A trip to Belfast and visit to Crumlin Road Goal (Northern Ireland's most infamous prison) presented more than a century’s worth of history and some dark etymology with unsavoury beginnings. This handful of everyday phrases are all said to have links to happenings in and around the jail – as told by our tour guide, Harry.
Male prisoners who deserved punishment were brutally flogged with a cat o’ nine tails – a whip of nine leather or rope straps, each with knots tied at the end. A prisoner would be beaten until he passed out, rendering them literally speechless. The cat’s got your tongue.
The first execution in Crumlin Road jail took place in 1854, a soldier, Robert Henry O’Neill. Executions were meant to deter people from crime, but they became a source of entertainment. In the hills and surrounding areas people gathered, drank, ate, played music. It’s said the effects of the mass events before a hanging were the ‘hangover’.
All prisoners were put to work. Women were forced to unpick threads of rope until their hands bled and nails fell off. The rope they’d unpicked was then repurposed (creating new rope) and sold outside of the prison walls.
When prisoners were transported from the prison for execution they were asked for their ‘last orders’, a beverage of their choosing.
As above, if they declined the offer of a last order the prisoner was ‘staying on the wagon’.
5 and a bit. A bonus label given to some prisoners at the jail ‘ordinary decent criminals’.
Whether these wordy tales are 100% accurate or not, it goes some way to showing how our language evolves over time.
------
If you enjoy going down wordy rabbit holes, there's more of the same in choosing the right case and unwrapping Christmas.
------
Leigh James (that’s me) is a Marketing Copywriter.
You can drop me a message, or scribble an email to me.
Photo credit – Leigh James