Just asked my colleague to guess what she thinks 'sucking the monkey' and 'tapping the admiral' mean and she couldn't come up with anything that wasn't too rude to say aloud at work! Thanks for teaching us something new 🙈🐒
You'd have thought that as a landlocked county we'd have less naval history, but it seems that we've always prioritised keeping documents that are a little bit rude.
This practice was not without risk: when I was cataloguing the Sir Bernard Spilsbury Notes on Autopsies index cards I came across a case of accidental death attributed to 'sucking the monkey': https://wellcomecollection.org/works/waa4q253 1920/21
Nelson’s body was placed in a barrel at Trafalgar and filled with booze to preserve it. Apparently that particular monkey was sucked as well. We all like a drink, but 🤮
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His reply was he had spent the day blowing bubbles.
For context:
At that time he owned a Chimpanzee named Bubbles.
*sounds of Beavis and Butt-Head style laughter*