"jail fever", 1720

[Laurence Horn]

Is this really "goal fever" rather than "gaol fever"?   I know the latter from Oscar Wilde, and I'm pretty sure by then it wasn't "The Ballad of Reading Goal", which sounds more like a paean to an educational public television show.

LH

On May 8, 2013, at 1:43 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> This will obviously be discovered by the OED minions when they reach
> this entry -- provided they are aware enough to look for "goal" :-)
> -- but anyhoo ...
>
> "Our common Prisons afford us an Instance of this, in which very few
> escape, what they call the Goal Fever, which is always attended with
> a Degree of Malignity in proportion to the Closeness and Stench of the Place."
>
> Richard Mead. "A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion,
> and the Methods to be used to Prevent it."  The Fourth
> Edition.  London: Printed for Sam. Buckley, 1720.
>
> [Despite this being the 4th ed., I don't think there are any editions
> of an earlier year.  However, if "they" already call it the Goal
> Fever, perhaps it will turn up earlier, such as in the Burney
> newspaper collection.]
>
> Antedates OED2 "jail fever", [1750]--..
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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