk the killer was making the symbolic statement "They're all the same",
i.e. "One dead whore is the same as another"?

Best regards,
Archaic