Hyphenated street names in Victorian English

Question

When I read news reports or official documents from the end of the 19th Century I often see a strange way of writing street names. Here is an example, taken from http://www.casebook.org/official documents/inquests/inquest pinchin.html "Police-constable William Pennett, 239 H, deposed: - I went on duty at
10 o'clock on Monday night. Nothing attracted my attention that wasunusual. I was on a regular beat during the night and morning. I had to go through Pinchin-street about every half-hour. I entered it from Christian-street and Backchurch-lane. I occasionally turned down Frederick-street to where the stables were. I then returned to Pinchin- street. Once or twice I cut it short, and simply went into Backchurch- lane. About 25 minutes past 5, I came from the direction of Christian- street to Pinchin-street.."
I wonder how long that pointless hyphenation went on for?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]When I read news reports or official documents from the end of the 19th Century I often see a strange ... I came from the direction of Christian- street to Pinchin-street.." I wonder how long that pointless hyphenation went on for?[/nq]
Until the 1950s. Fowler's English Usage (1908) deplores the practice...
1. Hyphens are regrettable necessities, and to be done without whenthey reasonably may.
2. There are three degrees of intimacy between words, of which thefirst and loosest is expressed by their mere juxtaposition as separate words, the second by their being hyphened, and the third or closest by their being written continuously as one word. Thus, hand workers, hand- workers, handworkers.
3. It is good English usage to place a noun or other non-adjectivalpart of speech before a noun, printing it as a separate word, and to regard it as serving the purpose of an adjective in virtue of its position; for instance, war expenditure; but there are sometimes special objections to its being done. Thus, words in -ing may be actual adjectives (participles), or nouns (gerunds), used in virtue of their position as adjectives; and a visible distinction is needed. A walking stick is a stick that walks, and the phrase might occur as a metaphorical description of a stiffly behaved person: a walking-stick or walkingstick is a stick for walking; the difference may sometimes be important, and consistency may be held to require that all compounds with gerunds should be hyphened or made into single words.
4. Not only can a single word in ordinary circumstances be thustreated as an adjective, but the same is true of a phrase; the words of the phrase, however, must then be hyphened, or ambiguity may result. Thus: Covent Garden; Covent-Garden Market; Covent-Garden- Market salesmen.
At Bow-street, Robert Marsh, greengrocer, of Great Western-road, Harrow-road, was charged...=97Times.
Great-Western Road, Harrow Road. Bow-street, as at (not in) shows, is a compound epithet for police-court understood, and has a right to its hyphen. By 3, there is no need for a hyphen after Harrow, and by 1, if unnecessary, it is undesirable. As to the other road, there are three possibilities. The Times is right if there is a Western Road of which one section is called Great, and the other Little. If the name means literally the great road that runs west, there should be no hyphen at all. If the road is named from the Great Western Railway, or from the Great-Western Hotel, our version is right.

Usenet · Answer

1950s? I'd say it was getting fairly rare after about the 1880s: Walford's "Old and New London", published at various dates from c.1870 to the mid 1880s, used the old form, but Wheatley's "London Past and Present" (1894), used the modern style. The 1926 edition of the LCC's "Names of Streets and Places..." didn't hyphenate, but used lower-case for the "street" and "road" part of the names.

I don't think "pointless" is the right word to use for it, though: it was simply a different convention, which fell out of use. I've always assumed that it's rooted in a view of "street", "road", "alley", "square", etc. as a subsidiary designator which originally identified the type of thoroughfare, and which wasn't seen as a fully-fledged part of the street name.

Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed

Usenet · Answer

Thank you to all!

Hyphenated street names in Victorian English

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions