Has Your Mother Sold Her Mangle?

From Jerry White's "London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God", on London slang:

London slang was a quick-change artiste. The slang recounted by, say, Pierce Egan in the 1820s, Dickens at mid-century and Kipling in the 1890s may have some overlap but in general each has a very different vocabulary and feel to it. This accelerated obsolescence was neatly observed by the journalist Charles Mackay. He recalled from his own experience of the early 1820s and the period from 1832 to 1852 the London slang catchwords and phrases used in the streets to deflate pomposity and tickle a crowd. One followed another in quick succession as the fashionable put-down of the day. "Quoz!" "What a shocking bad hat!" "Walker-r-r!" "There he goes with his eye out!" "Has your mother sold her mangle?" "Flare up!" "Does your mother know you're out?" "Who are you?" And no doubt there were others, each quickly used up and overtaken by the next, some to be revived by later generations.

Comments

[dearieme]

A friend of my wife's was appointed very young to a lectureship at Trinity, Dublin. As he walked in to deliver his first lecture a voice called out "Does your mother know you're out?"

[Mikeovswinton]

You (or the writer, perhaps) have left out "Where's my washboard?" That was my favourite.