Birth of the snowflakes
QUESTION Who was the first person to refer disparagingly to the younger generation as snowflakes? The term ‘snowflake’ describes an overly sensitive person, in particular a Leftleaning young liberal incapable of dealing with any opinions that differ from their own. These include students found congregating in ‘safe zones’ on university campuses — a usage which has snowballed since Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President last year.
etymologists have linked the current use of ‘snowflake’ to Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 cult novel Fight Club, which in 1999 was adapted into a film starring Brad Pitt and edward Norton.
In the book, a member of the anti-consumerist Project Mayhem tells other members: ‘You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone, and we are all part of the same compost pile.’
A similar quote is used in the movie. This is mirrored in the Seventies’ use of ‘snowflake’, which came from the many people in the guru/self-help/hippie/New Age community who were encouraging the mantra that people are all ‘beautiful and unique snowflakes’, based on the idea that no two snowflakes are the same.
however, the term has older roots. In Fifties Britain, ‘snowflake’ was used in playgrounds, with children taunting each other with the cry ‘Susie Snowflake’ or simply ‘snowflake’ to denote a wimp or a coward. Suzy Snowflake was a Christmas song written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, and made famous in 1951 by Rosemary Clooney, the aunt of hollywood star George. It starts with the lines: Here comes Suzy Snowflake, Dressed in a snow-white gown, Tap, tap, tappin’ at your windowpane, To tell you she’s in town.
In 1953, it was made into an animation — perhaps the first music video. The term snowflake, with its connotation of being frail and wispy, lends itself well to such an insult.
But even that was not the first time ‘snowflake’ was used disparagingly. L.U. Reavis, in his 1876 book St. Louis: The Future Great City Of The World, discusses its use in pre-abolition Missouri in the 1860s. There, a ‘snowflake’ was a person opposed to the abolition of slavery who valued white people over black people.
Snowflakes were contrasted with two other groups. The Claybanks wanted a gradual transition out of slavery. They were named for the light brown clay found in the area. The Charcoals wanted immediate emancipation and for black people to be able to join the army.
Emma Rabb, Manchester.
QUESTION During the invasion of the Dutch island of Walcheren in 1809 by the British, thousands who died of malaria were buried in mass graves. Are the graves known and marked?
IN JULY 1809, an army of 40,000 men set off from the Kent coast and sailed for Walcheren at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary in the Netherlands.
At that stage of the Napoleonic Wars, French naval activity at Antwerp had made the Dutch coast ‘a pistol held at the head of england’. The government was keen to strike a decisive blow at Napoleon’s ambitions.
The mission was a disaster. The overall commander was John Pitt, the elder brother of Pitt the Younger, who has been consigned to history as ‘the late Lord Chatham’ because of his difficulty in rising from bed in the morning.
his underling, Commodore Sir home Popham, was described by a fellow officer as being like a hippopotamus — ‘an amfiberous hanimal, wot cannot live on the land, and wot dies in the water.’ Whatever the military bungling, an account of the Walcheren expedition is essentially a medical history. Stuck in this putrid marshland, it was only a few weeks before the invading army was almost entirely destroyed by disease.
At the time, Walcheren fever was considered a great mystery. Recent research has suggested it was a lethal cocktail of malaria, typhus, typhoid and dysentery.
The condition affected 40 per cent of the troops, and 60 officers and 3,900 soldiers died. even six months later 11,000 men remained registered sick. Just 106 men died in action — and many of those who survived the fever suffered permanent health problems.
This should not have been a surprise, as the poor health suffered by the inhabitants of Scheldt was well known. According to a contemporary account: ‘ The weather and wet surrounds encouraged ill-health . . . and its inhabitants are pale and listless, suffering much from scrofula, the children rickety, and all much deformed.’
Walcheren fever rendered the soldiers ‘listless, prone to yawning, suffering from intense thirst, from shivering and burning fits, and finally falling into complete prostration’. The sick died almost by the minute, and all burials were at night without candles or torches so as not to demoralise the men. There were no grave markings or memorials.
Today, Walcheren is no longer an island and is much healthier. Polders and a dam across the Oosterschelde have connected it to the (former) island of Zuid-Beveland, which in turn has been connected to the North Brabant mainland.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow. QUESTION From where do tennis bracelets get their name? YOUR previous correspondent was right to point out that the name tennis bracelet preceded the 1987 U.S. Open.
Chris evert herself claimed the incident with the broken bracelet occurred in an early match of the 1978 tournament when the U.S. Open had moved from Forest hills to Flushing Meadow.
I looked up a video of the 1978 final of evert against Pam Shriver, and she is indeed wearing a tennis bracelet on her left wrist, while in tournaments in previous years she often favoured two sweatbands.
Bruce Emond, Tankerton, Kent.
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