Dead ringer: the origin of the term

The term “dead ringer” is applied to someone who looks remarkably like someone else, especially if the second person is a celebrity. “Dead Ringers” is also the title of a BBC radio show, although in this case it refers to professional impressionists who can be “soundalikes” of well-known people as opposed to lookalikes. But where does the term originate?

We have to go back to medieval times when medical science was nothing like as advanced as it is now. If somebody relapsed into a coma they were quite likely to be declared dead, after which they would go through all that that entailed, ending with burial in the local churchyard. Also common at that time was grave robbery, with bodies being dug up at night so that any treasures that had been buried with them could be stolen. The robbers were sometimes horrified to discover that there were scratches on the insides of coffin lids, where the “bodies” had “come to life” and desperately tried to dig themselves free, only to succumb to suffocation.

This possibility was so worrying to some people that they gave instructions that – when they died – their grave would be equipped with a bell above ground level and a string would link the bell to their wrist. Should they recover from their coma they would ring the bell and hope that somebody would hear it and dig them up before it was too late. Bizarre as this notion might sound, there were actually occasions on which this ploy worked and people were saved from a very unpleasant death.

Knowing that this was a possibility, people might imagine that someone who looked someone else, who was known to have died, was in fact the same person, “resurrected” by having rung the bell above his or her grave. That would make him or her a “ringer”, but surely he or she would be a “non-dead ringer”, as opposed to a dead one!

Logical or not, that is the origin of the term!

© John Welford

Toeing the line: two possible explanations

The instruction to “toe the line” is given when somebody is threatening to “step out of line” and behave in a way that breaks the rules. But where does the phrase originate? There are British and American accounts that offer an explanation, but - as one might expect – the American one can be discounted as complete nonsense!

The American version

According to the US Navy, toeing the line has to do with an old shipboard tradition. This refers to the lines on board a ship’s wooden deck that marked where one plank abutted another. In order to make the cracks between the planks watertight they would be packed with “oakum” (old rope that had been picked apart and the fibres beaten into a solid dense mass) then sealed with tar and pitch. The deck would thus appear to have a number of dead straight dark lines on it.

The custom on board ship was for groups of sailors to parade on deck and assemble in a particular area. The front rank would have their toes just touching one of the dark lines. Also, a naval punishment was for the miscreant to stand motionless for a long period of time with their toes just touching a line – in other words, toeing the line.

The British version

The relates to a strange feature of the House of Commons (the lower of the two Houses of Parliament). The Members sit facing each other, with the government benches to the right of the Speaker’s chair and the Opposition benches to the left. For most of the length of the chamber there is only an open floor that separates the two sides, so a Member of Parliament could – if so inclined – walk across the chamber and physically assault someone with whom he or she disagreed.

In past times, it was not unknown for Members to carry swords with them, so steps were taken to ensure that swordfights could not break out across the floor of the chamber. What Parliament’s managers did was to paint two red lines along the length of the floor, one in front of each front bench. It was reckoned that if you did not cross the line, your sword could not reach a sword wielded by someone who was standing behind the opposite line.

You can think what you like about the logic behind the assumption that somebody who was angry enough to draw their sword in the House of Commons would be restrained by a red line on the floor, but that is what was done.

The authority of the Speaker has always been paramount in the House, so if he called on someone to “toe the line”, thus keeping the whole of the foot behind it, they would do so without question.

Nobody these days carries a sword with them, but the red lines are still there on the floor. (As it happens, the coat hooks in the Members’ cloakroom have an extra loop that is there for the express purpose of allowing Members to hang their swords on them before proceeding to the chamber!) It is still customary for Members to stand behind the line when addressing the House, so it does have a function to perform even now.

So there you have it – I’ll go for the British version of the phrase’s origin every time!

© John Welford

The origin of the term Mickey Finn

With any luck, nobody has ever slipped you a “Mickey Finn”. This is what can happen to victims who find that the bar drink they are consuming is having much more effect on them than it should have. Contaminating someone’s drink is a familiar move by unscrupulous people whose motive is robbery or possibly “date rape”.

But where does the name come from? Was there ever a real Mickey Finn? Indeed there was!

Michael Finn, generally known as Mickey, ran the Palm Garden Restaurant and Lone Star Saloon in downtown Chicago around the turn of the 19^th/20^th centuries.

However, Finn was more interested in fleecing his customers for what he could get than he was in merely selling them food and drink. He acted like a latter-day Fagin in that he trained a gang of crooks in the arts of pocket-picking and petty theft, and one of his favourite tricks was to lace a customer’s drink with chloral hydrate (more familiarly known as knock-out drops) and then dump the motionless victim somewhere in the city after relieving them of all their valuables.

Tracing the crimes back to Mickey Finn was not difficult, and his two establishments were shut down in 1903. He must either have had very good lawyers or friends in high places – possibly both – because he did not go to jail. Even more amazingly, a local bar owner gave him a job working behind the bar, and he was happy to sell his supposedly secret recipe to anyone who was willing to pay his price.

Packets of “Mickey Finn” powder were therefore widely circulated and the name stuck. The practice of contaminating drinks is still prevalent and has been used to commit a huge number of crimes down the years, both of robbery and sexual assault.

It is unlikely that Mickey Finn was the first person to use this method, but it is his name that will always be attached to it.

© John Welford

On your tod: where does that come from?

Do you know the expression “on your tod”? It means being alone, and is actually an example of Cockney rhyming slang – “Tod Sloan, on your own”. As is often the case with rhyming slang, the rhyme has been lost over time, leaving just “on your tod”.

But who was Tod Sloan? His full name was James Todhunter Sloan and he was an American jockey who rode and won races not only in America but also in Great Britain and continental Europe in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. He developed a new and highly successful riding style that involving shortening the stirrups and bending forwards so that the heads of jockey and horse were very close together. This is now the standard way of riding a racehorse but was revolutionary at the time.

Tod Sloan won races for many of the top owners of the day, including the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) and grew very rich as a result. He spent his money on partying and gambling and gained a reputation as a rabble-rouser and hell-raiser.

This was his undoing, because he was eventually refused a licence to race by the Jockey Club of Great Britain on the grounds that his behaviour tarnished the image of the sport. The equivalent authorities in France and the United States followed suit, which meant that James Todhunter Sloan’s days as a top jockey were numbered. He sought solace in the bottle and died of liver disease in 1933.

So Tod Sloan did end up friendless and alone, which was a sad end for someone who had never been short of company in his glory days. Some examples of Cockney rhyming slang are particularly appropriate for what they mean, and “on your tod”, recalling the fate of Tod Sloan, is one of them.

© John Welford

At sixes and sevens

If a situation is “at sixes and sevens” it is generally held to be in a state of confusion in which nobody is quite sure what to do next. The phrase might also be used to describe the bedroom of the average teenager. People who disagree with each other can also be at sixes and sevens when there appears to be no easy reconciliation of their dispute – they might also be described as “at loggerheads”.

But where does this unusual expression come from? Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests that the most likely explanation is that it has to with gambling with dice, probably because the most common totals when two dice are thrown are six and seven.

However, there is a far more colourful account of the phrase’s origin, which has to do with the medieval livery companies of the City of London. These were the craft guilds that acted like combinations of professional associations and early trade unions. They set the standards for their trades, only admitting to their ranks people who demonstrated an acceptable level of skill and who had practised their craft for a certain period of time. The guilds took great pride in their professional status and developed ceremonial uniforms (“liveries”) that they wore on special occasions, such as the procession that marked the inauguration of a new Lord Mayor.

The twelve livery companies were keen to preserve their “pecking order” in terms of which trade was deemed to take precedence over the others. Top of the tree were the Mercers, or general merchants, and twelfth in line were the Clothworkers.

However, in the middle were the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners. These companies had both received their royal charters within a few days of each other in 1327 and both claimed to be number six, with the other being number seven. The dispute ran for more than 150 years, and may have been the inspiration for a line in Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” (c. 1386) that runs “… set the world on six and sevene, / And if thou deye a martyr, go to hevene”.

Eventually the two companies decided to accept the judgment of the Lord Mayor and aldermen, so the matter was presented to Sir Robert Billesden, who was Lord Mayor in 1484. He came up with a compromise solution that sounds typically English, especially as it involved the consumption of food and drink.

The judgment was that there should be two dinners, held annually, at which the master and wardens of one company would entertain the other. Having made friends with each other by eating and drinking together, they would not object if they took it in turns to be number six. Sir Robert decreed that, in the first year, this would be the Skinners, but the Merchant Taylors would precede them in the following year.

This arrangement, with the Merchant Taylors and Skinners taking turn to precede each other, has continued ever since, thus the two companies are always “at sixes and sevens”.

It is one of those explanations that one would dearly like to be true, even if it is not.

© John Welford