Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/491

 i is. XH. DEC. IB, MIS.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

483

ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT. Where can I find the pedigree of Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury 1604-10 ? I am trying to trace a Sir John Bowyer of Herefordshire, Knight, the Archbishop's sergeant-at-arms, who had married Sybil, daughter of Mary Gough, one of the Arch- bishop's sisters. P. A. BOWYER.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION WANTED. I wish to identify an Englishman (circa 1780) who married a German countess, was a friend of " the wicked " Lord Lyttelton (i.e., Thomas, second baron), was " an elegant and delicate poet," and became insane. With these clues can any reader of ' N. & Q.' help me ?

HORACE BLEACKLEY.

THE NEWSPAPER PLACARD. Can any cor- respondent tell me of magazine articles, or of chapters in more extensive works, dealing with the history of newspaper placards ? At what date, and by what newspaper, were they first brought into regular use in their present form ? Particulars of remarkable oosters would also be welcome.

R. H. E. F.

DANDO, THE OYSTER-EATER.

(US. xii. 400, 444.)

BETWEEN 1830 and 1840 there was hardly a name better known in London than that of Dando. To-day he is for- gotten, and the querist even hints that he may have been a myth. The ' Historical English Dictionary ' has the word " Boy- cott," but it does not contain " Dando," although one has equal claims with the other. A " dando " was in the thirties and forties a person who ran up a bill and then decamped. The real Dando flourished and was at the height of his career as an oyster gourmand about 1830. He was the hero of many ballads and chapbooks. It is a pleasure to be able to say that Dickens and Thackeray both refer to him, and Macaulay too. J. S. Farmer aiid W. E. Henley's subs, (common) a great eater ; a glutton, specifically a sharper who subsists at the expense of hotels, restaurants, or oyster bars." This excellent vocabulary of slang is the only dictionary I know of which has any allusion to Dando, but Farmer and Henley only establish the fact that " dando '
 * Slang and its Analogues ' gives : " Dando,

was a substantive of the English language they naturally enough are unable to go into the subject historically and at length. In All the Year Round for 1861 (vol. iv. p. 543) there is as good a study of the real Dando as probably may be found anywhere :

" He was never known to have eaten his fill of oysters, though he repeatedly made the attempt, and always at the expense of those who could have supplied him, if they would, with an unlimited number. Not until the oyster-opener's arms were wearied not until his knife was blunted and broken not until dozen after dozen had dis- appeared in company with mounds of bread-and- butter and floods of porter, did the oyster-shop keeper the Pirn, the Quinn, or whoever it might be discover in the ready foe to the genus oyster the inappeasable, the impecunious Dando. He ate his oysters with so much relish, he seemed so entirely at home with them, he handled them so completely with the touch of a master, that for a tune at least self-interested criticism was lost in admiration. The waiters who hurried in with relays grinned as they passed each other, and swore they had never seen * such a One-er ' the guests, who clamoured to be served, suppressed their clamour to gaze, more or less furtively, on an individual who seemed to be all throat, and with stomach of immeasurable profundity ; the fishmonger, from whose stores the oysters were transferred, felt a pleasing sense of dismay at the rapidity with which they vanished till, suddenly* flashed the thought : ' Suppose this should be Dando ! ' And Dando it always was, ever penniless, impenetrable, cool, and craving, into whose mind the thought of paying had never once entered, even had it been possible, which it never was, for him to have shelled out a single farthing. For Dando to be ' had-up ' for oyster-eating became the standing police amusement of every week during the season. It was of no use com- mitting Dando to prison, for the treadmill, oakum picking, prison fare itself, however liberal, only aggravated his appetite for oysters ; and, after he had sojourned for a week or two in Coldbath Fields or elsewhere, the oyster-shops were the real sufferers. When Ancient Pistol exclaimed that the world was his oyster, he merely typified the tendencies of Dando, to whom everything in existence was, as it were, an oyster, to be always eaten.

" At last Dando died of starvation with his mission unfulfilled. Alexander wept at having no more worlds to conquer, and Dando died because there were no more oyster-shops to victimize. He had succeeded in establishing his fame from Whitechapel to Knightsbridge, from Highgate to Cambenvell he was everywhere better known than trusted. What could he do, but calmly lay down his head on a dustheap, and pray^for con- tentment beneath a pile of oyster-shells ?

It will be recalled by many that Dickens, in ' The River Scene ' in ' Sketches by Boz,' has given the head man at Searle's boating yard the name of Dando, describing him as " quite a character, and sharing with the defunct oyster-swallower the celebrated name of ' Dando.' ' ' Sketches by Boz ' was issued in 1836