AUNT SALLY
[Q] From Paul Bowers, London: “It’s not referenced at all in Collins dictionary, but it is in common use around our work environment — ‘this is a bit of an Aunt Sally’. What does it mean and where does it come from?”
[A] The original Aunt Sally was a game, popular in Britain from the middle of the nineteenth century at fairgrounds and racetracks. The head of an old woman with a clay pipe in her mouth was set up and players had to throw sticks at it to try to break the pipe. From there it became a term for somebody or something that was an easy target for attack or criticism.
The aunt part of the name probably means an old black woman, employed both by blacks and whites in the USA from the eighteenth century onwards but known in London; aunt could also be applied familiarly to any elderly woman. Jonathon Green suggests in the Cassell Dictionary of Slang that the direct influence may have been an 1820s popular black-face doll, also called Aunt Sally.
This seems to have been an early example of merchandising spin-off, following the popularity of a low-life character named Black Sal. She was created by Pierce Egan in his successful series Life In London, which he published monthly between 1821 and 1828 and in which he told stories about the low amusements of sporting men about Town. A stage adaptation appeared late in 1821. I mention this mainly to be able to quote the playbill (for which I am once again indebted to Jonathon Green), which is a wondrous example of the advertising copy style of the time:
On a scale of unprecedented extent ... an entirely new Classic, Comic, Operatic, Didactic, Aristophanic, Jocalic, Analytic, Panoramic, Camera-Obscura-ic, Extravaganza Burletta of Fun, Frolic, Fashion, and Flash, in three acts, called “TOM and JERRY; or, LIFE IN LONDON.” Replete with Prime Chaunts, Rum Glees, and Kiddy Catches, founded on Pierce Egan’s well-known and highly popular work of the same name, by a celebrated extra-vagant erratic Author.
Incidentally, this was the first use of Tom and Jerry for a pair of characters.
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