DOI issue:
January 10, 1857
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16619#0028
20
PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[January 10, 1857.
A BOARD ON ITS BEAM ENDS.
The local Board of Health at Rotherliam, in the West
Riding, has been labouring with more zeal than discretion
in their sanitary operations, having spent upwards of
£40,000, incurred debts, become insolvent, and had their
works seized by their creditors, on whose mere will and
pleasure now depends the water supply, and nearly all
the drainage of the town. The venturous energy of the
board, as originally constituted, may be estimated from the
following statement:—
" The execution of the works was pressed on with -vigour, and trie
Board required that private property should be simultaneously
drained into the public sewers. They were, indeed, so urgent on
this latter point, that they undertook to execute the private drainage
through their own contractors for a very small per-centage above
the actual cost."
This readiness to sacrifice themselves and their own
contractors for the pubbc weal redounds greatly to the
credit of the Rotherham Board of Health; but how the
contractors relished the idea of being made use or as the
channels through which the drainage was to be accom-
plished, may admit of doubt. If the contractors meant
were Indian-rubber tubes, that alters the matter, and also
the marvel of then- application to the specified purpose.
To these remarks we would add the suggestion, that if the
Rotherham Board of Health has been going too fast with
the drainage of their town, the error is less culpable and
less common than going too slow.
A very 111 Weed.
It seems that if you desire to smoke—who does not ?—
in a railway carriage in the north of England, the only
answer you need make to remonstrance is, "I'm a
Bowton Bleacher." Porters Guards, Station Masters, and
all other officials recoil at this announcement. A Bolton
Bleacher understands nothing, listens to nothing, and
does as he pleases. Could anybody oblige us with a
si riilar pass-word for the South*? We tMnk, in coirmlrment
Old Mr. Wiggles tries his new Sewing Machine, and finds his Garments espe'.ia,,*^ to Lord Hastings, of trying " I'm* a Country
throw out Buttons in a very indiscriminate Manner. . Justice."
WHO IS TO STAND IT ?
The Times opened the new year with an eloquent sermon ou the
hollowness of outside show, with a pathetic appeal to the latent love
of truth and simplicity lurking, haply, in the British bosom. Let us—
cried our- monitors—no longer be impostors to one another and to our-
selves. Let us appear in our naked truthfulness, and be not ashamed!
Let not £500 per annum puff, and strain and swell to seem as big as
£1000, and burst in the endeavour. Let us five fife as a daily truth,
and not dress it up in flaunting fiction. The homily, the exhortation
was very noble. Well, will the women begin ? Will they reform their
milliners' bills—will they collapse to something like the tangible
dimensions of " femininitie ?" Seriously, they owe us something.
Seeing that all future milliners were even in the pips of that apple,
seeing that when Adam first put his teeth into that tremendous pippin,
he let loose upon futurity clouds of milliners—flocks of tailors, flocks
more multitudinous than flocks of northern wild geese the women
aught to begin the work of retrenchment, and further ought to subside
into the span of a fan armfull.
Yet how is it with them ? How is it with the delicate creatures at
this present opening of 1857 P A woman is hooped with iron like a
oeer-butt; being at the same time of thrice the circumference. When
she has not outer supplementary ribs of steel, there are the osseous
remains of leviathan weltering in many a rood of surrounding whale-
bone. And then to read the monthly manifesto issued to women—to
Englishwomen—from imperial Erance; and to reflect upon the haste,
("he ardour with which they hurry to obey the edict! We are invaded
by the needles of Erench milliners, and again we ask, on the part of
husbands and fathers,—who is to stand it ?
^ Let us glance at the affiche posted up in Vanity Eair for January.
Even as the Chinamen peruse the imperial edict, we read and tremble.
First, we are told that—" The casaque-jupe is still the most fashionable
style." That is the process of inflation still continues, and feminine
balloons are still up in the world. We come to shawls, about which
the daughters of Eve—think of Eve at ike Fountain, and Eve, a
laughter of Eve, in a casaque-jupe, with circumvallations of steel and
whalebone about Paradise—are all of them amiably mad.
"T1\e furor of the present season is the long double shawls, in stripes of bright ron-
■rastvng colours, with black or gold borders, and deep fringe the colour of the ground."
Here is a shawl, or pall, to hide a multitude of vamties; a shawL in
fact, crying loud, and fitly heralding a Dalilah ; but surely not a
shawl for our own gentle, timid Mary Anne ; nevertheless, Mary
Anne will do her best, that she may obey the manifesto, and don the
stripes !
The new sortie de bal is enough to make even the sixpences shake in
the husband's pocket.
"We cite one of white cachmere, entirely covered with embroidery of floss silk, in
China rose, blue, and black, mixed with gold and silver—the design and mixture of
colour displaying great novelty and elegance. a fringe of the same colours, spotted
with gold and siloei, surrounded this graceful cloak, which was made in large plaits,
forming sleeves, aud descending in points in front. a small high collar, slightly
turned back, and fastened at the throat with two large gold bwtons, from which hung
two long tassels of silk and gold, completed this elegant pardessus."
Is not this a sortie de bal for Queen Sheba, with the mines of
Ophir for her pin-money ? Nevertheless, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Jones,
and Mrs. Robinson will have a good womanly struggle to achieve
something like a sortie. If the real gold be not obtainable, they must
trypinchbeck.
We end with the mantle—a mantle "trimmed with a rich medallion
fringe ; " a mantle only to be worn by Cleopatra, with a regal mono-
poly of the pearl fisheries.
" Nothing can be more distingue and elegant than this embroidery, which resem-
bles rivers of pearls on the rich shades of ruby, purple, sapphire blue, or emerald
green. We have seen tthe same style of embroidery used with great effect on the
flounces of moire dresses."
Rivers of pearls ! Mines of diamonds will doubtless duly come in
for the mantle of February. Again we ask—who is to stand it ? _ Are
we never again to see a compassable woman in the sweet simplicity of
white musbn ? A woman whose figure defies steel, and who makes no
whalebones of herself ?
Tewkesbury and Glasgow.
Mr. Humphrey Brown is about to vacate Tewkesbury. When
may Glasgow count upon the same favour at the hands of Mr. Mac-
gregor? Or is it that Scotland is so fond of the term "British" in
preference to "English," that even a dirty tumble on a British Bank
makes a Glasgow member all the sweeter for his seat ?
PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[January 10, 1857.
A BOARD ON ITS BEAM ENDS.
The local Board of Health at Rotherliam, in the West
Riding, has been labouring with more zeal than discretion
in their sanitary operations, having spent upwards of
£40,000, incurred debts, become insolvent, and had their
works seized by their creditors, on whose mere will and
pleasure now depends the water supply, and nearly all
the drainage of the town. The venturous energy of the
board, as originally constituted, may be estimated from the
following statement:—
" The execution of the works was pressed on with -vigour, and trie
Board required that private property should be simultaneously
drained into the public sewers. They were, indeed, so urgent on
this latter point, that they undertook to execute the private drainage
through their own contractors for a very small per-centage above
the actual cost."
This readiness to sacrifice themselves and their own
contractors for the pubbc weal redounds greatly to the
credit of the Rotherham Board of Health; but how the
contractors relished the idea of being made use or as the
channels through which the drainage was to be accom-
plished, may admit of doubt. If the contractors meant
were Indian-rubber tubes, that alters the matter, and also
the marvel of then- application to the specified purpose.
To these remarks we would add the suggestion, that if the
Rotherham Board of Health has been going too fast with
the drainage of their town, the error is less culpable and
less common than going too slow.
A very 111 Weed.
It seems that if you desire to smoke—who does not ?—
in a railway carriage in the north of England, the only
answer you need make to remonstrance is, "I'm a
Bowton Bleacher." Porters Guards, Station Masters, and
all other officials recoil at this announcement. A Bolton
Bleacher understands nothing, listens to nothing, and
does as he pleases. Could anybody oblige us with a
si riilar pass-word for the South*? We tMnk, in coirmlrment
Old Mr. Wiggles tries his new Sewing Machine, and finds his Garments espe'.ia,,*^ to Lord Hastings, of trying " I'm* a Country
throw out Buttons in a very indiscriminate Manner. . Justice."
WHO IS TO STAND IT ?
The Times opened the new year with an eloquent sermon ou the
hollowness of outside show, with a pathetic appeal to the latent love
of truth and simplicity lurking, haply, in the British bosom. Let us—
cried our- monitors—no longer be impostors to one another and to our-
selves. Let us appear in our naked truthfulness, and be not ashamed!
Let not £500 per annum puff, and strain and swell to seem as big as
£1000, and burst in the endeavour. Let us five fife as a daily truth,
and not dress it up in flaunting fiction. The homily, the exhortation
was very noble. Well, will the women begin ? Will they reform their
milliners' bills—will they collapse to something like the tangible
dimensions of " femininitie ?" Seriously, they owe us something.
Seeing that all future milliners were even in the pips of that apple,
seeing that when Adam first put his teeth into that tremendous pippin,
he let loose upon futurity clouds of milliners—flocks of tailors, flocks
more multitudinous than flocks of northern wild geese the women
aught to begin the work of retrenchment, and further ought to subside
into the span of a fan armfull.
Yet how is it with them ? How is it with the delicate creatures at
this present opening of 1857 P A woman is hooped with iron like a
oeer-butt; being at the same time of thrice the circumference. When
she has not outer supplementary ribs of steel, there are the osseous
remains of leviathan weltering in many a rood of surrounding whale-
bone. And then to read the monthly manifesto issued to women—to
Englishwomen—from imperial Erance; and to reflect upon the haste,
("he ardour with which they hurry to obey the edict! We are invaded
by the needles of Erench milliners, and again we ask, on the part of
husbands and fathers,—who is to stand it ?
^ Let us glance at the affiche posted up in Vanity Eair for January.
Even as the Chinamen peruse the imperial edict, we read and tremble.
First, we are told that—" The casaque-jupe is still the most fashionable
style." That is the process of inflation still continues, and feminine
balloons are still up in the world. We come to shawls, about which
the daughters of Eve—think of Eve at ike Fountain, and Eve, a
laughter of Eve, in a casaque-jupe, with circumvallations of steel and
whalebone about Paradise—are all of them amiably mad.
"T1\e furor of the present season is the long double shawls, in stripes of bright ron-
■rastvng colours, with black or gold borders, and deep fringe the colour of the ground."
Here is a shawl, or pall, to hide a multitude of vamties; a shawL in
fact, crying loud, and fitly heralding a Dalilah ; but surely not a
shawl for our own gentle, timid Mary Anne ; nevertheless, Mary
Anne will do her best, that she may obey the manifesto, and don the
stripes !
The new sortie de bal is enough to make even the sixpences shake in
the husband's pocket.
"We cite one of white cachmere, entirely covered with embroidery of floss silk, in
China rose, blue, and black, mixed with gold and silver—the design and mixture of
colour displaying great novelty and elegance. a fringe of the same colours, spotted
with gold and siloei, surrounded this graceful cloak, which was made in large plaits,
forming sleeves, aud descending in points in front. a small high collar, slightly
turned back, and fastened at the throat with two large gold bwtons, from which hung
two long tassels of silk and gold, completed this elegant pardessus."
Is not this a sortie de bal for Queen Sheba, with the mines of
Ophir for her pin-money ? Nevertheless, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Jones,
and Mrs. Robinson will have a good womanly struggle to achieve
something like a sortie. If the real gold be not obtainable, they must
trypinchbeck.
We end with the mantle—a mantle "trimmed with a rich medallion
fringe ; " a mantle only to be worn by Cleopatra, with a regal mono-
poly of the pearl fisheries.
" Nothing can be more distingue and elegant than this embroidery, which resem-
bles rivers of pearls on the rich shades of ruby, purple, sapphire blue, or emerald
green. We have seen tthe same style of embroidery used with great effect on the
flounces of moire dresses."
Rivers of pearls ! Mines of diamonds will doubtless duly come in
for the mantle of February. Again we ask—who is to stand it ? _ Are
we never again to see a compassable woman in the sweet simplicity of
white musbn ? A woman whose figure defies steel, and who makes no
whalebones of herself ?
Tewkesbury and Glasgow.
Mr. Humphrey Brown is about to vacate Tewkesbury. When
may Glasgow count upon the same favour at the hands of Mr. Mac-
gregor? Or is it that Scotland is so fond of the term "British" in
preference to "English," that even a dirty tumble on a British Bank
makes a Glasgow member all the sweeter for his seat ?