Olden Life: Who were cardigan-huggers?
The northern housewives of my childhood were a formidable lot. Many were cardiganhuggers – the figures portrayed so finely by Roy Barraclough and Les Dawson in the 1970s and ’80s as Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham/sidebottom.
The cardigan-huggers had a lot to deal with. Husbands might be on the fiddle. Sons were easily led astray. Flighty daughters needed ‘keeping an eye on’; not to mention (gasp) that brazen hussy down the street, putting it about.
But the housewives themselves, legs planted firmly on the ground, rose above the swamp of local iniquity: indomitable bastions of moral values and public decency.
‘Her indoors’ habitually wore a floral wraparound pinny, except on Sundays. And for popping to the corner shop or hanging the washing out, she’d shrug a woolly garment on. Of dubious design, indeterminate colour and age, ponging of mothballs and hand-knitted, this cardigan-type garment came in handy as a prop for demonstrating moral indignation, and acted as imaginary armour against the ever-lurking threat of perceived virulent corruption.
When scandalised by a piece of gossip, the housewife rolled her eyes with lascivious delight, yet she’d take a step backwards, signalling detachment from such filth, making space for her disgusted bosom to inflate. (Les Dawson often added a little nudge of his bosom.) Then she’d hug her cardigan tighter round her, both highlighting how severely her respectability was being outraged and instinctively employing a protective, maternal gesture, inbred from the days when babies were carried inside their mothers’ shawls.
Though enormous, the northern housewife’s capacity for outrage was forgivably maternal, and laced with devastating humour.
A butt of jokes, from music hall to Les Dawson, these indomitable ladies nevertheless held serious sway. They were part of the glue that held society together. Little escaped them. In towns and villages where everybody knew everybody, their influence was mighty.
Remnants of that formidable band survived into the swinging sixties. But by then we’d discovered Elvis and the Beatles; strangers had moved into the street, and the permissive society was gathering steam.
Then along came affordable electrical home appliances and convenience foods and – eureka – housewives in their droves headed for the juicier gossip-holes of the workplace. Add in TV soaps and package holidays in Spain and the old local backstreet shenanigans were small potatoes.
And so the cardigan-hugging upholders of public morals and decency slipped away, into the annals of history.
Or so it seemed. In fact, they’d just skipped a generation. Now they’re back with a twist. Many are young and not necessarily physically wearing cardigans, though mentally they’re still hugging them to virtue-signal, in the time-honoured way. These days, their ‘outrage’ is often not maternal and community-minded, but personal. They declaim stridently about their ‘issues’ on social media and directly in our faces from the telly, with concerned eyebrows and an air of smug selfsatisfaction, at pains to prove themselves more ‘woke’ and holier than thou.
‘Not another cardigan-hugger, grabbing her 15 minutes of fame!’ I groan and click them off. Their outrage is often no more than a flight of fancy. And, unlike their robust, down-to-earth predecessors, they’re woefully lacking a sense of humour. They bore the pants off me.