Upper

Upper (pronounced uhp-er)

(1) Higher, as in place, position, pitch, or in a scale.

(2) Superior, as in rank, dignity, or station.

(3) In geography (as place or regional names), at a higher level, more northerly, or farther from the sea.

(4) In stratigraphy, denoting a later division of a period, system, or the like, (often initial capital letter).

(5) The part of a shoe or boot above the sole, comprising the quarter, vamp, counter, and lining.

(6) A gaiter; made usually of cloth.

(7) In dentistry, as upper plate, the top of a set of false teeth (dentures), the descriptive prefix for teeth in the upper jaw.

(8) In bicameral parliaments, as upper house (senate, legislative council, House of Lords etc), the body elected or appointed often on a less representative basis than a lower house.

(9) Slang for a stimulant drug, especially an amphetamine, as opposed to the calmative downer.

(10) In mathematics, (of a limit or bound), greater than or equal to one or more numbers or variables.

(11) In Taoism, a spiritual passageway through which consciousness can reach a higher dimension.

1300-1350: From the Old English upp, from the Proto-Germanic upp and cognate with the Old Frisian up, the Old Saxon up, the Old Dutch up, the Old High German ūf and the Old Norse upp.  Similar formations were the Middle Dutch upper, the Dutch opper, the Low German upper and the Norwegian yppare.  The –er suffix (added to verbs to form an agent noun) is from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ware (suffix denoting residency or meaning "inhabitant of"), from the Proto-Germanic (w)ārijaz (defender, inhabitant), from the primitive Indo-European wer- (to close, cover, protect, save, defend).  It was cognate with the Dutch -er, the German –er and the Swedish -are.  The Proto-Germanic (w)ārijaz is thought most likely a borrowing from the Latin ārius.

The phrase “upper hand” (advantage) was first noted in the late fifteenth century, possibly the jargon of wrestling (“over-hand” existed with the same meaning nearly two-hundred years earlier and “lower hand” (condition of having lost or failed to win superiority) was documented in the 1690s but both are rare compared with “upper hand).  Upperclassman is recorded from 1871 and upper crust is attested from the mid-fifteenth century in reference to the top crust of a loaf of bread tending to be reserved for the rich.  Upper middle class was in use by 1835 and, in an echo of the modern “one percenters”, “upper ten thousand” appears first in 1844 and was common by mid-century to refer to the wealthier strata of society; a companion term of the time was “uppertendom”.  As a descriptor of the part of a shoe above the sole, use emerged in 1789.  The slang use to describe amphetamines and other pep-pills is an Americanism dated usually from 1968 but which may have been in use earlier; the companion term for drugs with a calmative effect was "downer".

In bicameral parliaments, in almost all systems it's common to refer to "upper" & "lower" houses.  In the democratic age, lower houses evolved to be the places which were most directly representative of the electorate and a member able to gain the support of a majority of those elected to a lower house was able to form a government, a process long almost always mediated through party politics.  Upper houses were more varied in composition, sometimes elected, sometimes appointed (in some cases, for life) and they tended to be representative more or established (and entrenched) interests than the wider electorate.  In federal systems, many upper houses were conceived as representatives and defenders of the rights and interests of the constituent states but in the West, this aspect of the history has been subsumed by the influence of the parties and only in rare cases will the interests of the state transcend party loyalty.  The upper chambers have undergone many changes and one of the oldest, the UK's House of Lords, was radically transformed by the New Labour administration (1997-2010) although its powers had already dramatically been pruned earlier in the twentieth century and no prime-minister has sat in the Lords since 1903, something not again contemplated since the 1920s (and under unusual circumstances in the 1950s).  An exception to the use of upper & lower in the context is in the US where the congress and almost all the state assemblies are bicameral.  In the US, historically, there was no conception of "upper & lower" in that sense, the two being regarded as co-equal but with different roles.  That was influenced both by the circumstances of the origin of the nation and the fact the executive branches are not drawn from the memberships  of the assemblies.  However, in recent decades, the use of "upper house" & "lower house" has crept into use, essentially because the standards of journalism are not what they were and this seems to have infected even some US reporters.  Some systems (notably New Zealand) actually abolished their upper house and from time-to-time there are doubtless a number of prime-ministers elsewhere who wish they could.    

For most of the twentieth century, the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso was known as the Upper Volta (the name indicating the land-mass contained the upper part of the Volta River), initially as part of the French colonial empire, later as an independent republic.  A self-governing republic of the French Community between 1958–1960, it was granted full independence in 1960 and re-named Burkina Faso in 1984.  When president, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), used “Upper Volta” sarcastically, as a reference to any unimportant country, especially if he was compelled by the conventions of diplomacy to spend time meeting with their delegations, talking about things in which he just wasn't interested.

Lindsay Lohan wearing Louis Vuitton Star Trail ankle boots, fashioned with a Jacquard textile and glazed calf leather upper, treaded rubber sole, 3.1 inch (80mm) heel and patent monogram-canvas back loop (made in Italy, LV part-number 1A2Y7W, RRP US$1360.00), New York, January 2019.

Knocker

Knocker (pronounced nok-er)

(1) A person or thing that knocks.

(2) A sometimes ornamental hinged knob, bar, etc on (usually) a door, for use in knocking.

(3) In informal use, a persistent and carping critic; a faultfinder; nit-picker.

(4) In vulgar slang, a female breast (usually in the plural, for obvious reasons).

(5) In slang as “on the knocker”, canvassing or selling door-to-door (UK); promptly; on time; a correct (Australia & New Zealand).

(6) In slang, one who defaults on payment of a wager (an archaic North of England dialectical form).

(7) In slang, a person who is strikingly handsome or otherwise admirable; a stunner (an archaic variation of “a knock-out”).

(8) A dwarf, goblin, or sprite imagined to dwell in mines and to indicate the presence of ore by knocking (South Wales, archaic dialectical eighteenth & nineteenth century form).

(9) In the arcade game pinball, a mechanical device in a pinball table that produces a loud percussive noise.

(10) In entomology, a large cockroach, especially Blaberus giganteus, of semitropical America, which is able to produce a loud knocking sound.

(11) In geology, a large, boulder-shaped outcrop of bedrock in an otherwise low-lying landscape, chiefly associated with a mélange.

1375-1400: An agent noun from the Middle English knock, the construct being knock + -er.  Knock was from the Middle English knokken, from the Old English cnocian, ġecnocian & cnucian (to knock, pound on, beat), from the Proto-West Germanic knokōn, from the Proto-Germanic knukōną (to knock), a suffixed form of knu- & kneu- (to pound on, beat), from the primitive Indo-European gen- (to squeeze, pinch, kink, ball up, concentrate). The English word was cognate with the Middle High German knochen (to hit), the Old English cnuian & cnuwian (to pound, knock) and the Old Norse knoka.  It was related to the Danish knuge and the Swedish knocka (to hug).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  The –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun.  It added to a noun it denoted an occupation.  The sense of "door banger" is from the 1590s although the precise use in architecture of a "metal device fixed to the outside of a door for banging to give notice when someone desires admission" seems not to have been formalised until 1794.  The use to refer to breasts wasn’t noted until 1941.

Knocker-upper using bamboo knocker, circa 1900.

Mentioned in Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) Great Expectations (1860-1861), the knocker-upper (or knock-up) was an occupation created by the demands of the industrial revolution in late eighteenth century which demanded an often newly-urbanized workforce to appear in factories on time for shifts, the punctuality important because of the need to synchronize the attendance of labour to machines.  At the time, alarm clocks were neither cheap nor generally available but the role persisted in some parts of northern England, well into the twentieth century, long after electricity and alarm clocks became ubiquitous, the knocker-uppers sometime on the payroll of mill or factory owners.  The role was sometimes combined with employment by local authorities, the knocker-upper paid while on his “waking-up” rounds manually to extinguish the street-lamps.

Bronze door knockers from earlier centuries.

Knocker-upper Mary Smith using peas-shooter, London, circa 1930.

The tool used depended on the need.  Knocker-uppers tended to use a short, hardwood stick to bang on doors and a lighter one, often made of bamboo to tap on windows, the latter in some towns long enough to reach the upper stories although there are photographs of pea-shooters being used in London, apparently a dried pea projective the only practical way to reach the third floor.  The nature of service was customised according to need.  In places where shifts were invariable, the knocker-upper tended to work from a list which only occasionally changed whereas in areas where industries ran multiple shifts and an employee’s start and finish times could change from day to day, slate boards were often attached to the wall next to the door with the desired hour nominated, these known as "knocky-up boards" or "wake-up slates".

When door knockers go rogue.

It's not clear if the rogue door-knocker was a  schizophrenic Freemason but in 2011 Ms Lohan had been granted a two-year restraining order against alleged stalker David Cocordan, the order issued some days after she filed complaint with police who, after investigation by their Threat Management Department, advised the court Mr Cocordan (who at the time had been using at least five aliases) “suffered from schizophrenia”, was “off his medication” and had a "significant psychiatric history of acting on his delusional beliefs.”  That was worrying enough but Ms Lohan may have revealed her real concerns in an earlier post on twitter in which she included a picture of David Cocordan, claiming he was "the freemason stalker that has been threatening to kill me- while he is TRESPASSING!"  Being stalked by a schizophrenic is bad enough but the thought of being hunted by a schizophrenic Freemason is truly frightening.  Apparently an unexplored matter in the annals of psychiatry, it seems the question of just how schizophrenia might particularly manifest in Freemasons awaits research so there may be a Ph.D there for someone.

Bedint

Bedint (pronounced buh-dent (U) or bed-ent (non-U))

(1) Something which suggests a bourgeois aspiration to the tastes or habits of the upper classes.

(2) A generalized expression of disapproval of anyone or anything not in accord with the social standards or expectation of the upper classes.

(3) Any behavior thought inappropriate (ie something of which one for whatever reason disapproves).

1920s:  A coining attributed to variously to (1) English writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), (2) his wife, the writer Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) or (3) speculatively, Vita Sackville-West’s family.  The word is of Germanic origin and although there are variants, a common source is the Middle Dutch bedienen, the construct being be- +‎ dienen.  The Middle Dutch be- was from the Old Dutch bi- & be-, from the Middle High German be-, from the Old High German bi-, from the Proto-Germanic bi-, from the primitive Indo-European hepi and was used to indicate a verb is acting on a direct object.  Dienen was from the Middle Dutch dienen, from the Old Dutch thienon, from the Proto-Germanic þewanōną and meant “to be of assistance to, to serve; to serve (at a tavern or restaurant); to operate (a device).  In the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, it has the specific technical meaning of “to administer the last sacraments (the last rites).  A bedient (the second third-person singular present indicative of bedienen) was thus a servant, a waiter etc.  The acceptable pronunciation is buh-dent, bed-int, be-dit or anything is the depth of bedintism. 

The idea thus is exemplified by a maître d'hôtel (the head waiter in a good restaurant) who, well dressed and well mannered, appears superficially not dissimilar to someone from the upper classes but of course is someone from a lower class, adopting for professional reasons, some of their characteristics (dress, manner, speech (and sometimes snobbery) etc).  Whoever coined the word, it was certainly popularized by Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West.  It seems initially to have been their shared code for discussing such things but soon became common currency amongst the smart set in which they moved and from there, eventually entered the language although not all dictionaries acknowledge its existence.  It one of those words which need not be taken too seriously and is most fun to use if played with a bit (bedintish, bedintesque, bedintingly bedinded, bedintism, bedintology etc).  As a word, although from day one weaponized, bedint was subject to some mission-creep to the point where, as Lewis Carol’s Humpty Dumpty explained to Alice: "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."  Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898).

Harold Nicolson & Vita-Sackville West, London, 1913.

As originally used by Nicolson & Sackville-West, bedint, one the many linguistic tools of exclusion and snobbery (and these devices exist among all social classes, some of which are classified as “inverted snobbery” when part of “working-class consciousness” or similar constructs) was used to refer to anyone not from the upper class (royalty, the aristocracy, the gentry) in some way aping the behavior or manners of “their betters”; the behavior need not be gauche or inappropriate, just that of someone “not one of us”.  Nicolson didn’t exclude himself from his own critique and, as one who “married up” into the socially superior Sackville family, was his whole life acutely aware of what behaviors of his might be thought bedint, self-labelling as he thought he deserved.  His marriage he never thought at all bedint although many of those he condemned as bedint would have found it scandalously odd, however happy the diaries of both parties suggest that for almost fifty years it was.

Harold Nicolson & Vita-Sackville West, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent, 1932.

Bedint as a word proved so useful however that it came to be applied to members of the upper classes (even royalty) were they thought guilty of some transgression (like dullness) or hobbies thought insufficiently aristocratic.  The idea of some behavior not befitting one’s social status was thus still a thread but by the post-war years, when bedint had entered vocabulary of the middle-class (a bedint thing in itself one presumes Nicolson and Sackville-West would have thought), it was sometimes little more than a synonym for bad behavior (poor form as they might have said), just an expression of disapproval.

Harold Nicolson & Vita-Sackville West, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent, 1960.

The biographical work on Nicolson reveals a not especially likable snob but, in common with many fine and sharp-eyed diarists, he seems to have been good company though perhaps best enjoyed in small doses.  One of those figures (with which English political life is studded) remembered principally for having been almost a successful politician, almost a great writer or almost a viceroy, he even managed to be almost a lord but despite switching party allegiances to curry favor with the Labour government (1945-1951), the longed-for peerage was never offered and he was compelled to accept a knighthood.  His KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an honor in the personal gift of the sovereign) was granted in 1953 in thanks for his generous (though well-reviewed and received) biography of King George V (1865-1936, King of England 1910-1936), although those who could read between the lines found it not hard to work out which of the rather dull monarch’s activities the author thought bedint.  As it was, Nicolson took his KCVO, several steps down the ladder of the Order of Precedence, accepting it only "faute de mieux" (in the absence of anything better) and describing it “a bedint knighthood”, wondering if, given the shame, he should resign from his clubs.

Wedding day: Duff Cooper & Lady Diana Manners, St Margaret's Church, London, 2 June 1919.

So a knighthood, a thing which many have craved, can be bedint if it's not the right knighthood.  When the Tory politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) ended his term (1944-1948) as the UK's ambassador to France, the Labor government (which had kept him on) granted him a GCMG (Knight Grand Commander of the order of St Michael & St George) and although he thought his years as a cabinet minister might have warranted a peerage, he accepted while wryly noting in his diary it was hardly something for which he should  be congratulated because: "No ambassador in Paris has ever failed to acquire the it since the order was invented and the Foreign Office has shown how much importance they attach to it by conferring it simultaneously on my successor Oliver Harvey (1893-1968), who is, I suppose, the least distinguished man who has ever been appointed to the post".  Still, Cooper took his "bedint" GCMG and when a Tory government returned to office, he was raised to the peerage, shortly before his death, choosing to be styled Viscount Norwich of Aldwick.  His wife (Lady Diana Cooper (1892–1986) didn't fancy becoming "Lady Norwich" because she though it "sounded like porridge" and took the precaution of placing notices in The Times and Daily Telegraph telling all who mattered she would continue to be styled "Lady Diana Cooper".  They had a "modern marriage" so differences between them were not unusual.

Posh

Posh (pronounced posch)

(1) Sumptuously furnished or appointed; luxurious.

(2) Elegant or fashionable; exclusive.

(3) A more expensive version of something mass-produced.

(4) Non-U term for the upper-class or genteel.

(5) Non-U term for speaking English with received pronunciation.

1890s: The source is obscure but it’s thought probably derived from the Gypsy (Romani; Roma) posh & pash (“half”), from the Old Armenian փոշի (pʿoši), the preferred theories accounting for it being associated with wealth and its implications being either because (1) a posh-kooroona (half a crown), once a fair sum, was used metaphorically for anything pricey or (2) because posh-houri (a half-penny) became a general term for money.  A period dictionary of slang defined "posh" as a term for “money” used by the criminal class and notes this was used sometimes specifically to refer to a halfpenny or other small coin and the connection seems soon to have been extended to wealth in general: a slang use documented from the early 1890s meant "dandy" (someone well dressed and apt to "splash cash").  There was also the early-twentieth-century Cambridge University slang poosh (stylish) which may have been a (deliberate) mispronunciation of polish but it’s thought un-related.  A popular folk etymology, dating from 1915, holds it’s an acronym for "port (left) out, starboard (right) home", describing the cooler, north-facing cabins taken by rich passengers travelling from Britain to India under the Raj and back.  However, despite much repetition of the story, there’s no direct evidence for this claim.

Posh and Smart: U and Non-U

A selection of U & non-U words by Professor Alan Ross.

A fun linguistic irony is that posh folk aren’t supposed to use the word, their preference supposedly being “smart”.  In 1954, Alan Ross (1907-1980), Professor of Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, coined "U" (upper-class) and "non-U" (non-Upper-Class) to describe the differences social class makes in their use of English.  While his article included differences in pronunciation and writing styles, it was his list of variations in vocabulary which attracted most interest.  Professor Ross published his illustrative glossary of "U" and "non-U", differentiating the speech patterns in English social classes in a Finnish academic journal and used extracts from Nancy Mitford’s (1904–1973 and the oldest of the Mitford sisters) novel The Pursuit of Love (1945) to provide examples of the patterns of speech of the upper class.  This pleased Nancy Mitford who interpolated the professor’s work into an article about the English gentry she was writing for Stephen Spender's (1909-1995) literary magazine Encounter (1953-1990).  Although not best-pleased her discussion of the Ross thesis was the only part of her piece to attract attention, more amusing was the subsequent re-publication in her slim volume Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (1956) which, augmented with contributions from John Betjeman (1906–1984) and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), meant that for decades she was the acknowledged authority on upper-class speech, manners and ways.  Her class-conscious readers had taken it all more seriously than she had intended.

As a footnote, it was only after details were published of Professor Ross's role in Britain's World War II (1939-1945) code-breaking project which produced the "Ultra" transcripts from the messages sent through the German "Enigma" machine that details of his unusual child-care practices were revealed.  It transpired his way of ensuring he had a quiet, interruption-free train journey in which to read his book was to tranquilize his young son Padmint with a dose of laudanum, placing him on the luggage rack for the duration of the trip.  Laudanum was the opioid said to be responsible for the 300-odd lines of verse which came in a dream to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) but he’d written down only the first 50 when interrupted by “a person on business” from the nearby village of Porlock.  Once the person had departed, memories of the rest vanished, never to return.  Given the poet’s history in using the excuse for what has been judged “writer’s block”, critics have long doubted the tale but Kubla Khan (composed in 1797 but not published until 1816) remains one of the most beloved fragments of English verse.

In some circles, interest in "U" & "non-'U" has never gone away and, as differences in the English speaking world gradually diminish from country-to-country, works on the theme often appear in popular journalism.  Helpfully for the status-obsessed English middle-class, magazines like Country Life now and then print guides to help those concerned with such things and, sometimes controversially, there’s the occasional attempt to update the canon.  Right-wing English weekly The Spectator some years ago suggested the (non-U) "toilet" was now entirely classless and could be used, as it was by the rich Americans, instead of the (U) "loo" or (U) "lavatory".  Country Life ignored them and later retaliated by claiming the aristocracy's preferred term for their most frequent brush with the plumbing was "lavatory" and that "loo" was "now lower-middle class", apparently a slight worse than "peasant".

Posh vs smart: 2021 Lexus LS 500h (left) vs 1975 Bristol 411 Series V.  The essence of posh is a conjunction of shiny stuff (now expressed as "bling" or "bling-bing" and "pricetaggery", the latter a word coined apparently by the writers of The Simpsons cartoon though it was used by Mr Burns (evil nuclear power-plant owner) to convey a rather different meaning.  Something smart tends to express things like its price tag by being generally understated yet with one or two characteristics effortlessly recognized by smart folk while remaining invisible to most.

Poshmark is an example of the social marketplace, a site which exists to bring together buyer and seller, its revenue generated by "clipping the ticket" on each transaction.  It's thus structurally the same as a general trading site like eBay in that it facilitates B2C (business-to-consumer) and C2C (consumer-to-consumer) sales but as a niche player with a certain speciality, remains viable on less than 1% the turnover of the bigger aggregators because of the internet's global scale.

Suicide

Suicide (pronounced soo-uh-sahyd)

(1) The intentional taking of one's own life.

(2) By analogy, acts or behavior, which whether intentional or not, lead to the self-inflicted destruction of one's own interests or prospects.

(3) In automotive design, a slang term for rear doors hinged from the rear.

(4) In fast food advertising, a niche-market descriptor of high-calorie products deliberately or absurdly high in salt, sugar and fat.

(5) A trick in the game Diabolo where one of the sticks is released and allowed to rotate 360° round the diabolo until it is caught by the hand that released it.

(6) In Queensland (Australia) political history, as suicide squad, the collective name for the additional members of the Legislative Council (upper house) appointed in 1921 solely for the purpose of voting for its abolition.

(7) In sardonic military slang, as suicide mission, a description for an operation expected to suffer a very high casualty rate.

(8) A children's game of throwing a ball against a wall and at other players, who are eliminated by being struck.

(9) Pertaining to a suicide bombing, the companion terms being suicide belt & suicide vest.

(10) In electrical power, as "suicide cable (or cord, lead etc)", a power cord with male connections each end and used to inject power from a generator into a structing wiring system (highly dangerous if incorrectly used).

(11) In drug slang, the depressive period that typically occurs midweek (reputedly mostly on Tuesdays, following weekend drug use.

(12) In US slang, a beverage combining all available flavors at a soda fountain (known also as the "graveyard" or "swamp water".

(13) As "suicide runs" or "suicide sprints", a form of high-intensity sports training consisting of a series of sprints of increasing lengths, each followed immediately by a return to the start, with no pause between one and the next.

1651: From the New Latin  suīcīdium (killing of oneself), from suīcīda and thought probably of English origin, the construct being the Latin suī (genitive singular of reflexive pronunciation of se (one’s self)) from suus (one’s own) + cīdium (the suffix forms cīda & cide) from caedere (to kill).  The primitive European root was s(u)w-o (one's own) from the earlier s(w)e and new coining displaced the native Old English selfcwalu (literally “self-slaughter”).  Suicide is a noun & verb, suicidal is a noun & adjective, suicider is a noun; the noun plural is suicides.  Pedantic scholars of Latin have never approved of the word because, technically, the construct could as well be translated as the killing of a sow but, in medieval times, purity had long deserted Latin and never existed in English.  The modern meaning dates from 1728; the term in the earlier Anglo Latin was the vaguely euphemistic felo-de-se (one guilty concerning himself).  It may be an urban myth but there was a story that a 1920s editor of the New York Times had a rule that anyone who died in a Stutz Bearcat would be granted a NYT obituary unless the death was a suicide.

Terry Richardson's (b 1965) suicide-themed shoot with Lindsay Lohan, 2012. 

The Legislative Council was the upper house of the state parliament in Queensland, Australia and a bastion of what might now be called the upper 1% of white privilege.  The Australian Labor Party (ALP) had long regarded the non-elected Legislative Council (and upper houses in general) as undemocratic and reactionary so in 1915, after securing a majority in the Legislative Assembly (the lower house) which permitted the party to form government, they sought abolition.  The Legislative Council predictably rejected the bills passed by the government in 1915 & 1916 and a referendum conducted in 1917 decisively was lost; undeterred, in 1920, the government requested the governor appoint sufficient additional ALP members to the chamber to provide an abolitionist majority.  In this, the ALP followed the example of the Liberal Party in the UK which in 1911 prevailed upon the king to appoint as many new peers as might be needed for their legislation to pass unimpeded through an otherwise unsympathetic House of Lords.  Ultimately, the king agreed but so shocking did the lords find the idea of their chamber being flooded with "jumped-up grocers" that they relented in their opposition.  In Queensland however, the new members of the Legislative Council duly took their places and on 26 October 1921, the upper house voted in favor of abolition, the new appointees known forever as "the suicide squad".  Despite the success, the trend didn't spread and the Commonwealth parliament and those of the other five states remain bicameral although the two recent creations, established when limited self-government was granted to the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory (ACT), both had unicameral assemblies.

Suicide doors

1928 Mercedes-Benz Nürburg (W08) with four rear-hinged doors.

It wasn’t until the 1950s the practice of hinging doors from the front became (almost) standardized.  Prior to that, they’d opened from the front or rear, some vehicles featuring both.  The rear-hinged doors became known as suicide doors because they were genuinely dangerous (in the pre-seat belt era), the physics of them opening while the car was at speed had the effect of dragging the passenger into the airstream.  Additionally, it was said they were more likely to injure people if struck by passing vehicles while being opened although the consequences of being struck by a car sound severe whatever the circumstances.

2021 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII Tempus.

Still used in the 1960s by Lincoln, Ford and Rolls-Royce, they were phased out as post-Nader safety regulations began to be applied to automotive design and were thought extinct when the four door Ford Thunderbirds ceased production in 1971.  However, after being seen in a few design exercises over the decades, Rolls-Royce included them on the Phantom VII, introduced in 2003, the feature carried over to the Phantom VIII in 2017.  Like other manufacturers, Rolls-Royce has no fondness for the term suicide doors, preferring to call them coach doors; nomenclature from other marketing departments including flex doors and freestyle doors.  Engineers are less impressed by silly words, noting the correct term is rear-hinged and these days, mechanisms are included to ensure they can be opened only when the vehicle is at rest.  Encouraged by the reaction, Rolls-Royce brought back the rear-hinged door for their fixed (FHC) and drop-head (DHC) coupés although, despite the retro-touch, the factory seems now to call them simply coupés and convertibles.  

1971 Ford Thunderbird Landau.

In a nod to a shifting market, when the fifth generation Thunderbird was introduced in 1967, the four-door replaced the convertible which had been a staple of the line since 1955.  Probably the only car ever visually improved by a vinyl roof, the four-door was unique to the 1967-1971 generation, its replacement offered only as a coupé.  The decision effectively to reposition the model was taken to avoid a conflict with the new Mercury Cougar, the Thunderbird moving to the "personal coupé" segment which would become so popular.  So popular in fact that within a short time Ford would find space both for the Thunderbird and the Continental Mark III, changing tastes by the 1970s meaning the Cougar would also be positioned there along with a lower-priced Thunderbird derivative, the Elite.  Such was the demand for the personal coupé that one manufacturer successfully could support four models in the space, sometimes with over-lapping price-points depending on the options.  The four-door Thunderbirds are unique in being the only car ever built where the appearance was improved by the presence of a vinyl roof, the unusual semi-integration of the rear door with the C pillar necessitating something be done to try to conceal the ungainliness, the fake "landau irons" part of the illusion.

1966 Lincoln Continental convertible.

The combination of the suicide door, the four-door coachwork and perhaps even the association with the death of President Kennedy has long made the convertible a magnet for collectors but among American cars of the era, it is different in that although the drive-train is typical of the simple, robust engineering then used, it's packed also with what can be an intimidating array of electrical and hydraulic systems which require both expertise and equipment properly to maintain.  That need has kept a handful of specialists in business for decades, often rectifying the mistakes of others.  It was unique; after the even rarer Mercedes-Benz 300d Cabriolet D ceased production in 1962, Lincoln alone offered anything in the niche.  Introduced in 1961, the convertible was never a big seller, achieving not even four-thousand units in its best year and was discontinued after 1967, the two-door hardtop introduced the year before out-selling it by five to one.  The market had spoken; it would be the last convertible Lincoln ever produced.

Lincoln Continental concept, Los Angeles Motor Show, 2002.

Interest in the Lincoln Continental had been dwindling since the down-sizing of the early 1980s and the nameplate suffered a fourteen year hiatus between 2002-2016.  Unfortunately, the resuscitation used as its inspiration the concept car displayed at the 2015 New York International Auto Show rather than the one so admired at Los Angeles in 2002.  The LA concept might not have been original but was an elegant and balanced design, unlike what was offered in NYC fifteen years later: a dreary mash-up which looked something like a big Hyundai or a Chinese knock-off of a Maybach.  The public response was muted.

Lincoln Continental concept, New York Motor Show, 2015.

By 2019, it seemed clear the thing was on death-watch but Lincoln surprised the industry with a batch of eighty longer-wheelbase models with suicide doors to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Continental’s introduction in 1939.  Although there were cynics who suggested turning a US$72K car into one costing US$102K was likely aimed at the Chinese market where a higher price tag and more shiny stuff is thought synonymous with good taste, the anniversary models were sold only in the home market.

2019 Lincoln Continental Eightieth Anniversary Edition.

The retro gesture proved not enough.  After building a further one-hundred and fifty (non-commemorative) suicide door versions for 2020, it was announced production would end on 30 October 2020 and the Continental would not be replaced.  Not only was the announcement expected but so was the reaction; the market having long lost interest in the uninspiring twenty-first century Continentals, few expressed regret.  The name-plate however, one of the most storied in the Ford cupboard, will doubtless one day return.  What it will look like is unpredictable but few expect it will match the elegance of what was done in the 1960s.

Evelyn McHale: The most beautiful suicide.

The photograph remembered as “the most beautiful suicide” was taken by photography student Robert Wiles (1909-1991), some four minutes after the victim's death.  Evelyn Francis McHale (1923–1947) was a bookkeeper who threw herself to her death from the 86th-floor observation deck of New York's Empire State Building, landing on a Cadillac limousine attached to the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) which was parked on 34th street, some 200 feet (60 m) west of Fifth Ave.  The police would later find he last note which read: “I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation?  I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me.  My fiance asked me to marry him in June.  I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me.  Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”  It's reported her mother suffered from “an undiagnosed and untreated depression”.