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BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins
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BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins |
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Subject: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: MGM·Lion Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:21 AM Does anyone know the originator of the idea that the public house is "The poor man's club"? I was surprised to find by archiving that this question doesn't seem to have arisen before, as it is a folkloric concept, but yet one for which one feels an actual origin should be establishable. The phrase occurs, quoted by Doolittle as by then a well-known commonplace, in Shaw's Pygmalion ( 1912). ~Michael~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: maeve Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:44 AM It's an interesting question. Here are a few links to source material using the phrase. I haven't time to read them all carefully, but perhaps it will inspire some of the scholarly folk on Mudcat to pick up the search. http://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-293812585/the-poor-man-s-club-the-middle-classes-the-public http://books.google.com/books?id=PA0TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214&dq=public+house+is+%22The+poor+man%27s+club%22&source=bl&ots=I7 http://books.google.com/books?id=-dCx5sYztzoC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=public+house+is+%22The+poor+man%27s+club%22&source=bl&ots=Fb-JzZ http://books.google.com/books?id=104W8SNEd9kC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=public+house+is+%22The+poor+man%27s+club%22&source=bl&ots=0j |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: GUEST,Grishka Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:51 AM The observation is so obvious, in the (international) tradition of other "poor man's ..." sayings, that it has doubtless been made many times. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: maeve Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:53 AM By the way- it seems to me this topic would be better served in the Music section. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: MGM·Lion Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:03 AM No reason tho, Grish, that an origin for this one can't be found. And where do you find all these sayings? Some more examples? Many thanks for all your most helpful researches, Maeve. I did think of the upper section; but decided it is not really sufficiently 'musical'. ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: IanC Date: 16 Oct 13 - 10:48 AM This appears to have originated in 1899 with an address by a Bishop Potter, a US Episcopalian bishop, to the Church Temperance Society in New York. It apparently caused some shock at the time and was quite famous (or infamous). See this article. :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: MGM·Lion Date: 16 Oct 13 - 10:52 AM No ~ one of maeve's is dated 1868, and uses the phrase as a commonplace. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: maeve Date: 16 Oct 13 - 11:42 AM Even so- Ian's reference is of interest- how unusual for a clergyman of the time to promote a haven for those who couldn't afford club membership! |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'The poor man's club' ~~ origins From: GUEST,Grishka Date: 16 Oct 13 - 12:44 PM If you find an oldest origin, in other words an inventor, it is likely not to be the origin in the sense that all later usages are derived from it. MtheGM, searching for "poor man's" in various languages yields countless hits; the metaphor is active still today, for example when referring to fashionable cars. My wild guess about one of the origins is the medieval expression "Biblia pauperum" (Bible of the poor) for religious picture books, and, later, stained glass windows in churches. These things would be more adequately named "of the illiterate", but the correlation was considered sufficient. BTW: the level of literacy, and knowledge of Latin, in medieval western Europe was much higher than commonly believed. |
