Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/497

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. ix. JUNE 2i, 1902. NOTES AND QUERIES.


489


Chocolate by an Lngme to greater Perfection than any other Method hitherto in use," &c. Daily Advert., 15 October, 1742.

On 22 June, 1742, E. Bence, widow of Peter Bence, chocolate maker in Broad Street, Soho. advertises that she "continues to make and sell all sorts of Chocolate, after the Manner of M r Alphonce, Confectioner to the late Countess Dowager of Albemarle" (Daily Advert., 1742). J. HOLDEN MAC MICHAEL.

I have before me as I write the chocolate mill used by my great-grandmother, who died some seventy years ago. It is not silver, alas! but iron. Probably 'if it had been of the former metal it would not have come down to me. It is very well made. It has a flat head, and six perforated blades about two and a half inches long. Each blade is pierced with three five-pointed stars about a quarter of an inch from point to point, and with seven small holes near to the curved outer edge. The head is fitted on to a nicely turned oak handle about eleven inches long. It is in a good state of preservation.

E. E. STEEET.

Chichester.

There was, perhaps, no boy in London in the forties who did not know the mill that worked, to the delight arid wonder of passers- by, in the front window of a celebrated chocolate house situated just at the top of Hoi born Hill. I believe that chocolate and other delectable hot drinks are still disbursed from the same spot. The compound used to be stirred around by revolving mechanism that scooped up and turned over the tooth- some-looking mass at every revolution. Just below, upon the same (the north) side of Hoi born Hill, there existed a popular eating- house, in whose window the following tempt- ing notice was displayed : "A la Mode Soup, and no flies, 3 pence a basin." This particular place of entertainment stood a bit higher up than Field Lane. In the midst of the latter was a gutter, said to divide the City from the county. On one side were shoemakers (mostly second-hand), on the other Jews kept slop-shops, and dealt largely in second-hand silk pocket-handkerchiefs.

HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.


INTRODUCTION OF TROUSERS (9 th S. ix. 268, 415). The following, from the Daily News of 31 May, is to the point :

"Mr. J. Scruton, of Doncaster, referring to the recent correspondence in this column on the subject of ' trousers, states that in the original trust deed of Bethel Chapel, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, 1820, there is a clause providing that * under no circum-


stances whatever shall any preacher be allowed to occupy the pulpit who wears trousers.' The custom and propriety of that time required the ordinary breeches and gaiters. 1 remember, too,' the same correspondent adds, ' when in Hull in 1863, the late Rev. W. Garner (one of three very remarkable ministerial brothers) told me he had a letter in big possession in which the late Rev. Hugh Bourne, one of the founders of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, said of the late Rev. W. Clowes, the other founder thereof, "That trousers - wearing, beer-drinking Clowes will never get to heaven. " Hugh Bourne was a rigid teetotaler (even before the Seven Men of Preston), and a rigid wearer of breeches and gaiters, whereas Clowes drank an occasional glass of ale and wore trousers.' "

C. C. B.

In view of the quotations given at 7 th S. vii. 25, 75 ; 8 th S. ii. 488 ; 9 th S. iii. 126, 274, and earlier ones mentioned at the last of these references, the following extract from a journal called Fashion, of 15 May, reads somewhat singularly :

" Quietly and without any pomp or ceremony we that is, the masculine portion of the human race are celebrating the centenary of the trouser. Trousers 'came in' a hundred years ago as the result of drink, and may be said to owe their origin to old-world royalty, which in those days ate, and especially drank, heavily, and was consequently afflicted with gout and other maladies of a character to swell the leg. George IV., as Prince Regent, his brothers, the Dukes of York, Clarence, Cumber- land, and Sussex, the French Princes who after- wards reigned as Louis XVIII., Charles X.. and Louis Philippe, King Frederick William III. of Prussia, and many other equally illustrious per- sonages, adopted the modern form of pantaloon, which was at the time a source of no end of ridicule and entertainment to Gillray and to the other cari- caturists of the age."

A. F. R.

The dress of the ancient Irish consisted of the truis or strait bracca, the long cota, the cochal, the canabhas, the barrad, and the brog. The truis (i.e., the "trowses") was made of weft, with various colours running on it in stripes or divisions. It covered the ankles, legs, and thighs, rising as high as the loins, and fitted so close to the limbs as to discover every muscle and motion of the parts which it covered. "The Celtic braccce," says Whitaker, in his * Hist, of Manchester,' vol. i. p. 267, " were so denominated from the colours running on them in stripes or divisions." In vulgar Irish we have bhreacan, a plaid (see

  • Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient

and Modern Irish,' by Joseph Walker, in the Grenville Library, British Museum). Trousers were worn by the northern nations of anti- quity generally, especially by the Germans and Gauls. Striped, checked, and embroidered trousers were much worn by the inhabitants of Asia. Bracata Gallia, a department of