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A MAN LOADED with MISCHIEF, or MATRIMONY.
_A Monkey, a Magpie, and Wife; Is the true Emblem of Strife._]
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
“He would name you all the signs as he went along” BEN JONSON’S BARTHOLOMEW FAIR
“Oppida dum peragras peragranda poemata spectes” DRUNKEN BARNABY’S TRAVELS
WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. LARWOOD
_To Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., the Accomplished Interpreter of English Popular Antiquities, this_ Little Volume is Dedicated _by THE AUTHORS_.
The field of history is a wide one, and when the beaten tracks have been well traversed, there will yet remain some of the lesser paths to explore. The following attempt at a “History of Signboards” may be deemed the result of an exploration in one of these by-ways.
Although from the days of Addison’s _Spectator_ down to the present time many short articles have been written upon house-signs, nothing like a general inquiry into the subject has, as yet, been published in this country. The extraordinary number of examples and the numerous absurd combinations afforded such a mass of entangled material as doubtless deterred writers from proceeding beyond an occasional article in a magazine, or a chapter in a book,--when only the more famous signs would be cited as instances of popular humour or local renown. How best to classify and treat the thousands of single and double signs was the chief difficulty in compiling the present work. That it will in every respect satisfy the reader is more than is expected--indeed much more than could be hoped for under the best of circumstances.
In these modern days, the signboard is a very unimportant object: it was not always so. At a time when but few persons could read and write, house-signs were indispensable in city life. As education spread they were less needed; and when in the last century, the system of numbering houses was introduced, and every thoroughfare had its name painted at the beginning and end, they were no longer a positive necessity--their original value was gone, and they lingered on, not by reason of their usefulness, but as instances of the decorative humour of our ancestors, or as advertisements of established reputation and business success. For the names of many of our streets we are indebted to the sign of the old inn or public-house, which frequently was the first building in the street--commonly enough suggesting its erection, or at least a few houses by way of commencement. The huge “London Directory” contains the names of hundreds of streets in the metropolis which derived their titles from taverns or public-houses in the immediate neighbourhood. As material for the etymology of the names of persons and places, the various old signs may be studied with advantage. In many other ways the historic importance of house-signs could be shown.