CREWE, a municipal borough in the Crewe parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, 158 m. N.W. of London, on the main line of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 42,074. The town was built on an estate called Oak Farm in the parish of Monk’s Coppenhall, and takes its name from the original stations having been placed in the township of Crewe, in which the seat of Lord Crewe is situated. It is a railway junction where lines converge from London, Manchester, North Wales and Holyhead, North Stafford and Hereford. It is inhabited principally by persons in the employment of the London & North-Western railway company, and was practically created by that corporation, at a point where in 1841 only a farmhouse stood in open country. Crewe is not only one of the busiest railway stations in the world, but is the locomotive metropolis of the London & North-Western company, which has centred here enormous workshops for the manufacture of the material and plant used in railways. In 1901 the 4000th locomotive was turned out of the works. A series of subterranean ways extending many miles have been constructed to enable merchandise traffic to pass through without interfering with passenger trains on the surface railways. The company possesses one of the finest electric stations in the world, and electrical apparatus for the working of train signals is in operation. The station is fitted with an extensive suite of offices for the interchange of postal traffic, the chief mails to and from Ireland and Scotland being stopped here and arranged for various distributing centres. Its enormous railway facilities and its geographical situation as the junction of the great trunk lines running north and south, tapping also the Staffordshire potteries on the one side and the great mineral districts of Wales on the other, constitute Crewe station one of the most important links of railway and postal communication in the kingdom. The railway company built its principal schools, provided it with a mechanics’ institute, containing library, science and art classes, reading rooms, assembly rooms, &c. Victoria Park, also the gift of the company, was opened in 1888. The municipal corporation built the technical school and school of art. The borough incorporated in 1877, is under a mayor, 7 aldermen and 21 councillors. Area, 2185 acres.
CREWKERNE, a market town in the southern parliamentary division of Somersetshire, England, 132 m. W.S.W. of London by the London & South-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4226. It is pleasantly situated in a wooded hollow, in the upper valley of the river Parret. The church of St Bartholomew, one of the finest in the county, is in the Perpendicular style characteristic of the district. The ornamentation throughout is beautiful, and the west front especially notable. The grammar school dates from 1499, but occupies modern buildings. Sail-cloth, horsehair, cloth and webbing are manufactured.
CRIB (a word common to some Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch krib and Ger. Krippe; it has a common origin with the O. Eng. “cratch,” a manger or crib, cf. Fr. crêche), a manger or framework receptacle for holding fodder for cattle and horses, and so, from early times in English, particularly the manger in which Jesus was laid. It is thus used of a “cradle,” from which in form it should be distinguished as being a small bed with high closed-in sides. The word has many transferred meanings, as a rough, small hut or dwelling, from which comes the slang use of “crib” as a berth or situation, or, as a burglar’s term for a house to be broken into; also, technically, in engineering for a timber framework for masonry constructed with a caisson in laying foundations below water, or in mining for a timber lining to a shaft. “Crib-biting” is a vicious habit in horses, probably due in the first instance to indigestion; the horse seizes the manger or other object in its teeth, and draws in the breath, known as “wind-sucking”; the habit may be checked by the use of a throat-strap. The slang meaning of the verb “crib,” to steal, especially used of petty thefts, is probably derived from an obsolete use of the substantive for a small wicker basket; this meaning occurs in the expression “time-cribbing,” used of an illicit increase of the hours of labour in a factory or workshop, especially by the running of machinery each day slightly beyond the time of ceasing work. “Crib” and “cribbing” in this sense are also applied to any unacknowledged appropriation or plagiarism from an author, and particularly to the secret copying by a schoolboy of another’s work or from a book, and also to the secret use of a translation and to such translation itself. “Crib,” in the game of cribbage, of which it is a shortened form, is the term for the cards thrown away by each player and scored by the dealer.
CRIBBAGE, a game of cards. A very similar game called “Noddy” was formerly played, the game being fifteen or twenty-one up, marked with counters, occasionally by means of a noddy board. Cribbage seems to be an improved form of Noddy. According to John Aubrey (Brief Lives) it was invented by Sir John Suckling (1609-1642).
A complete pack of fifty-two cards is required, and a cribbage board for scoring, drilled with sixty holes for each player and one hole (called “the game hole”) at each end, the players usually scoring from opposite ends. Each player has two scoring pegs. The game is marked by inserting the pegs in the holes, one after the other, as the player makes a fresh score, commencing with the outer row at the game-hole end and going up the board. When the thirtieth hole is reached the player comes down the board, using the inner row of holes, until he places his foremost peg in the game-hole. If the losing player fails to obtain half the holes, his adversary wins a “lurch,” or double game.
The game may be played by two players, five or six cards being dealt to each, and each putting out two for what is called “crib”; or by three players (with a triangular scoring board), five cards being dealt to each, each putting out one for crib, and a card from the top of the pack being dealt to complete the crib; or by four players (two being partners against the other two, sitting and playing as at whist, and one partner scoring for both), five cards being dealt to each, and each putting out one card for crib.