Young Larrikins

Young Larrikins

One hundred years ago two boys were brought up before the magistrate for the use of ‘unseemly language’. They had been outside a butcher shop calling out to the butcher that the shop was selling rotten, stinking meat and they were calling him ‘foul’ names. It wasn’t stated exactly what those foul names were because in those days the newspaper didn’t print such words or even asterisks in lieu.

The local Bobby who arrested the lads told the magistrate that the boys were the same as any other boys on his beat and that this was the first time he had caught them doing anything wrong. So why would these boys do such a thing? Even though the Bobby said they had never done anything wrong before, you can bet they would have been using and misusing those foul words among their mates.

It wasn’t revealed why the boys had decided to lay siege to the butcher shop, but there was bound to be a reason. So let’s speculate. These were war years and small town New Zealand was patriotic, so maybe the butcher was a German or had German ancestry. People who had German ancestry often changed their names to avoid scrutiny or abuse. Some were confined in an island prison.

Maybe the butcher had made frankfurters. The frankfurters made by the butcher would not have been the traditional German sausage. Here they used low-grade meat, which was finely ground and pressed into blocks without any skins. Even though it was cheap meat, many people refused to buy them because doing so meant that they were in a small way supporting the enemy. So maybe the word in the shp window was enough to set the boys off.

Men were expected to volunteer and those who didn’t, but appeared to be able-bodied were abused and often sent white feathers in the mail. Sometimes there were legitimate reasons for not volunteering but each district had a quota to fill and if there was a shortfall, it brought shame on the district. Some workplaces that needed manual labour would try to hold on to their labour even though the workers, themselves wanted to volunteer. It was about this time a hundred years ago that conscription was brought in.

It could have been that indeed the meat was off! It was the height of summer – well officially, just autumn – so the heat made it difficult to keep meat fresh. Back then, if meat had gone green, the housewife would rub pepper into it to disguise the fact that it had gone off – it wouldn’t be wasted. People were used to that but nobody likes to see white wigglies in their meat! But it could have happened. Perhaps their mother found maggots or fly eggs in the meat.

Maybe the boys had decided to have a go at the butcher of their own volition but more likely they were prompted to do so by one or other of their parents, or both. Which brings us back to the magistrate, who ordered that as long as the lads received a sound thrashing, and they presented the following week with proof of the thrashing, not further action would be taken. Did the boys have to show bruised bums?

The outcome of this was not revealed, if the trashing made the lads resentful, if it indeed had the desired effect. I have a personal experience of a sound thrashing to share. I had done wrong at my grandparents’ house and my grandmother, severe old biddy that she was, ordered that I be whacked! Six strokes she said! My grandfather, a mild man, took me into the washhouse and whispered to me to call out, ‘ouch’ each time he hit the copper with his cane! He told me to hold my bum when we went back inside make sure to look sorry for myself! Did I learn a lesson? Several! But my performance directed at my grandmother taught me that there is advantage in telling people just what they want to hear. And oh yes, I can name a few that would benefit from a sound thrashing!