Dr Gheist an autobiography from the Midlands.

  • Gheist, David (pseudonym)
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr Gheist an autobiography from the Midlands. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    31/300 (page 19)
    In a time of great depression in the shoe trade, one took to horsebreaking, another bought a horse and cart and turned carrier, and a third became groom to an old lady, who lives near my own house. I was naturally interested in this horsey family; and, on inquiry, was not surprised to find their grandfather lived and died a post-boy. This heredity in dress and taste is a curious subject, and I suppose has its origin in certain fashions and customs peculiar to a class, becoming fixed as tendencies in the nerve centres. Why do tradesmen, who suppose they are getting on in the world, always wear their hats on the back of their heads? This is almost invariable. Why do well-to-do merchants wear mutton-chop whiskers and bunches of seals? Why is the full dress of a navvy, clean high tops and a red knotted neckerchief? Why does Hodge, the labourer, wear a highly ornamental breast to his smock frock ? What on earth induces a carpenter to wear a square paper cap? Why do some families take to velveteen and poaching at one and the same time ? What is the innate association between brown scratch wigs and snuff ? How is it that old maids of a certain type always take to cork-screw curls and bombazine ? These and similar questions, though very suggestive, I suppose cannot be satisfactorily answered, unless we subscribe to the theory of inheritance.