Mind your language
YOUR suggestions as to the origin of the term spend a penny have poured in, but I cannot say that all of you have really been concentrating. The problem I set was a reference to the act taken from an 18th- century letter; yet more than one reader has suggested that spending a penny derived from the similarity of the noise made by throwing down a small coin. Well, I remember the British pre-decimal penny, and it was by no means a small coin; 18th-century pennies were even big- ger, and if you dropped one it would not make a tinkling sound.
By chance I came across an 18th-cen- tury usage of a similar term which helps in a way, but adds a new difficulty. First, may I give the context of the original citation? It comes in a letter from the Bishop of Elphin in Ireland to his daughter, dated 28 July 1747: 'I am glad that you and Mrs Jourdan are to begin with Spaa Water. I hope it will agree with you. You may, manage so as that it may not interfare with your Exer- cise or Amusement. Should it so hap- pen, you may spend your penny near town, as you us'd to do on the road.'
It is fairly clear what is meant, but it is useful to add that the good bishop cau- tioned his daughter not to eat fruit such as apricots while on the Spaa regime. One must also mention that she was not actually going to a spa but drinking bot- tled water.
The reference I came across last week occurred in The Expedition of Humpiny Clinker by Smollett, published in 1771. It comes in a letter written by the unlet- tered Welsh servant woman of the dread- ful Tabitha Bramble. They are at Bath and the maid doesn't like going to the waters to bathe: 'The first time I was mortally afraid, and flustered all day; and afterwards made believe that I had got the heddick; but mistress said, if I didn't go I should take a dose of bumtaffy; and so remembering how it worked Mrs Gwyllim a pennorth, I chose rather to go again with her into the Bath.'
Both passages make it clear to me that the spa water and the `bumtaffy' are meant, like most physic of the time, to work on the bowels. The conse- quence would be a `pennorth'.
What bumtaffy is, though, I don't know. Brimstone and treacle or the like, I would hazard.
Please let me know if you sight any other early penny-spending.
Dot Wordsworth
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