One of the paradoxes of human nature is that we are capable of mocking the death of someone we probably would have risked our own life to save. In 1867, an eight-year-old child named Fanny Adams was murdered and dismembered in England. Members of the distinguished Royal Navy, perhaps distanced from the tragedy by the sensationalised coverage it received in newspapers, subsequently dishonoured themselves by jokingly bestowing the name of Fanny Adams on the tins of meat that were their daily fare. Worse, the name Fanny Adams later came to be used as a mild curse, most often heard as Sweet Fanny Adams!, a development likely caused by the coincidence that the child’s initials\u2014F.A.\u2014were also used as an abbreviation or euphemism tor fuck all. In Australia, the name of another murder victim\u2014Harriet Lane, killed in 1875\u2014was bestowed by merchant-marines on the tins of preserved meat that they received as rations.<\/p>\n
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One of the paradoxes of human nature is that we are capable of mocking the death of someone we probably would have risked our own life to save. In 1867, an eight-year-old child named Fanny Adams was murdered and dismembered in England. Members of the distinguished Royal Navy, perhaps distanced from the tragedy by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-f"],"yoast_head":"\n