The lost pocket

Lucy Locket lost her pocket
Kitty Fisher found it
Not a penny was there in it
Only ribbon round it.

As a child that little rhyme always puzzled me, how could someone lose their pocket? I'm not sure who explained to me that the pocket was a little bag, but until the other week I didn't really understand – then I found these . . . pockets.


The smallest one is obviously a child's, it is hand stitched – do you think it might have been made in a school needlework lesson? The larger white cotton pocket is machine stitched and is made from very sturdy fabric and the black one is very carefully constructed from smooth cotton satin – I wonder who wore that under their coat or skirt?


Lucy Locket and Kitty Fisher. In nursery rhyme books they are sweet little girls in long dresses and neat white pinafores. Old rhymes are often based on real incidents, was there a Lucy Locket who lost her pocket? did a girl called Kitty Fisher find it and keep it?

The true story turns out to be highly inappropriate for young children! In the 1760s, Lucy Locket was a bar maid at The Cock pub in Fleet Street. She dumped one of her lovers after she'd spent most of his money; Catherine 'Kitty' Fisher, a celebrity courtesan 'picked him up', it didn't matter that he was pennyless, it was good enough that he was good looking!

Catherine Maria Fisher's portrait was painted by Nathaniel Hone, it's now in the National Portrait Gallery; and look, next to her is a kitty fisher! The window reflected in the goldfish bowl shows a crowd of people looking in watching her – the price of being a celebrity call-girl!

© National Portrait Gallery, London

In 1766 Kitty Fisher married retired MP John Norris, but only four months later she caught smallpox and tragically died. She is buried in the Norris family crypt in the village church at Benenden in Kent.

Etymology and pinnies

APRON
The protective garment was once known as
a "napron." from the French "naperon"
which in modern French means
a napkin. However there was a
process in English of the "n" moving
from the article "an" to the noun
and "a napron" became "an apron."

I find that etymological fact both pleasing and amusing, so I thought I'd share it with you. It also gives me an excuse to show you a collection of vintage aprons/naprons/pinnies or what you will, which have come into my possession (long story far too complicated to bore you all with here).

They were a bit grubby, so I flung them in the washing machine . . . and here comes a word of warning, a lesson I have learnt and will now pass on my wisdom to you: if you wash ten aprons together the strings form a knot of amazing complexity!


Once I had untangled them (and this took a while)
I hung them up to dry . . .


I think some were bought, others home-made; the fabrics look as though they date from the 1960s and 1970s. Here's a gallery of the designs . . . aren't they jolly! Some need a few stitches here and there, then I'll have to decide what to do with them.




By the way, there are other "n" words that by a process called junctural metanalysis became transformed into the English words we use today: a nadder became an adder; a nauger became an auger; a numpire became an umpire and a norange became an orange*.

Here endeth today's lesson.
xx


*I admit that the evidence for "a norange" is a tad hazy – however it does come from the Arabic – "nāranj"