The trade signs of Essex : a popular account of the origin and meanings of the public house & other signs now or formerly found in the county of Essex / by Miller Christy.

  • Miller Christy
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The trade signs of Essex : a popular account of the origin and meanings of the public house & other signs now or formerly found in the county of Essex / by Miller Christy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the old-fashioned pictorial sign-board is to be regretted for many reasons. The signs which our forefathers made use of have interwoven themselves with our whole domestic, and even, to some extent, with our political, history. In losing them we are losing one of the well-known landmarks of the past. Sign-boards of the real old sort have about them an amount of interest which is sufficient to surprise those who care to take trouble in studying them. Dr. Brewer very truly says, in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:—“Much of a nation’s history, and more of its manners and feelings, may be gleaned from its public-house signs.” The sign- boards themselves tell us (as has already been pointed out) of the habit our forefathers had of crowding together in one street or district all those who were of a like occupation or profession. They tell us also of the deep ignorance of the masses of the people in days when sign-boards were a neces- sity. And when it is remembered that it was only so lately as the beginning of the present century that the knowledge of reading and writing became sufficiently widespread to allow the numbering of houses to come into general use as a means of distinguishing one house from another, it will be easily seen that the sign-boards of (say) two centuries ago played a very important, and even an essential, part in the commercial world of those days. But a study of the various devices that appear even on modern sign-boards will teach us still more of the doings of our ancestors. They tell us of the wares our forefathers made and dealt in, of the superstitious beliefs they held, of the party strifes in which they engaged, and of the great titled families which had so large a share in the making of English history—in short, the devices seen, even on modern sign-boards, afford, to those who can and care to read them, no mean picture both of mediaeval and more modern times. It was well remarked in an early number of the Gentleman's Magazine (1738, vol. viii. p. 526), that “ The People of England are a nation of Politicians, from the First Minister down to the cobbler, and peculiarly remarkable for hanging out their principles upon their sign-posts.” Some of our
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