"John TOZER was charged with a most riotous outrage. In the Butcher-row there is a respectable gentleman who sells taffies and other sweetmeats. Last Saturday he was awakened out of his first sleep by a tremendous battering at the door. He ran to see who was there and found the prisoner demanding a ha'porth of taffies. Hecould not serve him at that unreasonable hour; and the other kicked away at the door and swore if he did not serve him, he would beat the sanguinary door in. He at last opened the door, when the prisoner bolted down the passage and met a watchman in St. John-street, when he said "watchman, you're too late; there's been a hell of a row - and I've been in it!" Complainant then came up and gave him in charge, and the Bench fined him 5s. and expenses, and in default of payment locked him up for a week.
"
Taffies, of course, are toffees. This was the original form, not written down, according to OED, until 1817, a Creole word, coming, like the sugar cane, from the West Indies. Taffy became first Toffy and the Toffee.
John Tozer would seem to have been a taffy addict. We are not told how old he was but cabinet maker or not, I guess he was only a teenager. He lived with his parents but clearly they were not going to cough up the five shillings to keep him out of gaol.
The Butcher-row was an extension of Smythen St. It was a poor district. Would a seller of sweetmeats living in Smythen St. really be a respectable gentleman ? Perhaps not but if so he would be in the class of impoverished gentlefolk, a class we may be seeing more of in the decade to come. There is a distinct sense of looming Brother, can you spare a dime? about the present times.
Sanguinary door: No respectable newspaper in 1845 could print the word bloody, used as a vulgar adjective. A word not thus seen in print until 1840 (OED) hence the old humourous euphemism. When Bernard Shaw staged Pygmalion
17Source : The Western Times, 8th March, 1845.
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