According to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, St Lubbock was slang for an orgy or drunken riot. It owed its origin to the tendency of drunken holidaymakers to run amok on the August Bank Holiday that was introduced as a result of a bill proposed by Sir John Lubbock in 1871. It confirmed Easter Monday, Whit Monday, and Boxing Day as bank holidays and introduced the first Monday of August as a new one. Collectively, the four Bank Holidays were known colloquially as the Feasts of St Lubbock.

Many would use these days off to visit some attraction or other. Admission was invariably a shilling, which was so commonplace a tariff that it was abbreviated to Same o b (same old bob). The level of wages was pretty standardised too. Most workmen were paid the princely sum of three shillings and four pennies a day which, for six days work, amounted to £1 a week. The day rate was known as the same old 3 and 4.

James Ware almost waxes lyrical when he defines sandwich-men. They are, he states, “the doleful, broken-down men employed at one shilling a day to carry pairs of advertisement boards, tabard fashion, one on the unambitious chest, the other on the broken back”. While we are still familiar with the concept of sandwich-men, sadly, the term sandwich board was new to me. It was slang to describe a stretcher which the police used to carry drunkards on. Perhaps it was a mode of transport more salubrious than the sardine-box, the term used to describe a police van into which the prisoners were crammed like, well, sardines.

I normally do not include Americanisms in these reviews, but I could not resist Sapheadism. When the sap rises, the bark of a tree softens so, naturally, someone exhibiting Sapheadism is weak-headed.