Swearing Fetuses and the English Sausage Seller May 17, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
A nasty little episode from the late 1860s and London with a most curious annex. A sausage seller gets roughed up by a group of young London Jews, after saying something anti-semitic. This led to a trial. When his wife or ‘missus’ was called into the witness box though, something rather peculiar happened.
To corroborate his evidence the prosecutor called his ‘missus,’ who on getting into the witness-box curtseyed to the magistrate, and said, ‘I’ll tell the truth, sir, but don’t want to take the oath.’
I have a vague memory of others preferring not to be under oath in the witness box. Some believe that any kind of oath in God’s name is wrong: for example, the Cathars in the Middle Ages. But the ‘missus’ motives are rather, let’s say, lower than that. The judge, Mr Newton, reasonably enough asks why ‘the Missus’, who is heavily pregnant, refuses to take up the Bible. This is one of these great episodes where the good and the great of late Victorian England find themselves staring into the rather frightening face of Britain’s lumpen proletariat. Needless to say they deserve each other…
Witness: Because I’m near my confinement, sir.
Mr Newton : What has that to do with it?
Witness: They say, sir, that it is not right, because when you’re that way it’s more than one swearing.
This is a really quite extraordinary superstition, for which this blogger has been unable to find any parallel. The suspicion is that the ‘Missus’ was about to lie and didn’t want to involve her baby in perjury, the kind of honest-dishonest stratagem so typical of the criminal class of all ages. In any case the judge tries reason.
Mr Newton: Well, it is a most extraordinary superstition and I think you are a very foolish woman. To take the oath cannot hurt your baby.
Witness: I had rather not sir; but I’ll tell the truth (and here she crossed herself).
Mr Newton: I shall not take your evidence unless you are sworn; so you may stand down.
The case then went rather badly for the sausage seller and his wife. The refusal to take an oath must have been a dearly held one. I’ve been unable to find any other reference to this kind of superstition from Britain or anywhere else. Can anyone help or was it all just a personal matter of conscience between the sausage-maker, the missus, God and sausage maker junior? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
