by Daniel Pool
Morning room, Windsor Castle.
muff—A popular women’s accessory among the upper and middle classes for keeping the hands warm.
muffin man—A street vendor known for the bell he carried. At the unruly Eatanswill elections in Pickwick the mayor loftily calls for silence and instructs the crier to call for it, too. “In obedience to this command the crier performed another concerto on the bell, whereupon a gentleman in the crowd called out ‘muffins’; which occasioned another laugh.”
mull—To mull wine or another beverage was to stick a red-hot poker into it after it had had sweetening and spices added.
muslin—One of the finest kinds of cotton. It was very thin and was the favorite material for dresses in Jane Austen’s day. The more daring girls wore them with damped down chemises underneath. It was very popular for the first few decades of the century.
mute—A person hired to come to a funeral and mourn.
mutton—The flesh of sheep. Sheep, it should be emphasized, are grown-up lamb. Hence their meat was apt not to be as tender as lamb.
My Lord—The correct form of address to bishops of the Church of England and any peer below the rank of duke, as well as a lord mayor and certain judges.
nankeen—A yellowish kind of cotton originally made in China or imitations of it. Named after the port of Nanking in China.
national school—A misleading term. The name national schools makes them sound like government institutions but they were actually schools set up by the Church of England’s National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales that was founded in 1811, their purpose being to teach children to read the Bible. Along the way, however, the society’s schools became the main source of primary education for the lower classes in England and started receiving government subsidies in the 1830s. Thereafter they were for many years the almost exclusive providers of education for those who were not well-to-do. Tess Durbeyfield, we are told, attended a national school and passed her “standards,” which is one reason she no longer speaks only the dialect.
nave—The main, lengthwise axis of the church, along which the congregation entered, facing the altar. The eastern end of the nave was called the chancel.
navy list—The list of officers in the navy.
navvy—The laborers who worked on the building of the canals in the early 1800s were called inland navigators. When they later went to work on the railroads, the nickname “navvy” stuck. They were the most skilled of railroad workers and tackled the roughest and most dangerous jobs. They also had a reputation as somewhat colorful dressers.
negus—Colonel Francis Negus cooked up this drink, which consisted of sugar mixed with water and a wine such as sherry or port. Apparently, a popular drink for balls and dances.
net—A favorite material for making mittens, it looked like what it sounds like, i.e., a net of tiny ropes. Net was used in various parts of dress and ladies seemed to have “worked” at it in their spare time.
newel—The central column around which a circular staircase wound. The newel post was the post at the bottom of the stairs from which a banister ascended.
Newgate Prison—For years the main (and perhaps most formidable) prison in London, the site of public executions and the place where condemned criminals, e.g., Fagin in Oliver Twist, spent their last hours. It connected with the Old Bailey by a passageway, and on the Sundays before executions it was the custom in the early part of the century for a sermon to be preached in the prison chapel at which the condemned was seated next to his coffin, the public—until 1826—being charged a shilling a head to attend this edifying spectacle.
Newgate Calendar—In the late 1700s biographies of some of Newgate Prison’s more notorious inmates began to appear. Newgate Calendar was the name given to their issuance in collected form.
Making net, or netting.
nightjar—The “goatsucker,” a night bird of somewhat sinister reputation and appearance—under one name it was known as the “lich” or “corpse” bird—that made a kind of whirring sound.
nob—Someone with a good deal of status. Used often in conjunction with “snob,” in the sense snob initially had of someone of no status or pretensions.
nobility—A somewhat loose term, but used generally to refer to the peerage, sometimes with a correlative reference to the “gentry.”
“nolo episcopari”—Literally, “I do not want to become a bishop” When chosen bishop one was supposed to make this reply at least twice, and the post was supposed to be pressed upon one at least three times. The third time one was supposed to keep one’s mouth shut and accept the post unless one really did not want the job in which case one said “nolo episcopari” a third time and was not made a bishop.
nonconformists—The nonconformists were the Protestant sects like the Quakers and the Unitarians and the Baptists and the Methodists outside the Church of England who did not “conform” to the teachings of the Church of England. They could not hold office in a borough until 1828, they could not get an Oxford or Cambridge degree until the 1850s and they had to pay local church rates to support the local Church of England parish church’s upkeep even in the 1860s. Sometimes, the term was used as a synonym for “Dissenters,” although a distinction between the two is sometimes made on the grounds that dissenters also sought the disestablishment of the Church of England.
normal school—One that trained teachers.
note of hand—A promissory note.
nullifidian—A nonbeliever.
nursemaid—A girl, usually in her teens, hired to look after the young children in a household, dressing them, feeding them, exercising them, and so forth. Often believed to be a target for amorous policemen or soldiers since nursemaids alone of female servants were assured of getting out of the house each day when they took their young charges for an airing in the park.
nursery—A special room in well-to-do homes in which children from infancy until the age of about three or four played and ate. Jane Eyre sleeps there—age ten—at the beginning of her eponymous novel. “In first-rate homes,” said a contemporary source, “a room may be attached, to serve as a place for cooking the babies’ food, and washing and drying their clothes, and washing and bathing all the children.”
oakum—The tarred strands of which ropes were composed. In prisons it was deemed a suitably mindless and pointless punishment to put people to work picking oakum apart, which, given its tarry condition, was not such an easy task. The resulting substance would then theoretically be used to caulk ships, except that after a certain point in the 1800s ships were no longer caulked this way. The prison task went on anyway. Workhouses also favored this endeavor—Oliver Twist is set to work in the workhouse picking oakum.
oatcake—In Scotland, Ireland, and the northern parts of England, one is not surprised that of the corns, wheat and barley did the poorest while oats did the best. Consequently, Mr. Lockwood finds in the kitchen parlor “a frame of wood laden with oatcakes” when he enters Wuthering Heights.
oil light—Whale oil was used for street lighting in London until the early 1800s, when it began to be replaced by coal gas. Oil lights were apparently less bright than gas.
oilskin—A cloth treated with oil to make it waterproof. Used as floor covering or raingear.
offices—The kitchen or stables or other parts of a large house where the work of the household was done—as opposed to the bedrooms, dining room, etc., lived in by the family.
Old—See Old Style.
Old Bailey—See bailey.
Old Style—The way of reckoning dates before 1752, when the English switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and permanently “lost” eleven days. (Thursday, September 14, 1752, came the day after Wednesday, September 2, 1752.) Nothing else changed, e.g., the day of the year on which a quarter day fell. Thus, Lady Day would have fallen on March 25 both in 1751 and in 1753. But when Tess of the d’Urbervilles makes reference to “
Old Lady Day,” occurring in the 1890s, it means April 6 under the New Style, i.e., where the Old Style March 25 would fall plus the eleven days needed to bring it into line with New Style reckoning.
ombre—An old-fashioned (even in 1800) card game played by three players. Only forty cards were used; the 8s, 9s, and 10s were omitted from play.
omnibus—The forerunner of the bus, only it was pulled by horses. The first one appeared in London in 1829 and soon there were large numbers of them as the city grew and commuters found them a convenient way to get around. They ran fixed routes, were generally small and cramped inside, and had floors strewn with hay. Their conductors were known colloquially as “cads.” The first ones carried about twenty-two passengers; by the 1880s a circular staircase leading up to the roof had been added, and they carried twelve inside and fourteen on top. There were about 1,500 omnibuses in London by 1850.
operative—A factory or mill worker.
opium—A bitter-tasting, pain-killing drug made out of the juice of poppies.
Opposition—The party that was not running the national government at the moment. Opposition members sat on benches across the aisle in the House of Commons from the members of the party in power.
orange girl, orange woman—Among the poorest of the London street sellers, they were often young girls. The capital required to get started was very little—fifty oranges could be bought in the early 1860s for 15d. to 18d. Oranges were more of a treat then than now—the price went up a good deal at Christmas and in May during the peak season for fairs and races.
orderly—A military term. The orderly was a private or a noncommissioned officer who carried messages for a higher officer.
orders—To take orders was to become a clergyman in the Church of England. The church consisted of three orders—deacons, priests, and bishops.
ordinary—A place to eat where meals at a fixed price were served.
oriel—A sort of bay window on the upper floor of a building.
ormolu—From the French word for gold. A piece of furniture or similar item made to look like gold through the use of gold leaf or a substance resembling gold.
osier—A willow tree whose twigs or branches could be woven into baskets.
ostler—Also spelled “hostler,” which see.
ottoman—Not usually a footstool but rather a proto sofa from the early 1800s that was like an upholstered bench, generally with no arms or back.
ouzel—The name of two different birds. The ring ouzel was a blackbird with white on its chest that frequented moors and mountain areas. The water ouzel was a wren that liked mountain brooks and had coloring similar to the ring ouzel.
out—See come out.
outdoor relief—The name given to any official means of helping the poor (Christmas turkeys, a dole, etc.) that kept them from becoming workhouse inmates, i.e., that kept them outside the doors of the workhouse. The most controversial outdoor relief was the so-called Speenhamland system, where the poorhouse authorities paid the difference between local farm wages and a living wage. Outcry against this resulted in the oppressive Poor Law of 1834 to which Oliver Twist was subjected.
outhouse—Any detached building that was part of a complex surrounding a dwelling.
outside—An outside was someone who rode on the outside of a stagecoach, which was generally cheaper than the inside, but, of course, exposed to the elements.
overseers—Short for overseers of the poor. These were the people in a parish chosen annually by the justice of the peace to look after the poor. The New Poor Law of 1834 replaced them with a board of guardians, e.g., the “board” before which poor Oliver Twist is brought at the beginning of his adventures.
Oxford Movement—A movement at Oxford University in the 1830s and 1840s led by John Keble and E.B. Pusey, among others, who published religious tracts (the movement was also called the Tractarian Movement) setting forth their view of the need for the church to return to first, i.e., semi-Catholic, principles. John Henry Newman did become a Catholic subsequently. They were the epitome of High Church. Oxford specialized in the training of Tory clergy during this period—it was not an illogical place for such a movement to originate.
packet—A ship carrying mail regularly from one place to another and also, sometimes, passengers.
packman—A peddler, usually carrying ladies’ goods like linen and cotton in his pack.
paddock—A horse pasture. Also, in racing, a place where the horses and their jockeys gathered prior to the race.
page—A boy hired to run errands and answer the door and serve generally as a junior-grade footman.
palace—The name given to the residence of a bishop of the Church of England. The archbishop of Canterbury lived in Lambeth Palace, across the Thames from Westminster.
Pall Mall—A fancy street in the West End of London, notable for being the site of many fashionable clubs. It was named after a French game resembling croquet that was at one time played on Pall Mall.
palsy—Any kind of paralysis, including those like Parkinson’s, which could produce shaking.
panels—The square or rectangular pieces of raised or sunken wood set in an old-fashioned wall.
pannier—A large round basket that was slung on either side of a horse to carry goods to market.
pannikin—A little metal drinking cup, usually made of iron.
pantalettes—Undergarments in the form of long pants worn mostly by little girls from the 1820s through the 1850s, the frilled bottoms of the pants descending below the level of skirt and petticoats so as to be visible.
pantaloon—The name for the pants that were worn, beginning in the early 1800s, in competition first with breeches and then with tights. The name was later shortened in the United States to pants.
pantomime—A favorite theatrical diversion, beloved of children, especially at Christmas. It combined music, dancing, drama, and all sorts of things, with elaborate costumes, and at the end there was always a broad comic routine involving Harlequin, Columbine, the old man (Pantaloon), and the clown.
pantry—A place for storing food that wouldn’t go bad rapidly. The butler’s pantry was the place where the “plate” was kept, often in a locked safe.
paraphernalia—Things like jewelry and clothing. Virtually alone of a woman’s possessions, they did not become her husband’s property when she married.
parish—The local unit of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Church of England. Also—sometimes coterminous with this religious unit and sometimes not—a unit of local government administration dating back at least to Elizabethan days whose officials were responsible to the local justice of the peace for relief of the poor, maintaining law and order, keeping the local roads repaired, and seeing that church property was kept up. The parish officials charged with these duties were the constable, the overseers of the poor, the surveyor of highways, and the churchwardens. There was generally a parish workhouse, too; Oliver Twist was actually subtitled The Parish Boy’s Progress. To be “on the parish” meant to need poor relief.
park—The term park originally denoted a fenced-in area containing deer. By the early 1800s it meant an enclosed area—sometimes several square miles in extent—with trees and lawns and sometimes sheep or deer, kept primarily for purposes of the sublime view and grandeur rather than profit or cultivation. Mansfield Park is, of course, the story of one such environment, where, as sometimes happened, the name was given to the entire estate. Parks were favorites of the gentry. Some of their estates, e.g., Thrushcross Grange, incorporated a park without its being reflected in the name of the estate.
Park Lane—The ritziest street address in London. Park Lane was the street in Mayfair that ran along the eastern border of Hyde Park.
Parliament—The House of Commons and the House of Lords.
parlor—The formal or “best” room in a modest home. In a grander home, it seems to have been either a sitting room or a formal room for company, a little more impressive than a sitting room, perhaps not as
grand as a drawing room. In a tavern, the parlor as compared with the taproom was usually the room for the more upper-class traveler or drinker.
parlormaid—A sort of substitute for the butler, she was hired in families that couldn’t afford or didn’t want such a male servant. Often hired for her appearance—and therefore reputedly quite pretty. She answered the door and waited on table as a butler would have in a grander household.
parson—Another name, sometimes affectionate or mildly contemptuous, for the local parish rector or vicar. Also, a dissenting or nonconformist cleric.
parterre—An area in a garden with different-size plots of flowers connected by various walkways and paths.
pasteboard—Basically cardboard. Calling cards were made from it, and pasteboard was sometimes used as a slang term for visiting card.
pastille—A little roll that could be set afire to disinfect or fumigate a room. Also a small sweet lozengelike object, sometimes medicinal in nature.
pastor—A minister.
pastry cook—A shop that sold pastries, but it also often had tables at which customers could eat ices and sip wine as well or have soups and other light food.
patent—The monarch sometimes gave something to one of his subjects with a “letter patent,” that is, a letter that was open, available for the whole world to see, as opposed to a “closed” letter. Hence, a “patent of nobility” was a royal grant of noble status of which the whole kingdom was made aware. The “patent” of an invention was the grant of a right to an invention.
patience—The card game of solitaire.
patron—A person who had the right to appoint a clergyman to a living.
pattens—What women wore on their shoes in Jane Austen’s day to keep them from getting muddy or wet in the great outdoors. Pattens were little circular rings strapped on under the shoes to raise the foot up a few inches out of the mud or slush. They ceased to be fashionable with the quality by mid-century, but continued to be used in the country. There are not infrequent references to the racket they could make on city pavements when it was wet out. David Copperfield is transported by an evening at the theater and exits only to find he has “come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.” In 1850, Kensington Gardens was apparently off-limits to “servants in livery, women in pattens or dogs.”