Sitting on the bus last Saturday on the way into town, I suddenly found myself thinking of Darby & Joan clubs.
Goodness knows why – I cannot now remember which immediately prior thought pushed the file pointer to land on that particular bit of the memory bank – because I was instantly in recall mode, simultaneously viewing film clips & being that child walking past the building – next to the Town Hall & opposite the swimming baths – a church hall perhaps? – where the Darby & Joan club held its weekly (monthly?) meetings, meetings which were always reported in the local paper.
I don’t think it was a national organisation, like Scouts & Guides, Boys’ & Girls’ Brigade, Woodcraft Folk, TocH, Rotary, Round Table, Townswomen’s Guild, or Women’s Institute, nor one attached to any particular religious denomination, but every town, village or community seemed to have one.
A social occasion for OAPs, old folk, the elderly. People older than my grandparents, born when Queen Victoria was on the throne; people who didn’t (to a childish mind) have anything else to do because they did not work anymore & so did not have much money either.
They had tea; perhaps they had a Talk from an invited speaker; they may have played games such as housey-housey or beetle drive; they may even have done some dancing. But what they, always, most definitely did have, was a sing-song. Accompanied, as was most communal singing outside of church, by a piano, played perhaps by someone who was an OAP themselves, or someone younger who had that particular skill of being able to play any tune on request. And these songs would, most likely, be the popular songs of their youth, or courting days – form the music hall or variety theatre.
The clubs don’t seem to exist any more; today’s pensioner is not necessarily poor & there are many other opportunities for entertainment & occupation, organisations such as Age UK, or social services run lunch clubs & day centres for those whose choices are limited by ill-health or poverty, but I found myself wondering where the name had come from.
The OED calls it ‘a jocose appellation’ for a devoted married couple, ‘especially in advanced years and in humble life’. The source is usually thought to be a verse published in The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1735, which contains the lines:
Old Darby, with Joan by his side,
You've often regarded with wonder:
He's dropsical, she is sore-eyed,
Yet they're never happy asunder.
The OED is not convinced, thinking it possible that the names go back to some earlier piece, & may even have been based on real people.
I was surprised to find that there are still plenty of Darby & Joan clubs in existence, including the original Club in Streatham, south west London. The opening of this club – which had its own building – was reported in The Times of 18 December 1942. The amenities – ‘comfortable lounges, reading & rest rooms, a small billiard table, bathrooms, & an advice bureau to assist with the knotty problems of old age & supplementary pensions’ – were free to users, who could also buy themselves a proper hot dinner for 8d (less than 3½p). There is even a photograph of two of the first members arriving – a rather prosperous-looking couple – captioned TO DISPEL LONELINESS.
The Streatham Club was run by the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) on behalf of an executive management committee chaired by the local MP. After the war the WVS was a prime mover in setting up Darby & Joan Clubs all over the country. Despite the name I do not think membership was limited to married couples – that would make no sense given the large numbers of widowers &, more especially, widows, in this age group.
Interestingly, the OED describes Darby as ‘A southern (not the local) pronunciation of Derby, the name of an English town and shire, which was formerly also sometimes so spelt.’
In the whole of my lifetime as a Derbyshire girl I only ever knew one person who pronounced it with an e as in herby: that was my Irish grandmother, who had spent the majority of her life in the county, so must have been aware of her difference. Nobody – in the family at least – liked to correct her.
Of course that is the way modern Americans pronounce it when speaking of horseracing or hats. Probably just another example, of which there are many, of pronunciation, grammar or meaning which we nowadays think of as Americanisms which turn out to a survival of English as she used to was spoke even as far back as the age of the first Elizabeth
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