Martin Fone's Blog, page 299
April 13, 2017
Double Your Money – Part Seventeen
The Letters of Jerusalem
Occasionally, just very occasionally, I get an unsolicited e-mail pop into my in-box, usually from an African unknown to me, telling me that they have access to untold wealth. If I would only send them a small sum of money and my bank account details, then they will transfer the money to me, I can take my slice and everything in the garden will be rosy. Smelling a rat, I have never been tempted but the sheer frequency of these e-mails suggests that some must take the bait, lured by the prospect of getting rich quick.
It seems that these emails, which are known as advance fee fraud, follow a long if ignoble traditions, dating back to at least the late 18th century and revolutionary France if an account published in his memoirs by Eugene Francois Vidocq is to believed. Vidocq was an interesting character, having been an accomplished thief who then became a policeman. When he retired from the force in 1827, he had amassed a fortune of 0.5 million francs. He was also the model for Jacques Collin in Balzac’s Pere Goriot, but that is by the by.
The scam was conducted by prisoners and guards at the Bicetre prison which was in a southern suburb of Paris. The starting point was to compile a list of the rich living in the targeted area, particularly those with anti-revolutionary sentiments. The scammers would then compose what they termed a letter of Jerusalem. Vidocq gave an extensive version of the type of letter, containing many of the characteristics of the modern scamming e-mail, which I will abridge for convenience.
It would start off, “you will doubtlessly be astonished at receiving a letter from a person unknown to you who is about to ask a favour from you; but from the sad condition in which I am placed, I am lost if some honourable person will not lend me succour”. The correspondent then went on to spin a tale in which he and his master were emigrating from revolutionary France on foot, to avoid suspicion, with a casket containing “sixteen hundred francs in gold and the diamonds of the late marchioness”. They were beset by assailants and the valet, acting on his master’s orders, threw the casket into a ditch.
Once the party had reached their foreign destination, funds began to run low and so the valet was sent back to France to recover the casket. The valet was about to recover the casket from the ditch when further troubles befell him. “I prepared to fulfil my mission, when the landlord .. a bitter Jacobin, remarking my embarrassment when he proposed to drink the health of the republic” – a phrase designed to further win the support of the recipients –“had me apprehended as a suspected person”. He was now languishing in jail and if the recipient could only find it in his heart to send some money, then the casket would be recovered and the profits split.
Vidocq claimed that 20% of the letters elicited a response, with correspondents offering to recover the casket from its hiding place. Often a batch of letters would raise the not inconsiderable sum of between 12 and 15,000 francs. Some even visited the area in the hope of finding the casket without the aid of their correspondent but needless to say, their searches turned up nothing. One cloth seller from the Rue de Prouvaires was caught undermining one of the arches of the Pont Neuf in an attempt to find the diamonds of the Duchess de Bouillon which is where his correspondent claimed to have hidden them.
It just goes to show, there is nothing new under the sun.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: advance fee fraud, Balzac, Bicetre prison, Eugene Francois Vidocq, Pere Goriot, Pont Neuf, success rate of letters of Jerusalem, the Letters of jerusalem
April 12, 2017
Book Corner – April 2017 (1)
Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte
Of the astonishing Bronte sisters, Anne, the youngest, is the forgotten one. She is the one you struggle to remember in a pub quiz. Of the three she was the only one who held down a job, living a miserable existence as a governess, one of the few occupations open to an unmarried woman in reduced circumstances, and the only one to be buried away from Haworth, in Scarborough.
For many these days the upstairs-downstairs world of 18th and 19th century England has a strange fascination – witness the inexplicable success of Downton Abbey. The governess, though, existed in a sort of mezzanine world, not good enough to spend much time with her betters (natch) but too good to be hobnobbing with the servants. The result was that the governess often led a miserable and isolated life, at the mercy of the spoilt brats she was supposed to keep out of mischief, if not actually educate.
Agnes Grey, published in 1847, is autobiographical and tells the story and struggles of the eponymous heroine as, in order to make a financial contribution to her hard-pressed family after the death of her father, the parson Richard Grey, she finds employment as a governess firstly to the Bloomfields and then the Murrays. The Bloomfields were horrid brats and led Agnes a merry dance, forcing her at times to restrain them physically. The Murray sisters were a notch up the social scale. Rosalie, the elder, has ideas above her station, enjoys flirting and makes a socially improving disastrous marriage which she instantly regrets. The younger, Matilda, is besotted with her horses, wanders around with a whip in hand, swearing like a trooper.
Agnes is a rather passive voice relating the trials and tribulations that her charges bring on her. Although we are urged to see this as an early feminist novel – it is about a woman and written from the woman’s perspective but that doesn’t mean it is feminist in my book – you can’t help thinking that Agnes is a bit too prim and proper, a little too whiny and annoyingly infallible. She is the epitome of a vicar’s daughter. Her beacon of hope is the kind, worthy curate, Mr Weston, with whom she eventually settles down. But it is not a tempestuous love affair, merely one acknowledged by the bumping of elbows together. It is an interesting period piece about the role of a woman trying to make a living for herself but I think it would be wrong to read too much into it.
The style is easy and the book is well paced. There is one unsettling image. Tom Bloomfield has brought a nest containing some small birds into the garden and is proceeding to torture them, much as a cat does with its prey. Agnes puts them out of their suffering by dashing them to death with a large stone. But it is hard to say we get to know Agnes by the end of the book, what made her tick. She is slightly aloof from what is going on around her. Nonetheless, it is an interesting read and confirms what a literary powerhouse the parsonage in Haworth really was.
Anne’s relative obscurity is partly down to her big sister, Charlotte. Agnes Grey was accepted by publishers whereas Charlotte’s first effort, The Professor, was rejected but Anne was unfortunate in her choice of publisher and sales were poor. Charlotte’s second effort, Jane Eyre also dealt with the life of a governess in a rather more vigorous and romanticised style. It sold like wildfire and whilst Charlotte’s publisher took over the publication of the other sisters’ works and they were republished in 1847, Anne was destined to remain in her elder sister’s shade, not helped by Charlotte’s decision, after Anne’s death, not to allow the republication of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Sibling rivalry, eh?
Filed under: Books, Culture Tagged: Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Rosalie Murray, the role of a governess, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Tom Bloomfield
April 11, 2017
I Don’t Want To Belong To Any Club That Will Accept People Like Me As A Member – Part Thirty Four
The Red Lions
Sometimes the best of clubs are formed spontaneously without any real rhyme or reason. One such is the rather splendid Red Lions whose convivial banquets were not to be missed by those fortunate to be associated with them.
The story begins in 1839 when the British Association for the Advancement of Science met in Birmingham for a symposium. Some of the younger members, perhaps bored with the company of the older fuddy-duddies, decided to dine together at the Red Lion in Church Street. So convivial was the evening and so well did the diners get on that the assembled company determined that they would repeat the exercise wherever the British Association met next. And so they did, taking their name from the hostelry where they had held their first repast. When in London, they dined at Anderton’s in Fleet Street.
The fortunes of the club mirror the life of its leading light, Professor Edward Forbes, who held the title of President. He drew around him some close friends who were described in contemporary reports as “jovial philosophers” and membership was carefully controlled. There were some qualifications for entry – you had to satisfy the other members that you could sing or roar or come up with a bon mot – not necessarily a high bar for entry but one designed to keep out the hoi polloi. You would not necessarily go for the fare, plain roast and boiled being the food of choice. Invitation cards were issued for each meal, featuring the figure of a red lion erect, bearing a pot of beer in one paw and a clay pipe in the other. So that you were in no doubt that vegetarians were not welcome, the invite commenced with the words, “the carnivora will feed”.
During the proceedings, members were invited to talk, tell jokes and sing songs. When a contribution met with Forbes’ approval, he would gather up his coat tails as if they were a tail and wag it and roar his approval heartily. Taking Forbes’ lead, all the other members would follow suit. So celebrated did this form of approbation become that the secretary of the Zoological Society, a Mr Mitchell, presented the Club with the skin of a lion. This graced the President’s chair with paws at the elbows and the tail handily positioned so that it could be waved with gusto. A drawing of proceedings at a dinner in Aberdeen survives showing the lion in action.
All good things must come to an end, they say, and following Forbes’ death in 1854 the wind seemed to have gone out of the club’s sails. An attempt was made in 1865 when the British Association met in Birmingham to revive the club and sixty conference goers attended the dinner, although for some reason it was not held in the Red Lion. Alas, though, according to the Daily News, the atmosphere was not the same. The diners, none of whom had to demonstrate any of the qualities that Forbes had insisted upon, were relatively subdued, although there were some songs sung, including Professor Rankine’s own composition, the Mathematician In Love.
The revival never got off the ground and that was that. I wonder what happened to the lion skin?
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: British Association for the Advancement of Science, lion skin of the Red Lions, Professor Edward Forbes, Red Lion in Church Street in Birmingham, revival of the Red Lions, The Red Lions
April 10, 2017
A Better Life – Part Seven
The Town of Pullman
The idea of an industrialist creating a community for their workforce was not a new one by the time George Pullman – he of Pullman carriage fame – got round to it in 1880. After all, there were the successful models of Sir Titus Salt who created Saltaire in Yorkshire and the Krupp Munitions Company in Essen to emulate. The theory, perhaps, was that a happy workforce was a productive workforce but for the American industrialist what drove the venture was his belief that capitalism was the best way to meet all material and spiritual needs.
Pullman bought some 4,000 acres of land west of Lake Calumet in Chicago in 1880 for $800,000, although the actual town only occupied some 300 acres of the site. The first permanent residents, the Benson family, moved in on 1st January 1881 and by 1884 the town was completed, boasting some 350 residents. Pullman was run on a strictly capitalist basis and was expected to return a profit of 7% per annum. Employees were given two pay cheques, one for their rent which was immediately paid back to their landlord, and the other for the essentials of life which they could only buy from shops owned by their benevolent employer.
There was a strict demarcation policy as to who could live where. Detached, eight or nine roomed houses, commanding a monthly rent of between $28 and $50 were sited near the factory and were only available to company executives who were spared having to traipse past the less commodious dwellings. Foremen and company officials were allocated in Dutch colonial style row houses for which they paid $2 per month. Skilled workers had to make do with smaller quarters whilst the unskilled were accommodated in two room apartments. The houses, though, were well built and still stand today.
There was only one church in the town – after all the factory used interchangeable parts so why wouldn’t one church do for all denominations? – and there was no pub, although the hotel used to accommodate visiting dignitaries had its own private bar. According to mortality statistics, it was the healthiest place to live but it came at a cost. Pullman ruled the place with a rod of iron, prohibiting independent newspapers, public meetings and open discussion. Harper’s Weekly commented in 1885 that Bismarck was insignificant “compared with the ruling authority of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Pullman”. Regular inspections were carried out on the properties and if there was a breach of cleanliness a worker could be given 10 days’ notice to leave.
By 1892 the town had turned a profit and was valued at $5m. But although the place was aesthetically pleasing, man cannot live on views alone. In 1894 America was in the grip of a depression and sales of Pullman’s goods stalled. He cut wages but didn’t reduce the rents he was charging. The result was that the residents were trapped and plummeting into debt. This, in turn, fuelled discontent. As one resident was reported as saying, “we are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shops, taught in the Pullman school, catechised in the Pullman church and when we die we shall go to the Pullman hell”.
The only way out was to strike. The action received the support of the railway unions who removed Pullman cars from the trains and was only resolved when Federal troops were called in and started shooting strikers, 34 of whom were killed. The dust-up spelt the end for Pullman’s utopia, the Illinois Supreme Court, in 1898, a year after Pullman’s death, ruling that a company town was illegal and forcing the company to sell off the housing. It seems that capitalism isn’t all-powerful, after all.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: first inhabitants of the town of Pullman, George Pullman, Krupp Munitions Company, Lake Calumet, Pullman Palace Car Company, Saltaire, Sir Titus Salt, the Pullman strike of 1894, the utopian town of Pullman
April 9, 2017
Bollards Of The Week
I can’t resist a story involving bollards and Trossachs, so here goes.
If you are a knitter, are you bored with making socks, scarves, jumpers and baby clothes? If so, here’s a novel idea for you – bollard covers.
A circle of 40 knitters have made an Easter-themed cover for each of the 20 traffic bollards to be found in the Scottish town of Callander on the border of the Trossachs, I learnt this week. It took the ladies some 8 weeks and 100 balls of wool to finish the job.
They have form because this is the third bollard related project they have worked on. Last summer they knitted some Minion covers and for the town’s winter festival some on an Olaf theme (me neither).
From the photos I’ve seen they look cute and at least it took their minds off agitating for independence. I just hope they haven’t asked Cadbury or the National Trust to sponsor them.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Callander, Easter-themed knitted bollard covers, knitting, row over Easter eggs with Cadbury and National Trust, the Trossachs
April 8, 2017
Graffiti Of The Week
It is gratifying to know that they still do things in Cambridge with a dash of panache. Six new houses which have been built on the site of a pub (shame) in Water Street in Chesterton and selling for around £1.25m a time, have been daubed with graffiti. What is so unusual about what is regrettably an everyday occurrence is that the slogans were in Latin: “loci populum” and “locus in domo”.
Mary Beard – does the media think she is the only one with a working knowledge of Latin? – was drafted in to translate the slogans for the benefit of those who drifted through their version of the groves of Academe without an acquaintance with the ancient tongue. Her take was that it was too lovely a place to be turned into homes.
With vandals like these, Cambridge doesn’t need the services of the self-proclaimed, and to date anonymous, grammar vigilante who has prowled around the streets of Bristol at night for the last 13 years, rectifying the most egregious examples of the blight that is the grocer’s apostrophe. More power to his elbow and step ladder.
Illegitimi non carborundum, I say.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Bristol grammar vigilante, illegitimi non carborundum, Latin graffiti in Water Lane in Chesterton, Mary Beard
April 7, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (122)?…
Keep your hair on
One of my favourite recreational hobbies is watching football live and in particular my team, Shrewsbury Town, a labour of love if anything is. Occasionally, in sheer frustration, usually, when the latest inept striker misses an open goal, I am known to throw down my hat in exasperation. On such occasions, I am encouraged to keep my hair on, to calm down.
It seems as though, inadvertently, I am acting out an age old ritual which goes some way to explaining the origin of our phrase. According to a discussion on the subject in the magazine, Notes and Queries, of 12th July 1902 we are informed that “this expression is common or frequently heard in Gloucestershire. Its origin is supposed to be coeval with wigs or the wig period. Irascible and aged gentlemen” – me to a T – “when mad with passion, have been known not only to curse and swear, but to tear their wigs from their heads, and to trample the under their feet, or to throw them into the fire….if a man wished in his passion to be emphatic, he threw off his wig”. An amusing image, to be sure.
Passing English of the Victorian Era, published in 1909 by the lexicographer J Redding Ware, which was a useful dictionary of slang and phrase, dated our idiom to 1800 and onwards and associated it with the lower classes. His definition of Keep yer ‘air on – the dropping of the aspirant is a sign of the lower orders if there ever was one! – is “a favourite monitory proverb recommending patience as distinct from impatience, and tearing the ‘air off”. Barriere and Leland’s Dictionary of Slang, jargon and Cant of 1889 gives an example, albeit undated, of its usage, from the Sporting Time, “with the most perfect good temper the new-comer answered the expostulations of the hat woman with a “Keep your hair on, Lizer””. The figurative sense of calming down is crystal clear.
What is interesting about our phrase is when it appears in print there are contemporary examples from all around the world. The South Australian Register of 18th October 1879, quoting the Glasgow Weekly Mail of 18th August, describing the scramble for luggage when a boat lands, reported, “..and a wordy combat with porters and railway servants who,, should you get excited, coolly tell you to keep your hair on”. The New Zealand Observer of 18th November 1882 commented, “Mary, the buxom cook at a certain hotel, says she would go for anybody if he were to put anything about her in the Observer. Keep your hair on, old girl”.
In 1882 David Murray made a pun of the idiom in his Val Strange, A Story of the Primrose Way, “keep your hair on, returned Hiram, in a tone of soft expostulation. You’re in no hurry to get bald”. The immortal bilk, Bret Harte, used the phrase in 1885 in his A Ship of ’49, “keep yer hair on, remonstrated the old man with dark intelligence”. Looking for earlier examples of its usage I found reference to a comic song, described as “very laughable”, called Keep Your hair On which was in the repertoire of a certain Ted Callingham around 1873.
It is tempting to see the development of this phrase as, initially, the rather eccentric and amusing behaviour of wig wearers who got steamed up and found some expression of their anger by dashing their syrup to the ground. It then moved into popular speech and then suddenly, and almost universally around the English-speaking world, found its way into print in the late 1870s and 1880s. I’m sure this is the norm but it is interesting to see such suppositions confirmed.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: dashing down a wig to show anger, Francis Bret Harte, J Redding Ware, Notes and Queries, origin of keep your hair on, Ted Callingham, The Immortal Bilk
April 6, 2017
The Streets Of London – Part Fifty Six
St Mary’s Axe, EC3
One of the most iconic images of modern London is Sir Norman Foster’s 180-metre tall Gherkin which is to be found at 30, St Mary’s Axe. I have visited the bar on the 40th floor, open to tenants and their guests, on a number of occasions and can confirm that on a clear day it affords wonderful views of Greater London. Because of its position and height, it can be seen from as far away as the M11 motorway in the north and Great Windsor Park in the west. Alas, its architectural merits leave me cold.
The street of St Mary’s Axe runs from Houndsditch to Leadenhall Street, deriving its name from a church which was sited where Fitzwilliam House can now be found. The full name of the church was a bit of a mouthful – St Mary, St Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins – and, doubtless, the locals were pleased to give it a shorter appellation. According to John Stow in his A Survey of London of 1603, the shortened version of the church’s name derived from “the signe of an Axe, over against the East end thereof”.
More recent and diligent research has uncovered a document dating back to the early 16th century which, perhaps, sheds more light on the church’s peculiar name. It states that the name came from a holy relic that was kept inside the church, “an axe, oon of the iii that the 11,000 Virgyns were be hedyd with”. Legend had it that St Ursula had been traipsing around Europe with a contingent of 11,000 handmaidens when they were attacked by the Huns. The virgins were all beheaded, whilst Ursula was shot by an arrow fired by Attila. One of the three axes used in the slaughter seems to modern eyes to be a particularly gruesome relic to have adorning the walls of a church but even in mediaeval times when the trade of religious bric-a-brac was at its height, you had to make do with what relics you could get your hands on.
The church was patronised by the Guild of Skinners for whom an axe was a tool of trade. Their patronage may have given the church its name or they may have been favourably disposed to the church because of the prominence of the axe. We are in danger of getting into a vicious circle as we are when noting there was a pub nearby called the Axe which, surely, took its name from what was around it rather than the other way round.
The church, although associated with the nearby Priory of St Helen’s, seemed to have escaped the worst of the Dissolution but its fortunes went into a steep decline. By 1562 was offered to Spanish Protestant refugees as a place of worship, going under the name of Santa Maria de Hacqs. This proved only a temporary respite and around 1566 in a poor state of repair it was knocked down and the parish amalgamated into that of St Andrew Undershaft.
The Jews were another group of refugees to be found in the area, giving rise to this mildly amusing lampoon, “Jews from St Mary Axe, for jobs so wary/ that for old clothes they would even axe St Mary“.
Butchery and destruction seem to have haunted the area. In the late 18th century an elephant was dissected in the courtyard of number 12, a carpet hung over some railings shielding any passer-by from the sight. Its skeleton was donated to the museum at St Thomas’ Hospital. More recently in 1992, the Baltic Exchange was destroyed by a bomb probably planted by the IRA, killing three people. The rebuilt Exchange moved up the road to number 38 but its former site, number 30, is now occupied by the Gherkin.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Baltic Exchange bombing of 1992, Guild of Skinners, John Stow, santa Maria de hacqs, Sir Norman Foster, St Mary's Axe, St Ursula and the Virgins, The Gherkin
April 5, 2017
Quacks Pretend To Cure Other Men’s Disorders But Rarely Find A Cure For Their Own – Part Fifty Two
Mother’s Friend
Having endured another series of Call The Midwife – the plot line is that a woman gets pregnant, there are complications, there’s a lot of screaming, pushing and breathing and a sprog pops out – I realise why women might want to find ways to make the process of pregnancy and labour as comfortable as possible. So common is pregnancy – indeed, the survival of the human race depends upon it – that it offers an enormous opportunity for the unscrupulous proponents of quackery to exploit.
One company who seized the opportunity was the Bradfield Regulator Company, based in Atlanta, Georgia, who peddled a liniment called Mother’s Friend for around 30 years in the States and Canada from the 1880s. Selling at $1 a bottle, its virtues and properties were lauded in the advertisements placed in the press. One, dating from 1899, advised that it was for “expectant mothers to use externally. It softens the muscles and causes them to expand without discomfort. If used during most of the period of pregnancy, there will be no morning sickness, no rising breasts, no headache. When baby is born there will be little pain, no danger and labour would be short and easy”. No wonder there were plenty of people willing to give it a go.
Some of the adverts were almost lyrical in their proclamation of the liniment’s amazing powers. “To young mothers we offer not the stupor caused by chloroform with risk of death to you or your dearly loved and longed for baby but an agent which will if used as directed invariably alleviate in the most magical way the pains, horrors and risks of labour and often entirely do away with them…” Others had a rather troubling eugenic twist to them. In an advert dating from around 1901 a Kentucky attorney-at-law is quoted as saying, “before the birth of my last one, my wife used four bottles of Mother’s Friend. If you had the pictures of our children, you could see at a glance that the last one is healthiest, prettiest and finest-looking of them all”.
An advert from 1902 went to great pains to satisfy the reader that there wasn’t the faintest trace of opium, morphine and strychnine which many rival birth medicines contained. That’s a relief, then, but it begs the question what was in the liniment and was it effective?
For many a quack, the Food and Drugs Act (1906) began to make life a little difficult. With its extravagant claims, the Bradfield Regulator Company soon came under official scrutiny. On two occasions in 1909 consignments of Mother’s Friend were seized and subjected to scientific analysis. The good news was that as the advert had stated, there wasn’t a trace of a noxious drug amongst the ingredients. The bad news was that there wasn’t really much to the much-vaunted liniment. The investigators found that it consisted of some oil, probably vegetable, and some soap. It was unlikely to cause harm but would barely alleviate the traumas of childbirth.
Mother’s Friend continued to be sold but it went through what we would term today as a bit of rebranding and market repositioning. It was marketed as a massage oil designed to help with dry skin and the aches and pains of pregnancy. When the brand was acquired by the S.S.S Company it became a body lotion and is still available today. As the website says, “keep all your skin smooth and supple before, during and after pregnancy with the creams that moms have used for generations”.
The power of a placebo is a wondrous thing.
Filed under: Culture, History, Science Tagged: Bradfield Regulator Company, Call The Midwife, Food and Drugs Act 1906, ingredients of Mother's Friend, Mother's Friend, pregnancy liniment
April 4, 2017
A Measure Of Things – Part Two
The Apgar scale
The arrival of a little one is a source of immense pride and joy to the parents and, of course, the doting grandparents, the world over. After the initial joy of the sprog popping out the immediate question – these days the identity of its sex is generally known prepartum – is whether it is OK. Ignoramus that I am, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that there is a method for evaluating the newborn child which for the experienced midwife takes a matter of seconds to use.
The Apgar scale, for that is what it is called, was the brain child of Virginia Apgar, an anaesthetist who developed it as a quick way of assessing the effect of obstetric anaesthesia on babies. She published her paper in the ever-popular Current Researches in Anaesthesia and Analgesia that year and it has been adopted since then. Without knowing it, I probably had a score when I popped out of my mother’s womb, although quite what it was I don’t know.
The scale used five criteria for assessing the sprog normally within the first five minutes of its birth- skin colour, pulse rate, reflex grimace and irritability, activity and respiratory effort – and awarded a score between 0 and 2 in each category. The child, therefore, could have a maximum score of 10 and a minimum of 0 but most would be somewhere in between.
A child would score 0 in skin colour if it was blue all over, a 1 if there was blueness at the extremities and a 2 if the body and extremities exhibited a normal complexion. The absence of a pulse rate would score a 0 while a rate in excess of 100 beats per minute would attract a 2, a 1 being reserved for a rate in between. If there was no reaction from the baby when it was prodded, it would be marked down with a zero whereas a cry on stimulation would earn it a score of 2. A silent grimace would score a one. If the child showed no obvious signs of movement it would score a zero, some flexion of the limbs would attract a one and flexed arms and legs which resisted extension would score top marks. Finally, a baby with a strong, robust cry would attract a two but one with weak, irregular breathing would score a one and when where breathing seemed absent would attract a zero.
Now I’m no expert but a consistent score of zero across each of the categories doesn’t sound good. Indeed, a score of 3 or below is regarded as critically low and tests would be repeated to check on progress. On the other hand, scores of 7 or over are considered normal and those in the middle are fairly low. The objective behind the scale is not to be predictive of long-term health but to get a sense of how quickly it needs attention. Hats off to Virginia.
If you consider the criteria used carefully and apply synonyms – skin colour = Appearance, pulse rate = Pulse, reflex etc = Grimace, Activity and respiratory effort = Respiration – you will note that you have Virginia’s surname. I often wonder if there really is something in nominative determinism, where some people’s futures are predicted for them by their surnames. After all, we have a Lord Justice Judge, I know of a Canon Parsons and Lou Gehrig was thought to have suffered from Gehrig’s disease, although it later transpired that he didn’t. Be that as it may, what we have here is an example of a backronym, the retro-fitting of a mnemonic to an existing word or acronym.
If you are anticipating a happy event, why not ask for the Apgar score. It will guarantee you extra kudos in the delivery room.
Filed under: Science Tagged: backronym, Current Researches in Anaesthesia and Analgesia, nominative determinism, the Apgar scale, the criteria of the Apgar scale, Virginia Apgar
