As education progressed, signs were less needed, and when thoroughfares were named and sign-posts set up and houses numbered, the use of business signs vanished. They lingered sometimes on account of their humor, sometimes because they were a guarantee of an established business, but chiefly because people were used to them.
The shops in Boston were known by sign-boards. In 1761 Daniel Parker, goldsmith, was at the Golden Ball, William Whitmore, grocer, at the Seven Stars, Susannah Foster was “next the Great Cross,” and John Loring, chemist, at the Great Trees. One hatter had a “Hatt & Beaver,” another a “Hatt & Helmit”; butter was sold at the “Blue Glove” and “Brazen Head”; dry-goods at the “Sign of the Stays” and at the “Wheat Sheaf”; rum at the “Golden Keys”; pewter ware at the “Crown and Beehive”; knives at the “Sign of the Crown and Razor.” John Crosby, for many years a noted lemon trader, had as a sign a basket of lemons. In front of a nautical instrument store on the corner of State and Broad streets, Boston, still stands a quaint wooden figure of an ancient naval officer resplendent in his blue coat, cocked hat, short breeches, stockings, and buckles, holding in his hand a quadrant. The old fellow has stood in this place, continually taking observations of the sun, for upwards of one hundred years. It will be seen that these signs were often incongruous and non-significant, both as to their relation to the business they indicated, and in the association of objects which they depicted.
A rhyme printed in the British Apollo in 1710 notes the curious combination of names on London sign-boards:—
“I’m amazed at the signs
As I pass through the town;
To see the odd mixture
A Magpie and Crown,
The Whale and the Crow,
The Razor and Hen,
The Leg and Seven Stars,
The Axe and the Bottle,
The Sun and the Lute,
The Eagle and Child,
The Shovel and Boot.”
Sign-board of
Stratton Tavern.
Addison wrote nearly two centuries ago on the absurdity and incongruity of these sign-boards, in The Spectator of April 2, 1710. He says, advocating a censorship of sign-boards:—
“Our streets are filled with blue boars, black swans, and red lions; not to mention flying pigs, and hogs in armour, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. My first task therefore should be like that of Hercules, to clear the city from monsters. In the second place I would forbid that creatures of jarring and incongruous natures should be joined together in the same sign; such as the bell and the neat’s tongue; the dog and the gridiron. The fox and goose may be supposed to have met, but what have the fox and the seven stars to do together? And when did the lamb and dolphin ever meet, except upon a sign-post? As for the cat and fiddle there is a conceit in it, and therefore I do not intend that anything I have said should affect it. I must, however, observe to you upon this subject, that it is usual for a young tradesman, at his first setting up, to add to his sign that of the master whom he has served; as the husband, after marriage, gives a place to his mistress’s arms in his own coat. This I take to have given rise to many of those absurdities which are committed over our heads; and as, I am informed, first occasioned the three nuns and a hare, which we see so frequently joined together.”
Many of the apparently meaningless names on tavern signs come through the familiar corruptions of generations of use, through alterations both by the dialect of speakers and by the successive mistakes of ignorant sign-painters. Thus “The Bag o’ Nails,” a favorite sign, was originally “The Bacchanalians.” The familiar “Cat and Wheel” was the “Catherine Wheel,” and still earlier “St. Catherine’s Wheel,” in allusion to the saint and her martyrdom. The “Goat and Compass” was the motto “God encompasseth us.” “The Pig and Carrot” was the “Pique et Carreau” (the spade and diamond in playing cards). Addison thus explains the “Bell Savage,” a common sign in England, usually portrayed by an Indian standing beside a bell. “I was formerly very much puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading of an old romance translated out of the French, which gives an account of a very beautiful woman who was found in a wilderness, and is called in French, La Belle Sauvage, and is everywhere translated by our countrymen the Bell Savage.”
“The Bull and Mouth” celebrates in corrupt wording the victory of Henry VIII. in “Boulougne Mouth” or Harbor. In London the Bull and Mouth Inn was a famous coach office, and the sign-board bore these lines:—