April 11, 2010: Toffs and Toughs
 

Most Brits will recognize this photograph, taken in 1937 outside the 133rd, Eton vs Harrow, Cricket match.
The photograph has been used repeatedly in the Media, and even on book jackets, to illustrate the Class divide in Britain.

http://cellar.org/2010/Toffs-And-Toughs-.jpg

What many Brits don't know is;
1~ The photograph was taken by Jimmy Sime, not Bert Hardy.
2~ The two boys on the left, were students at Harrow, not Eton.
3~ The other three boys were not street "toughs", but local boys working at that gate as porters, carrying wicker hampers from spectators' cars into the stands.

George Salmon, Jack Catlin and George Young, the three local boys, lived long happy lives.

Peter Wagner, on the left, died locked up in the East Sussex asylum at Hellingly.

Tim Dyson, leaning on the post, died of Diphtheria the following summer, while visiting his parents stationed in India.

link

Fancy clothes will do that.

I find the walking sticks for these young boys curious. Surely they were quite an anachronism in 1937.

So the three on the right were tough after all.

They're canes, not walking sticks. For beating the poor with.

canes then (even tho to me they are synonymous). Were they a prescribed part of the dress uniform or something?

Most likely.

I was listening to a radio interview the other day and the chap being interviewed had attended a boarding school in the late 60s. They were required to follow a fairly strict dress code, including some totally anachronistic pieces, such as a straw boater.

Richard Cory - Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.

A cane would generally not be strong enough to provide any walking support.

As Dana says, most likely the were part of the uniform. If you've read Harry Potter, remember Dudley's Smeltings stick? Whilst HP is fiction, very little in there outside of the magic comes purely from JKs imagination. Even the seven-sided muggle coins.

huh. OT, but I still remember that in my boarding school around 1970 (I was a day student) the girls had to "dress for dinner" every night in a really ugly uniform dress, hose, and pumps.

and what are canes for, then, if not to provide support? (confused)

beating the poor.

I wasn't kidding.

They could certainly be used to keep the riff-raff at bay in the street, and proably were in days past. I'd suspect that at some point the streets were rough, weapons and sticks were prohibited and this was a way of disguising a weapon as a legitimate accessory. Obviously the poor wouldn't be able to afford this luxury. Mostly just for show in the era of the picture, though.

Good for keeping Artful Dodger from getting too close.

Of course it's fashion. That shit can make even a completely mobile peanut look good. There is nothing wrong with that damn peanut's legs.

Please, ALL of you are going to tell me you were absent the day they taught self defense with a cane?

Please, it strains credulity.