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Tartan Tinkers

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Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 16, 1998

Under the title “The tartan tinkers who turned into the real-life Deliverance Clans and brought terror and evil to every American state”, the Scottish newspaper, The Sunday Mail, on 22 November 1998 refers to criminal groups in the United States which originated in Scotland. The author Maggie Hall, writing from Washington DC, focused on the plight of Patsy Hart. She lives in daily fear for her life after having “rescued her two small boys from the horrors of life with the Con Clans”.

However, she believes it worthwhile if other children are saved from “the Deliverance-style inbreeding and incest of the degenerate tartan tinkers”.

These people are “degenerate Scots Americans” whose “secrecy and cunning put them virtually beyond the law”. According to Patsy Hart, Con Clan girls are married off at twelve to teenage cousins. So many deformed and mentally retarded children are born that the Clan, also known as the Travellers, are seeking “fresh meat”. Patsy Hart was offered £75,000 for her sons a day after marrying a Clansman.

“These families of Scots and Irish decent have created their own Gaelic-based ianguage called Cant … And with their ill-gotten millions they build Southfork-style mansions — and then live in caravans parked in ihe backyards …

“The Scots Con Clans were foundcd hy Robert Logan Williamson, who landed as immigrant in the 1890s. His only qualifications to help him prosper in the New World were the survival skills he’d used as a tinker plying his dubious trade around Glasgow and Edinburgh …

“In the Fifties, a trball elder called “Uncle Isaac Williamson used to claim “We can trace our blood back to the Picts” … The Williamson Clan became such a target for the police that most changed their last name.”

The name “Con Clan” comes from the fact that men clan members practice home-improvement scams.

The article cites many types of crime but states that a pending court case could be the first to end in one of the man being convicte.

Two features of this piece are remarkable. One is the fact that a Scottish newspaper should carrying such references to a Scottish group without conducting a little reaearch into the Scottish Travelling communities which have been such a fruitfull source for folklore collectors.

The second that the description of the travellers should be in terms which are close to racism. Assume all the accusations are true, would members of any other ethnic group have been described in such hostile terms in a mainstream newspaper?

Curl Up and Dye!

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Brian McConnell | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 16, 1998

Sandy Hobbs’ collection of punning hairdresser’s names (LTAM 15) rang a distant bell in my memory. The Londoner’s Almanac by Russell Ash (Century, 1985, page 85) incudes a list. He says. “Although most London hairdressers are called something like “Maison Roger’, ‘Andre’ or ‘Snippers’, many have names that are clever puns on the services they offer. Here are forty of them.”

ALIAS QUIFF AND COMBS
ALI BARBER
BEYOND THE FRINGE
BLOW INN
BUZZ BEES
CURL UP AND DYE
CUT ABOVE
CUT LOOSE
DEB ‘N HAIR
DO YER NUT
FRINGE BENEFITS
HAIR AND NOW
HAIRAZORS
HAIR TODAY
HAIR WE ARE
HAIR WE GO
HAIR LOOM
HAIR PORT
HAIRS AND GRACES
HATS OFF
HAZEL NUTS
HEAD FIRST
HEADLINES
HEADMASTERS
HEADWAY
HEAD START
HEADS WE DO
HEAT WAVE
LUNATIC FRINGE
MANE ATTRACTION
NEW BARNET*
NEW WAVE
SHEAR PLEASURE
SHYLOCKS
STREAKS AHEAD
SUN ‘N HAIR
UPPERCUTS
WAVELENGTH

* In cockney rhyming slang, Barnet Fair is Hair

I am tempted to extend the collection to other trades butlrt me just confine myself (for now) to two favourites. The former antique shop in London Road, Forest Hill, London S13 was truthfully named JUnk and Disorderly. And still, I believe, in the backstreets of Brighton,Sussex, is a shop under the glamorous name of Twentieth Century Frocks.

Internet Chain Letter: Diasporic Emigre Oikotypification

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Sanjay Sircar | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 27, 2002

Reading Jean-Bruno Renard’s item in Letters to Ambrose Merton 25 prompted the following comment. The Indian postal services were once remarkably good in delivering letters with incomplete addresses, etc., though nowadays they are said to be particularly unreliable – sometimes they are deliberately so, what with the rise of the much more expensive courier services, which may pay postal employees for such subversion. I first heard this from an India expatriate, Canberra 2000.

Be that as it may, English language chain letters were not uncommon in India. The first time I saw one was in the mid 1960s, when my sister Kanika Sircar brought one home from school (Loreto House, Calcutta), I think anonymously deposited in her desk. I remember my mother Mrs Rani Sircar laughingly reassuring her about the blackmailing threat that such letters used to have embedded in them, that bad misfortune would befall if they were not passed on. My sister (l3 years old or younger) was a little rattled by this threat, and the awful example in this letter was the Indian case of V K. Krishna Menon, a politician whose downfall this letter attributed to him not passing the letter on.

In relation to this threat, the contradiction of such letters purporting to spread love and goodwill over the world and to bring incredible good luck to participants while simultaneously threatening dire punishment if the recipient did of obey seems rarely remarked upon by people who receive them; at any rate, the threat still seems to work. A very intelligent Danish academic was intimidated enough by the receipt of such a letter at the University of Queensland in the mid 1980s to do the commanded passing on, attempting to retain anonymity, though his ecological sensibilities caused him to use reusable “internal envelopes” which had his name above that of the people he sent it to, so he was found out. A similar case occurred in the 1990s in relation to an internet chain letter, when an American doctoral student friend of mine, in that state of acute superstitiousness which overcomes one just before thesis submission, obeyed the command and apologised to those she sent it to across the world (for Internet anonymity while easy, is less easy than written anonymity).

Today, there are some of us, like myself and a few friends of mine who have followed my lead, who very occasionally pass on such internet chain letters if their content seems interesting but add the initial caveat that the present sender specifically cancels all requirements to pass the letter on, and that no excessive bad luck has befallen as a result of doing so in the past (which is true).

Thus we have mutations in this non-narrative folk-transmitted form. I want to draw attention to another feature of such mutation over time and space — a phenomenon perhaps peculiar to the late twentieth-century and following (or at any rate more common than before), which I call “diasporic emigre oikotypification”, whereby the internet allows the core of ihe English-language chain letter to remain, along with the promise of good luck as an equivalent of the standard threat, but not only adds an Indian “awful example” as chain letters on paper used to do, but a distinct South Asian frame to a foreign-originated core. In relation to South Asians, the internet chain letter is perhaps more used by the more moneyed diasporic segments of the South Asian diaspora, particularly in the U.S.A., than poorer and thus less advanced Indians in India. Such communities of NRIs – Non Resident Indians, when Hindu, are often supporters of Hindu culture via “cultural” internet sites (and sometimes supporters also of the Hindu fundamentalism which threatens other Indians such as the Indian Christion minority), and chain letters evoking Hinduism might carry particular weight with them.

Here is one such English-language chain letter that I was sent on 7 July 2001, which probably originated in the U.S.A., which oikotypifies, culturally domesticates, what is (very probably) U.S. content, in attaching it to an Asian cultural frame. It was sent to me in Australia via my friend Ms Anjana Basu India, who also simultaneously sent it to others — Indians in India and non-South Asians in other parts of the world (I have cut and pasted it just as I received it, spelling mistates and all — the > markers seem to indicate that the form in which I received it has been cut and pasted twice before.) Note that despite its claim to have originated in India, it is probably of US origin. The evidence lies in the references to New York, silk paper wrapped package etc., in the core, which is probably of a piece with the American moral it preaches (approximately that it is necessary to “take time off to smell the roses”). The ungrammatical oddity of “clothings” does not indicate an original Indian author, though people in the U.K. who believe in the accuracy of Peter Sellers might like to think it does. It omits the standard chain-letter threat, retaining only the promise of good fortune, in the form of incremental good luck in proportion to the number of future recipients, though the phrase “must leave your hands” bears traces of the threat built into the genre. Few Indians in India would probably accept that the material constitutes, as it claims, a “Tantra” (mystical enigmatic sacred text, often involving prescriptions for the practice of “sacred sex’). It might work for some Indians in India (of that class in which cultural deracination goes with superstition). But it is likely that the identification as a “Tantra” and as “Indian” originated from somewhere within the South Asian diaspora, end was later added to the main text, and that it is more likely to work on the sensibilities of emigre Hindu NRIs than Indians in India (Hindu or otherwise).

Take Hold of Every Moment

A friend of mine opened his wife’s drawer and picked up paper wrapped package:
> >
> > “This, – he said — isn’t any ordinary package.”
> > He unwrapped the box and stared at both the silk paper and the box.
> >
> > “She got this he first time we went to New York, 8 or 9 years ago. She has never put it on. Was saving it for a special occasion.
> > Well, I guess this is it. He got near the bed and placed the gift box next to the other clothings he was taking to the funeral house, his wife had just died. He turned to me and said:
> >
> > “Never save something for a special occasion. Every day in your life special occasion”. > >I still think those words changed my life.
> > Now read more and clean !ess.
> > I sit on the porch without worrying about anything.
> > I spend e time with my family, and less at work.
> > I understood that life should be a source of experience to be lived up to, not survived through. I no longer keep onything. I use crystal glasses every day. I’ll wear new clothes to go to the supermarket, if i feel like it.
> > I don’t save any special perfume for special occasions, I use it whenever I want to. The words “Someday…” and “One Day…” are fading away from my dictionary. If it’s worth seeing listening or doing, I want to see, listen or do it now. I don’t know what my friend’s wife would have done if she knew she wouldn’t be there the next morning, this nobody can tell. I think she might have called her relatives and closest friends.
> > She might call old friends to make peace over past quarrels. I’d like to think she would go out for Chinese, her favourite food. It’s these small things that I would regret not doing, if I knew my time had come.
> > I would regret it, because I would no longer see the friends I would meet, letters… letters that i wanted to write “One of this days”
> > I would regret and feel sad, because I didn’t say to my brothers and sons, not times enough at leastt, how much I hove them.
> > Now, I try not to delay, postpone or keep anything that could bring laughter and joy into our lives.
> > And, on each morning, I say to myself that this could be a special day.
> > Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.
> > If you got this, it’s because someone cares for you and because, probably, there’s someone you care about.
> > If you’re too busy to send this out to other people and you say to yourself that you will send it “One of these days”, remember that “One day” is far away… or might never come…
> >
> > This TANTRA came from India. No matter if you’re superstitious or not, spend some time reading it.
> > It holds useful messages for the soul.
> > Don’t keep this message.
> > This Tantra must leave your hands within 96 hours.
> > Send copies and watch what goes on in the next four days.
> > You’ll have a pleasent surprise.
> >
> > This is true, even if you’re not superstitious.
> > Now, here’s the fun of it:
> > send this message to at least 5 people and you’re life improves.
> >
> > 0-4 people: your life improves slightly.
> > 5-9 people: your life imnproves according to your expectations!
> > 9-14 people: you’ll have at least 5 surprises in the next 3 weeks.
> > 15 or more people: your life improves drastically and your dreams start to take shape. > >

Child Abduction Scare

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David Cornwell & Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 16, 1998

Under the headline “Bizarre truth behind story that’s shocked the city”, the Evening Times (Glasgow), 14 November 1998, reported that a story of child abduction which had swept the city was actually “the world’s greatest” urban legend. The newspaper had received more than a dozen phone calls from worried parents afraid to take their kids into Glasgow city centre. They had heard the following story:

“A young mum shopping in Marks and Spencer’s Glasgow Argyle Street store finds that her three-year-old daughter has vanished from her side. After a few minutes frantic search, she rushes to a security man, who contacts his control room. The store’s electronic shutters are rolled down – preventing shoppers leaving.

“Security staff then begin to search the store from top to bottom – and make a bizarre and terrifying discovery in the toilets. Two paedophile perverts have captured the tot and are calmly cutting off her long hair and changing her clothes in an attempt to smuggle her out of the store disguised as a little boy.

“The men are said to be part of a gang of paedophiles, and since arrested are said to have been secretly helping the police with investigations into a city-wide pervert ring.”

A Strathclyde police spokesman stated “There is no truth in this story whatsoever”. A Marks and Spencer press officer was quoted as saying: “There was a similar case in one of our Manchester stores – the same story down to the last detail, Somebody is obviously maliciously starting these rumours. It’s quite serious because it worries people inordinately and is starting to upset both parents and our staff.”

However, the author of the article, Beverley Lyons, sees the story as an urban legend rather than a malicious rumour. She notes that the Urban Legend Archive website mentions a story labelled “Code Adam” which is virtually identical with the story going the rounds in Glasgow.

Beverley Lyons reinforces her argument for a readership which may not be familiar with the concept of an “Urban Legend” by outlining a number of other examples. These included: Elephant sits on mini; Eddie Murphy in Los Angeles lift; Ghost boy in Three Men and A Baby; Drug tattoos turn children into addicts; Alligators in sewers.

The Crocodile from Paris again

/ kevinhobbs

Veronique Campion-Vincent | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 6, 1996

Veronique Campion-Vincent has sent us an unidentified clipping from a French newspaper, dated January 1996. It concerns the crocodile rescued from the sewers of Paris, discussed in Dear Mr Thoms 36: 13-15. The crocodile, captured in 1984, now resides in the aquarium at Vannes in Britanny and the story concerns the need to move it into a larger tank. Initially it was about 80 centimetres long and was put in a tank with turtles. However, it has grown considerably since then. The article claims that it could reach seven metres when fully grown.

The article describes the difficulties faced by the biologist, Pierre-Yves Bouis, who was in charge of the crocodile’s tank. He had twelve tries at lassoing the crocodile’s jaws shut before managing to hoist it onto a stretcher to make the move.

S.H. notes: This tells us little more than that the aquarium probably has quite an effective press officer. However, most interesting from the point of view of contemporary folklore is the brief account given of the crocodile’s origins. He was “saved by firemen from the sewers of Paris, near the Pont Neuf, where his previous owner had got rid of him”.

In reality, we do no know how the crocodile got into the sewer. It may have been abandoned by its owner. However, describing the location as “near the Pont Neuf” conceals another possibility, namely that it was an escapee from a pet shop. The sewer ran under the Quai de la Megisserie, renowned as a centre for the sale of exotic plants and animals.

On the Fringes of Urban Legend: Homage to Brunvand

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Sandy Hobbs | # ,

Some time around 1980, I started to organize a growing pile of notes into what I called the MODERN FOLK TALE file. Over subsequent years I have added to that file, not always very systematically and never managing to empty out the Miscellaneous file which feeds it. The MFT file now stands at well over 400 items. Some of these I have written about, many more have been written about by other people. Of course, the name “modern folk tale” now seems rather old fashioned. They are much more frequency called legends, with the qualification “contemporary”, “rumour”, “urban”, “modern” and “belief”. (“CRUMB” legends is what Gillian Bennett and I once called them.)

The term “urban legend” is being used here in acknowledgement of the work of Jan Harold Brunvand, who has employed that phrase. His book The Baby Train (1993) contains the closest attempt that I know of to a systematic listing of these stories. What follows is based on Brunvand’s listing, in that it contains some examples from the MFT file which DO NOT occur there.

The MFT file has been a working instrument. It has included items about which I had mused “Is that a modern folk tale?”. Sometimes that judgement turned out to be probably wrong, but it was nevertheless worth making, because it meant I kept an eye open for more evidence one way or the other.

In general, I have erred on the side of overinclusiveness. This has meant noting material which was perhaps too local or lacked a sufficiently strong narrative to become part of the urban legend corpus. Nevertheless, it seemed to me to be worthwhile to look at some of the “failed” items and reflect on why they didn’t make the Brunvand collection.

UL stands for Urban Legend(s); the number before each item is its MFT code; CLFB refers to Bennett and Smith (1993); LTAM stands for Letters to Ambrose Merton, DMT stands for its predecessor, Dear Mr Thoms…

007 HOWLERS

David Cornwell and I wrote about these in LTAM 1:1-5 and LTAM 2:26-36. Whilst they seem to circulate like UL, it probably makes sense to classify them apart from UL. However, the dividing line is fuzzy. In The Choking Doberman (1984: 26-27), Brunvand tells a story of how the Lord Chancellor processing through the Houses of Parliament shouted “Neil!” when he saw his friend, Neil Marten, M.P., only to find tourists around him falling to their knees. The same Neil/kneel mistake has appeared in a book of howlers, attributing it to new pupils in a primary school (see Hobbs, 1989).

010 TITANIC HEADLINE

A story to illustrate the parochial outlook of local newspapers is that when the Titanic sank, a local newspaper in Aberdeen headlined the report:

Aberdeenshire Man Drowns At Sea
He Was A Butcher In Union Street

Hamilton (1982) included this in a collection of “myths about the Titanic”. He reports that one of the two local papers in Aberdeen ran the headline:

Mid-Atlantic Disaster: Titanic Sunk By Iceberg

A rival paper had a similar headline. However, like UL, this “myth” has survival powers. I have seen or heard it attributed to papers in Bideford, Gateshead, Greenock and Norwich. Most recently I spotted it, ascribed to Aberdeen, in The Herald newspaper, 13 April 1987.

021 MURDERED SON

The story of the son returning home unrecognized, who is murdered by his parents, is most certainly a legend (see CLFB entry 782). But is it modern? It may no longer be currently “told as true”, perhaps because of its use by Camus in his famous play Le Malentendu (translated as Cross Purpose).

060 SECRET TUNNELS

The earliest use of the phrase “contemporary legend” I have come across is by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (first published in 1925). Gatsby’s notoriety, writes Fitzgerald, “fell just short of being news” and “contemporary legends…attached themselves to him…” As an example of such a legend, Fitzgerald gives the “underground pipe-line to Canada”. I have never come across other references to underground pipe-lines, but the similar idea of a secret tunnel is quite widespread in Britain.

Many years ago, Alistair Steven gave me a reprint of an undated article he had written for a local newspaper in Scotland, in which he discussed tunnel claims. He argues that Scottish topographical writing is “plagued by a surfeit of stories which do not bear the weight of any close scrutiny…” As an example he casts doubt on the story of tunnels between castles in Perthshire.

What advantage would tunnels between castles have given which would have compensated for the immense amount of work involved? The greatest tunnel of the old world which the Romans drove under Monte Salviano to drain Lake Rucino went for three and a half miles…but it is said to have involved 30,000 labourers for 11 years. The kind of mind capable of constructing it was also capable of recording the construction. If there was anything at all approaching a Newton-Ardblair tunnel in Scotland why is nothing satisfactorily known about the system? James I would not have been murdered in Blackfriars Monastery had even the short sewage system there not been blocked. Had they been in use as an escape route, bigger castles than the Newton, whose lairds commanded regiments of men, would have had them. The Drummonds purchased the lands of Newton of Blair about 1550 and would build the original keep thereafter. George Drummond was on so poor terms with practically all his neighbours that four years later they banded together and murdered him…Amongst the murderous band was the laird of Ardblair. There is no record subsequently of any strong links between the families…How then could the tunnel be made?

Steven pours the cold water of historical detail over these tunnels. However, the story is not unique. For example, Enid Porter, in her Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (1969) has two examples. On page 143 she refers to vaulted cellars under “Old Abbey House, a 17th century building built on the site of a 12th Century priory. A bricked up arch is traditionally regarded as the entrance to an underground tunnel. This is rather vague. Where did the tunnel go? However, on page 183, there is a more detailed tunnel story. It was supposed to run from Grantchester Manor to King’s College Chapel, in Cambridge. Furthermore, there is a narrative to go with the tunnel. A fiddler went to explore the tunnel and was never seen again. There is a local field name, Fiddler’s Close. This is the widespread legend of the Lughnasa Musician discussed very fully by David Buchan (1970).

The Lughnasa Musician is not always lost in a tunnel; sometimes there is a cave. However, the tunnel is a common feature. It may be objected that this is clearly a traditional, rather than a contemporary, legend. However, is there a sharp dividing line? One version David Buchan cites was collected orally only two years earlier than the publication of his paper. It concerned a tunnel between Paisley Abbey and Crookston Castle, two or three miles away.

066 A TAXI TO WICK

I opened a file on this story on the basis of a newspaper clipping I made and lost. The file was intended to alert me to look out for it appearing again. However, the file remains empty. The story is very simple. A London newspaper editor rings a journalist in Glasgow about a story he wants followed up. “I want you to take a taxi to Wick..,” he begins. That is the story. If it means nothing to you, it is because you don’t know Scotland. Wick is about as far from Glasgow as you can get on mainland Scotland. The taxi journey would be long and expensive. Perhaps the story is to elementary and its “meaning” too crude to have allowed it to develop into a fuller legend narrative. That London editor is an outsider who does not understand Scotland. There are lots of people in Scotland indulge in the hobby of anti-Englishness; perhaps if had moved in those circles I would have had a better chance of hearing about the taxi to Wick again.

067 SALMON TWICE A WEEK

This file contains notes of a conversation, a radio programme and a television programme. The least vague refers to the television programme I saw on BBC 1 on 27 June 1983 but which had apparently been first shown on BBC 2 in May 1979. Called “The River Keeper”, it was in a series called “A Year in the Life of…”. The keeper was Bernard Aldrich of Broadlands Estate. The narrator, appropriately enough, was called Tom Salmon. The programme referred to the decline in salmon stocks and said that at one time salmon was so plentiful it was food for apprentices and they complained about having to eat it every day.

My other notes refer to (a) apprentices having written into their indenture agreements a clause stipulating they would be fed salmon no more than twice a week, and (b) a similar stipulation being made by farm servants in the North Est of Scotland.

085 ORDERED NOT TO FAINT

On 14 July 1989, The Times newspaper reported that 300 children between the ages of seven and fifteen years had collapsed while marching in a jazz band competition at a carnival in Nottinghamshire. One explanation offered, and hotly disputed, was that it was a case of mass hysteria. During the debate which followed, one reader wrote the following letter, published 2 August 1980:

Sir, Between 1924 and 1929 I was a pupil at Cheltenham Ladies College.
One morning, a girl fainted during prayers, and there was a certain amount of confusion in taking her out of the hall. Next morning two girls fainted, and thereafter there was not a morning, but that two or three girls succumbed.
On the Friday, after prayers were over and she had given out the usual notices, the Principal, Miss Sparks said, “In the future, no girl will faint in College”.
No girl did – in my time,
Yours faithfully,
Mary Crisp…

My suspicion that this might be apocryphal was given support by a letter appearing on 6 August 1980.

Sir, When I was at Cheltenham Ladies’ College from 1917 to 1923, the story of the fainting girls was told in almost exactly Mrs Crisp’s detail of Miss Dorothea Beale, the great founding Principal who died in – I think – 1912.
Miss Sparks was maintaining a well-established tradition.
Yours sincerely,
I.K. Stephenson…

086 FISHING FOOTBALLS FROM THE RIVER

This is a very straightforward example of a story reported by a friend in the belief that it might be apocryphal. Listening to a radio commentary on 27 January 1979 of an F.A. Cup match between Shrewbury Town and Manchester City, he heard it claimed that the Shrewsbury club was so poor that it employed a man to fish footballs out of the river that ran past the ground. He was suspicious of this as he thought he had heard the same said of another team, possible Wigan Rugby League. I filed the story and waited.
On 13 February 1982, I heard a preview of an F.A. Cup match between Shrewsbury and Ipswich. The item included an interview an elder gentleman called Fred Davis, reminiscing about his job: fishing footballs from the river. Apparently in one match the ball went into the river eight time. The story was apparently true.

089 RATION BOOK FOR 1984

This file contains just three letters. Note that they are dated 1982.

8 February 1982
Dear Sandy,
Have you encountered at all recently the folk tale about someone (in the case brought to me “A fellow college student’s mother”) having sent to the appropriate government office for a Child Benefit form and receiving instead a food ration book dated 1984, and all properly made out with her name and address? I’d be interested to know if you have encountered this recently, because it used to resurrect itself from time to time.
Regards,
Norman [Norman Buchan M.P.]

12.2.82
Dear Norman,
I am sorry but I can’t give you much help on the ration book story. Although I can remember seeing references to it at least twice, I didn’t keep records because its “folk” status escaped me. One appearance was in Socialist Worker, I think, told with an obvious political point. More recently, I noticed a journalist appealing for someone who had actually seen a ration book to come forward. Now you’ve alerted me, I’ll be on the look out and let you know of any further sightings.
Yours sincerely,
Sandy Hobbs.

February 25 1982
Dear Sandy
Thanks very much for your note. Regarding its folk status:
(a)It’s a fairly common tale;
(b)It’s always happening to someone at second or third remove;
(c)It usually is accompanied by an embellishment to the effect that a policeman called next day and threatened them with dire consequences if they didn’t keep silent about it – as in this case.
I suppose it is all a rather bureaucratic concept for a folk tale!
Best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Norman.

In fact I don’t seem to have come across it again. Presumably, Brunvand would have classed this with his Government Legends.

115 JAM JARS AT THE CINEMA

In the essay “Enough to constitute a legend?”, which I contributed to The Questing Beast (Bennett and Smith, 1989), I took a critical look at the debate about whether British cinemas ever accepted empty jam jars as payment for admission. That debate goes on.

What follows is abridged from “Mystery of the jeelie jar” by Frank McGroarty, which appeared in The Herald newspaper, 16 December 1995, in a special supplement celebrating the centenary of the cinema.

Every household takes for granted the common jam jar. However, during the early years of the century it was more than just a way to store preserves. It was a form of currency.

In those days, the jam (jeelie) jar was a prized possession among youngsters. They were exchanged for money or sweets at the local grocer’s, would pay for fairground rides, and according to many mature members of today’s society, the jars would pay for the price of a cinema admission ticket.

The connection between jeelie jars and the cinema is the only part of that legend that is hotly disputed, even till this day. For every former patron who said that it did not happen, there were those regular customers who have strong recollections of paying their way in with jam-jars and in some cases lemonade bottles.

Many film historians are convinced that this story was myth because according to them, such a practice would have been illegal. At that time cinemas had to give a percentage of the money raised from admission tickets to the Customs and Excise, to pay what was an entertainment tax, which ran from the time of the First World War until the early fifties. So they believed that paying in by the jam jar method deprived the taxman of his cut.
Another point raised was that…a typical cashier’s desk was so small, that there would be nowhere to store the empty jars.

However, Dunfermline sports coach, and film fan, believes in the jamjar story and was able to explain how cinemas used to get round that problem based on regular conversations with his parents.

“They used to say that there were two queues, one leading to the cash desk and one for those with jam jars, which was often referred to as the poor queue,” he said. “They handed the jar to the man who would then place it in a box, and then hand them a ticket. They would then take it to the cash desk where they would be given an admission ticket.”

One former customer, Ray Hannah, used to go to the local cinemas in Blackburn in the forties and remembers often getting himself into trouble when collecting his jars to take to the cinema. “I got many a whack with a bannister brush after being caught supping the jam in the garden shed in order to get the empties,” he said…
Even though noted film historian, Frank Manders, has not discovered any documentary evidence, he is convinced that such a practice did exist.

“There are certainly many cinemas that did not allow jam jars, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that it happened at the small picture houses,” he said.

Memories of admission by jam jar are widespread. When the Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Mail, ran a story on the subject, it was “mobbed” with letters, of which it published five (21 June 1992). One appeared to recall the circumstances in great detail:

“At the Wellfield Cinema in Springburn, Glasgow, you could get in for three jam jars on a Wednesday afternoon between four and 4.30.”

Two indicate that jam jars were not a unique alternative to cash:

“A jeelie jar…got you into the Victoria in Greenock. And so did a label from a packet of Lyons tea.”

“In Saltcoats you could get in for a wrapper from Cowan’s soap as well as a jam jar.”

These could presumably have been the result of promotional schemes by the companies concerned. One reader remembered getting change!

“A one pound jar got you in, and if all you had was a 2lb jar they gave you sweets for change.”

Rather less plausible, apparently, is change the other way round:

“I once went to the pictures with half a crown (30 old pence) and got 29 bottles in change.”

However, Michael Thomson (1988) in his history of cinemas in Aberdeen, cites a story in a local newspaper in March, 1921, in which a boy was said to have received eleven jam jars change when he paid for his ticket with a shilling. Thomson believes the jam jar practice lasted from approximately the First World War until around 1935.

I have also come across references to the jam jar admission in Edinburgh (Community History Project, n.d.), Sheffield (Vickers, 1987) and York (York Oral History Project, 1988). However, these are all memories of members of the audience. I have still to find either documentary evidence or recollections by cinema staff.

120 SHOVE OFF, CHARLIE!

This was collected from a letter to the editor in Expression! The Magazine for American Express Cardmembers, May 1985. The writer starts by stating that this is one of his favourite business anecdotes, but is probably apocryphal. It concerns a young advertising executive, rising fast but as yet relatively unknown.

Hoping to close his biggest deal yet, he booked lunch at the Ritz. Awaiting his guest nervously, wondering how best to create the right impression, he spotted Sir Charles Clore heading for the restaurant, and had his inspiration.

Brashly approaching the great man, he introduced himself, explained his situation, and begged Sir Charles to do him a tremendous favour by somehow indicating (in the client’s presence) that they were mutually acquainted.

The sheer impudence of the request touched a soft spot with Clore – perhaps reminding him of his own early days – and when the young man and his guest sat down to lunch he delivered the favour handsomely, striding across to their table, beaming with outstretched hand, “My dear chap, how nice to see you! How’s everything with you?”

The young man responded with a pained expression. “Oh shove off, Charlie. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

I felt fairly confident that I’d come across this story again, but in fact this clipping sits alone in the file.

413 FALKLANDS VETERAN

David Cornwell provided me with the following text on 21 March 1989. He had heard the story two or three weeks previously from a colleague at Jordanhill College of Education at Glasgow. I had asked him to write it down because I had heard essentially the same story two days earlier from John Widdowson, who reported it as the content of a cartoon.

This guy was sitting on the pavement in Argyle Street with his cap upside down in front of him, begging for money. He was covered in cuts and bruises, all scarred. He had only one arm, and one leg. He was blind. A sign hung around his neck read “Falklands Veteran. Please give generously.” No one paid any attention to him, and no one gave him any money. People just walked by, walked around him. This other guy notices that no one is giving the beggar any money. He says, “Come on, what’s wrong with you all,” shouting at the passersby. “This man has fought for his country. He’s been wounded and suffered greatly…Come on, give him some money.” The passersby seem embarrassed by all of this, and keep a wide berth of the man. They still don’t give any money. “Come on,” shouts the man, “Give him some money. Here! I’ll start this off.” And he pulls out his wallet and takes out a ?10 note. He throws it into the beggar’s hat. The beggar looks up at the mind and says, “Gracias, senor”.

Almost three years later, in his column in The Observer newspaper (19 January 1992), Simon Hoggart told the following version:

You may have heard this joke, but I pass it on anyway because it was told me by one of Lady Thatcher’s best known and most intimate confidantes. It seems that the Lady was passing by some homeless beggars and had a crisp word of advice for each: “Smarten up, there are plenty of jobs to be had”, and so forth. Then she came to a pitiable figure with the words “Falklands Veteran” around his neck.

Overcome by sorrow and gratitude, she instructed an aide to find a ?20 note. The derelict’s eyes popped with astonishment as he sobbed: “Muchas gracias, senora!”

References

Bennett, Gillian & Smith Paul. Contemporary Legend: A Folklore Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.

Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Choking Doberman And Other “New” Urban Legends. New York: Norton, 1984.

Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Baby Train And Other Lusty Urban Legends. New York: Norton, 1993.

Buchan, David. “The legend of the Lughnasa Musician in Lowland Britain”, Scottish Studies, 23: 15-37, 1970.

Community History Project. Jeelie Jars and Barrie Coats. [This twenty page pamphlet, reporting a project undertaken at Silverlea Day Care Unit, Lothian Region, has neither publisher’s name nor date.]

Hamilton, Alan. “Sunk at last: some myths about the Titanic”, The Times, 15 April 1982.

Hobbs, Sandy. “Enough to constitute a legend?” in G. Bennett and P. Smith (Eds.), The Questing Beast, Perspectives on Contemporary Legend IV, pages 55-75. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. [Am earlier exploration of the edges of legend.]

Porter, Enid. Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore. London: Routledge, 1969.

Thomson, Michael. Silver Screen in the Silver City: A History of Cinemas in Aberdeen, 1896-1987. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. {Appendix 1, pp 339-340: The Great Jam Jar Controversy.]

Vickers, J. Edward. A Popular History of Sheffield (2nd ed.) Sheffield: Applebaum, 1987.

York Oral History Project. York Memories of Stage and Screen: Personal Accounts of York’s Theatres and Cinemas. York: York Oral History Project, 1988.