"jail fever", 1720

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/8/2013 02:12 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>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.

Or to British schoolboy football, a la Casey?

You could check for yourself (while I did neglect to say Google
Books, I did say even minions ought to find it).  But I'll be kind
and say, yes, I just did reconfirm it.

If you read colonial newspapers of the early 18th century, you'll
find "goal" frequently, perhaps more so than "gaol".

Joel


>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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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