Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this text.
BY JACOB LARWOOD AND
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN
“He would name you all the signs as he went along”
“Oppida dum peragras peragranda poemata spectes”
TWELFTH IMPRESSION
WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. LARWOOD
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1908
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 beenwell traversed, there will yet remain some of the lesser paths to explore.The following attempt at a “History of Signboards” may be deemed theresult of an exploration in one of these by-ways.
Although from the days of Addison’s Spectator down to the presenttime many short articles have been written upon house-signs, nothing likea general inquiry into the subject has, as yet, been published in thiscountry. The extraordinary number of examples and the numerous absurdcombinations afforded such a mass of entangled material as doubtlessdeterred writers from proceeding beyond an occasional article in a magazine,or a chapter in a book,—when only the more famous signs would becited as instances of popular humour or local renown. How best to classifyand treat the thousands of single and double signs was the chief difficultyin compiling the present work. That it will in every respect satisfy thereader is more than is expected—indeed much more than could behoped for under the best of circumstances.
In these modern days, the signboard is a very unimportant object: itwas 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 wereless needed; and when in the last century, the system of numbering houseswas introduc