Let me take you down, ‘cause I’m going to...

...talk about jerry-built stuff. And who the hell Jerry is, anyway.

My process for writing posts like these is a little… ad-hoc, let’s say. I have my newspaper clippings, and then I have my Notes file, and then I have a few Python scripts that I use to format everything so that it looks the way I want. Most of these tools were not intended to function this way. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. You might even describe it—dare I say?—as jerry-rigged.

Or jury-rigged?

Or [unprintable racial slur]?

No. We’re not going to touch that one today. Let’s start by defining our terms. First off: is there a difference between something being [adjective]-rigged, and [adjective]-built? This will be important later, when we talk about origins.

At one point, the answer was “yes.” Using a hair-tie to hold your cabinet door closed is an [adjective]-rigged solution: improvised, but potentially effective. On the other hand, you might need that solution because the cabinet is [adjective]-built: shoddy, cheap, and substandard.

Some places on the Internet suggest that this distinction is still preserved. I would guess that, depending on your audience, you might keep that in mind. That being said, to the extent the distinction still exists I think it’s a minimal one. Most people are still going to think of your -rigged solution as low-quality and undesirable, not as an ersatz one that nonetheless works perfectly well.

“Jury” is the older term, by far. The OED attests it as far back as the early 17th century, and originally it was an open, if nautically themed, adjective—it did not exist only in the compound “jury-rigged.” A jury mast (the earliest example) would be one that was not normally part of the ship, but was added as an expedient—perhaps after losing a mast, or to help tack the ship under particularly trying conditions.

But that has the potential to be confusing, though I promise we’ll come back to the early difference. For the purposes of this article, though, I’m going to propose that—irrespective of a difference between “rigged” and “built”—there is no difference today between “jerry” and “jury.”

Also, for the rest of this article, I’m going to say “jerry,” both because that takes us through the most interesting parts of the origin story and because that’s how I normally write the phrase. Okay? Okay. So. This kicked off, as you might expect, via a text message that went like this:

My friend: Hey I have a question
Me: okay, shoot
My friend: about etymology
Me: Yeah?
My friend: is it racist to say jerry rigged?
Me: …
Me: …hm

Initially, my thinking was “probably, mildly.” Because initially, my thinking was that it probably derived from the slang term for “German” used in the First and Second World Wars. That “jerry-rigged” on its own first appears towards the end of the 19th century just seemed like more evidence—coming, as it does, around the time that the British were specifically calling out German goods as poorly made, and instituting the first origin marks so people knew that their junk was “made in Germany.”

And jerry-can, as in a container used to carry fuel, certainly seems to have come from its putative German origins. Early on it even competed with “ameri-can,” emphasis on the last syllable, for another design originating in the United States. So, plausibly, even if “jury-rigged” was a much older term, “jerry” emerged as a pejorative in direct response to British tensions with the more Teutonic members of their own damned royal family.

Except—probably no surprise—it is clearly a variant of “jerry-built,” and that is an older phrase. The two converged as the 19th century went on; an 1888 example describes a boat being constructed with a “jerry stern” at one side and “a jerry stem upon the part containing the engine room,” which is clearly the improvised, non-pejorative meaning generally attached to “jury.” So this confusion has persisted for a century and a half.

“Jerry,” in the negative sense, is the more interesting question and the one people have spent the most time on. The earliest examples are from Merseyside; in 1850 the London Morning Chronicle would expressly mention “the ‘slop’ or ‘jerry’ builders, as they are called in Liverpool” (emphasis mine).

In this usage, “jerry buildings” certainly appears to mean those that are built cheaply and poorly. The Liverpool Mercury is the canonical source for these early uses. Consider, from April 12th, 1839:

Jerry Building.—A bricklayer’s assistant, or in plainer terms, a hod-carrier from the Emerald Isle, was called the other day to speak to the quality of the mortar and plaster used in the erection and finishing of two or three houses in this neighbourhood, of a description certainly not calculated, if intended, to serve the purpose of many generations

i.e. a house made of poor-quality material, likely to fall down at the slightest provocation. Six years earlier, the paper printed a June 21st, 1833 letter on the consequences of capitalists chasing the lowest price for labour possible:

Another evil of the system is, that the cupidity of some of the masters prompts them to task and tyrranize over their men, allowing them too little time to make a good job; witness what you call Jerry buildings, blown up like bottles or balloons, without that substantiality and convenience which give security and comfort to the inhabitants.

The same paper contains this on July 20th, 1832:

JERRY BUILDINGS—In consequence of our statement respecting the shameful quality of the mixture, miscalled mortar, used in the building of certain houses in Toxteth-park, a correspondent informs us that the jurisdiction of the surveyor appointed to superintend the erection of houses in Liverpool does not extend to Toxteth-park. Our correspondent not only confirms all we said about the stuff called mortar; but he adds that the partition walls of many houses that he could name are so flimsy, that, if a man of moderate weight should stumble against one of them, he would, in all probability, go through into the next room. The floors, he says, are often made of what is called half-inch deals which, when planed down, are scarcely sufficient to sustain the weight of a heavy man or piece of furniture. These things certainly demand investigation.

I’d like to note a few things about this:

1. In early use, it is definitely capitalized, implying that the adjective is intended as a proper name

2. It is also always “Jerry”—not “Gerry” or “Jerri” or anything else—and also there is no corresponding use of “jury,” by extension or reference to “jury rigging.”

3. The Liverpool Mercury does not need to explain the term, implying that it would have been understood by its readers

4. The usage, in which cheap material and labor is used to create substandard houses, is consistent

To this point, it is possible that I’m telling you nothing new. It has been known that “Jerry building” comes from around Liverpool, and was in common usage in the 1830s, for some time—the current edition of the OED lists the earliest example as dating from 1869, so the origin has been pushed back a little, but nothing else. The open question has, then, been: why Jerry?

Etymologists have considered two popular alternatives. One is that there was a specific builder in the region who was so notorious as to have been applied to the general practice of constructing these houses—an explanation that the OED says “has on investigation not been confirmed.” The other is that it is a joking, metaphorical, reference to the walls of Jericho.

Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico
An’ de walls come tumblin’ down

Alright.

So, having noted “a few things about this,” I’d like to start adding in caveats. Firstly, although the early examples are capitalized, it takes almost no time at all for this to fall away. By the early 1840s, both in and outside Liverpool, the lower-case version had become at least as common. In my opinion, this does not seem to support the idea that writers understood reference was being made to a specific, named, living Jerry who was being pilloried for his construction techniques.

But, more importantly, I don’t think the usage is as consistent as it seems. An 1844 advertisement for “£2000 ready to be advanced on good security” specifies, at the end, “N.B. No Attorney or Jerry Builder need apply. Secrecy will be strictly observed.” The next year, an article in the Derby Mercury on “vote manufacturing” mentions—

Young gentlemen, of undeniable Whig-Radical appearance—drab-faced and long-haired people of all ages—accompanied by surveyors, agents, jerry-builders, or lawyers, have been observed poking their noses into all manner of unclean localities, sniffing all manner of unsavoury smells, and submitting to every kind of unwholesome contact, in search of small purchases of dilapidated shells of brick and mortar wherewith to qualify themselves as freeholders; and marvellous, in consequence, has been the sudden increase in the value of property in the classic regions of Marybone, Vauxhall-road, and the cellars and courts thereof.

The Whigs, at this time, were a more explicitly aristocratic and propertied political party, and now we need to talk about “building societies,” and the “every man a landlord” philosophy. These societies were a feature of British culture at the time, which originally started as something similar to cooperative investment pools in, e.g. Korean-American communities: everyone puts money into a pool, that pool is used to finance a house for one member of the group, then the next, and so on.

They very quickly, however, became associated with what were essentially cooperative banks that invested in property that generated wealth for their members, who therefore acted as landlords. The buildings constructed by these clubs were characteristically designed first and foremost to generate profit, and were made with the cheapest possible materials.

They were, in other words, jerry-built. I think a clear reading of all these early examples is not that a “jerry building” is merely poorly constructed—it is one built by one of these cooperative societies, which is unconcerned with the safety or well-being of their tenants and willing to cut any corner to make a shilling, and the construction is an extension of that.

As such, Jerry builders are unsavory principally because they are money-grubbing new-rich scum who are out to exploit the poor through equally unsavory institutions—that is, not just individuals doing the equivalent of mixing sawdust into their bread. At some level, that’s a distinction without a difference, but since we need to agree on this to keep working further back, I want us to be on the same page.

(If it helps, you don’t have to take my word for it. In a September 28th, 1842 article about some warehouses being destroyed, the Guardian made the connection explicit: “The warehouses themselves which have been destroyed were of the class called ‘Jerry built,’ which is equivalent to the term applied in Manchester to the property of building clubs.”)

But, even if that’s what Jerry-building came to mean within the decade, what did it mean originally?

Well. As far as I—and other wordsleuths on the Internet—are concerned, the earliest use of “jerry build” so far is from April 27th, 1832, once again in the Liverpool Mercury. In an letter to the paper, the writer characterizes the town meeting as being overly focused on “matters relating to pounds, shillings, and pence”:

The last meeting was characterised by a large accession of democratic parishioners. There were the members of the Landlords’ Club, the Blue Bell Club, the Jerry Building Society, &c.: classical allusions to crockery-ware, with handles on one side: assertions by some that holding office had removed the scales from their before dark and prejudiced organs of vision. How strange is the power of office! how soon the man is changed! how subdued the tone of voice!

Humble, however, as the talent for orations and harangues may be of the cottage owners, if they but bring an economical prudence, a vigilant attention to parochial expenditure, they will do much good. The value of money is much altered; and perhaps all the salaries, from the treasurers to the active collectors, may be more equalized, if not reduced.

The arrears for 1830 and 1831, amounting to £42,000, show most glaringly either the badness of the times,—thanks to the boroughmongers!—or a partial, lenient, and inefficient mode of collection. Is it true, Gentlemen, that wealthy defaulters escape in consequence of the magistrates refusing to sign warrants against them, when the poor widow’s furniture has sometimes been seized for a few shillings of water rent?

So: I think that, if this phrase is the same as later uses—put a pin in that—and not a homonym, then the building club meaning was there from the start. Once again, let’s pose the question: “why Jerry?” First off, let me defer to what I’d consider the best current explanation, advanced by Jim Kenny, which is that the “Jerry” in question is Diddler.

Jerry (Jeremy) Diddler was a character from the 1803 farce Raising the Wind, by James Kenney (…no relation, presumably), described by Wikipedia as “a needy artful swindler”; a con man, the Jerry Diddler archetype greatly broadened the use of the word “diddle” in the sense of swindling or cheating. In this interpretation, the Jerry Building Society is a building club for Jerries—that is, scammers.

However, I’d like to propose an alternative—at least, a complication. Others have noted that the piece in the Liverpool Mercury is satirical, with the implication that the names given are also satirical: there are, for example, no other references to a Jerry Builders Society, and no references to a Blue Bell Club until years later. I think this is almost certainly true, but the letter also should be given context, because it does have a very specific context.

First bit of context: from the turn of the 15th century, the word “cottage” referred principally to small, basic houses occupied by lower-class workers—at first the small huts in which a feudal tenant might live, and later to any rural or urban dwelling rented out to a laborer. These would later be targeted for reform, like tenements or favelas, but as Great Britain rapidly industrialized, more and more of its people lived in such dwellings.

Second bit of associated context: in late 1831, the Select Vestry—the guardians responsible for Liverpool’s “poor laws”—proposed levying a tax on property owners, in order to pay for measures to fight cholera in the city on behalf of said property owners’ tenants. This was, as The Poor Law in Liverpool puts it (PDF), “violently opposed by the cottage owners.”

Over the course of the winter of 1831 and the first half of 1832, the Liverpool Mercury was full of commentary on the “cottage owners bill,” both for and against; the April 27th article is one of many. Among other reporting, we find, on November 11th, 1831, the following:

Meeting of Cottage Owners.—on Thursday evening se’nnight [“sevennight,” in this case presumably meaning ‘a week ago from Thursday’] a meeting of the owners of cottage property took place at the Blue Bell, London-road, for the purpose of concerting measures for resisting the assessment of cottage property to the parish rate.

The Blue Bell Inn does not exist today, as far as I know—does not even have a historical marker—but it is to be found on an 1836 map of Liverpool, at the corner of London and Seymour.

It was a common place for auctions and sales and, through November and December of 1831, at least, the regular haunt of landlords upset about the prospect of being taxed. And this, then, is the “Blue Bell Club”: a term the editorialist has attributively invented to describe, collectively, these cottage owners.

Which, I think, ought to lead us to another underwhelming question: what if “Jerry” is not an adjective? What if Jerry is a place?

A decade later, it definitely would be. The Mercury describes (January 11th, 1839) the impact of a windstorm on Toxteth Park, “considering the flimsy nature of many of the houses in the Park, and especially that part of it which is familiarly known by the name of Jerry-hill.” See also:

• December 23rd, 1842: “On Saturday last, some burning soot from a chimney in a house in Jerry-hill, Toxteth-park, fell on the floor of the room, and ignited the timber.”

• July 17th, 1846: “The complainants stated that on Tuesday they went to Prophet-street, Toxteth-park, in the locality of Jerry-hill, to execute a warrant against a person named Mack.”

• August 1st, 1851: “She went with him to Jerry-hill, to Leonard’s public-house, Hughes-street”

• November 25th, 1851: “Harper-street is situated in Jerry-hill, one of the most debased districts of the town, and proverbial for juvenile profligacy.”

• August 21st, 1858: “Ben and Joe Edwards, brothers, quarrelled in Russell-street, Jerry-hill, Toxteth park, about Sunday midnight.”

From the middle of this period, on October 29th, 1847, most evocatively: 

If you should have an opportunity, some Sunday, to walk out a little, just step up as far as Toxteth-park. If you will go over the fields, at the top of Windsor-street, you will see a scene very similar to the one I am about to describe. Now, are you over the stiles, and walking towards St. John the Baptist’s church? Don’t forget it is Sunday afternoon! Hallo! Hallo, there!! What a row! Take care of your head; if you don’t, you may very well get a lesson in “bumpology” that you will not quickly forget!

Do you see those ill-clad boys, some with only a ragged shirt and trousers on—the least of them busily engaged in gathering stones for the larger boys, who are throwing them at one another, might and main, some with slings, and some with their hands, uttering yells and shouts not much unlike an Indian war-whoop. Look again! there are two parties of them; they come from two neighbouring streets, called Heath-street and Jerry-hill; they are doing what is termed by them “warring.” If you should wish to know more on the subject of “warring,” inquire of any of the neighbours; they know very well.

In the early 20th century, someone recalled “Jerry-hill” as being bounded by Northumberland Street, Park Road, Park Street, and Mill Street. The references are all pretty consistent; here is that boundary marked on an ordinance survey map, along with St. John the Baptist Church.

(For those of you who wish to do further investigating on your own, note that in 1865, the street names were changed as follows: King became Gaskell, Russell became Fernie, Harper became Goring, and Hughes became Hughson. It is this part of present-day Liverpool)

One more thing. That final note, “classical allusions to crockery-ware, with handles on one side”? To me, this is an unambiguous reference to Herculaneum Pottery, a famous pottery and porcelain company that existed, in the early 19th century, in Toxteth—today, the site of a residential development but at the time the southernmost of Liverpool’s docks.

So in summary, I think the phrase comes not just from “Liverpool,” but specifically from Toxteth Park, a southern district that was, at the time, rapidly urbanizing. The need for housing was filled with an abundance of cottages and, indeed, many of them seem to have been owned by single individuals who had extensive stock at the time—the kind of people who would’ve been hurt the most by a tax on cottages.

Here is a non-exhaustive sample, taken only from within the area that would later be identified as Jerry Hill:

• An August 5th, 1831 ad lists “four highly-finished new DWELLING-HOUSES, situated on the west side of King street […] also seven Front and four Back HOUSES, situate [sp] in King-street and Harper-street, Toxteth-park, all new”

• A June 15th, 1832 ad lists “nine MESSUAGES [a lot for a dwelling-house] or DWELLING-HOUSES thereon erected, bounded on the north by Premises now or late of Mr. Alexander Gordon, on the east by King-street aforesaid, on the south by Harper-street aforesaid…”

• 5 houses on Prophet Street and Hughes Street, 4 more on Prophet and Northumberland, and 3 on King Street being auctioned by a Mr. Healing and a Mr. Robinson, on October 2nd, 1929

• 19 houses on Prophet Street and 1 on Northumberland Street, being sold that same day by those same people,

• 3 dwelling-houses on King Street and 8 on Hughes Street, “on terms most eligible to purchasers,” by “W. Lewis” on January 8th, 1830,

• Mr. Healing, again, auctioning 4 messuages or dwelling-houses on Hughes Street, “which will produce an annual rent of £52,” exactly a week later,

• 8 messuages or dwelling-houses on Hughes Street, Mr. Lewis again, on May 27th, 1831,

• 6 houses on Park Street and Hughes Street, being sold by Mr. Ward on July 7th, 1843,

• 44 (!) dwelling-houses on Hughes Street and Russell Street, all owned by “Mr. Griffiths,” on February 27th, 1846

…and so on.

So this part of Toxteth Park was heavily dominated by cheap, slumlord-owned dwelling-houses. The area that would become Jerry Hill was known as a hotbed of crime by the 1830s. It is, I think, as possible that the “Jerry Building Society”—like the Blue Bell Club—is a reference to the landlords of that notorious neighborhood as it is that it’s referencing a building society of Jerry Diddlers.

Unless, that is, the name came first—that Jerry Hill was named for the prevalence of Jerry builders there. Here, the answer is: I don’t know. A transcript of a meeting specifically about crime, in 1833, reads thusly:

From the local position  of Liverpool and Toxteth-park, connected by a single street, and only parted in the centre—from the activity of the police of Liverpool and the deficiency of that of Toxteth-park—the township, containing a population of 25,000, which had increased in a most enormous ratio of late years, had actually become the abomination of Liverpool. All the bad characters driven out of Liverpool congregated in the lower part, near the docks, which [Mr. Francis Jordan] called “Jerry-hill” (Laughter.)

The “laughter” is part of the transcript. This, to me, leaves one of three possibilities. The first is that, a year after a letter-writer to the Liverpool Mercury coined it, “Jerry Building Society” had become so hilarious that when someone referred to part of Toxteth as “Jerry-hill,” everyone knew what was meant. The second is that “Jerry-hill” was already a somewhat common term, and that a building society for that neighborhood would have an obvious meaning.

The third is that the two are coincidental, which is another catch with the “Jerry Diddler” hypothesis. Why Jerry Diddler and not Jerry Sneak, another stock character common at the time? Or “Tom and Jerry,” from Pierce Egan’s play Life in London, which had come out in 1821 and was actively being performed in Liverpool at the time?

In that play, Tom and Jerry are bawdy characters; “Tom and Jerry-shop” or “Jerry-shop,” “Jerry-house,” etc. were terms for bars, particularly disreputable ones, and the whole reason why I started writing this two weeks ago was because I figured I could make the argument for those shops as the ur-example of the phrase. Probably not, but a council meeting writeup from November 29th, 1833 summarizes:

Mr. Alderman HORSFALL said that Mr. Finch must be mistaken when he said that the public-houses were kept open all day on Sunday. They were required to be closed during Divine service.
Mr. FINCH had not said that all the public-houses were kept open. In the narrow streets they were, and especially what were called the Jerry-shops.
Lieut. MORRISON did not know what might be the case with respect to public-houses, but the public pumps were locked up during Divine service, and a thirsty traveller would have to go a long way to search for water. (Laughter)

Jerry-shops sometimes specifically carry the meaning of public-houses that served alcohol without a license, in keeping with (or heralding) a general association of the name with criminal behavior or the general affairs of miscreants. “Jerry” is also used, contemporaneously, as a slang term for an overweight hook—butchers were said to say “hang on Jerry,” at which point their assistant would switch hooks and allow them to sell underweight meat without their customers being any the wiser.

Was this common slang? No idea. But it does point towards one answer for “why Jerry,” which is that it would not necessarily have to be a specific Jerry for someone to know, in the general sense, that it was referring to something sketchy. That is, if you described Toxteth Park as having a lot of jerry attributes—jerry cottages, jerry builders, etc.—for much of the 19th century, I think people would have known what you meant. This is what we put a pin in, a few paragraphs ago.

Now: how early would that have been the case? I’m not sure.

If you held a knife to my throat, I’d say that I think Jerry Hill is Patient Zero for the “Jerry Building Society,” for “Jerry builders” as unscrupulous, cheap, uncaring building-club members, and that Jerry Hill as a particularly disreputable slum in the outskirts of Liverpool—a reputation it would hold such that it would still be notorious in the early years of the 20th century—is where things started.

But I’m not certain. And I think it is a distinct possibility that “Jerry Hill” the neighborhood and “Jerry Building Society” have the same origin. I am going to end this long essay—thanks for sticking with me!—by doing two things. First, I am going to materially advance the history of “jerry built.” And then, I am going to indulge in the kind of dubious speculation that I hate having to sift through when I find it on Stack Overflow—but I think, in this case, I will have earned it.

So. The very first use of the term, the one with the Blue Bell Inn and all that, is a pseudonymous letter to the Liverpool Mercury, signed “E.K.” Thing is, that’s not the only letter E.K. wrote to the paper. In fact, they wrote to that paper all the damned time. In February, two months before the Jerry Building Society but while the topic of cholera was being hotly debated, they wrote in with a proposal to limit its spread:

Fourthly, clothe the poor in woollens—warm woolens, not cold filthy linen and cotton rags—let them have simple wholesome food, soup, bread, oatmeal, and cheap tea, free of duty. Lastly, as to the means of providing these things. Try first a public meeting and subscription; if that is not liberally and handsomely supported, then poll for a rate for the express purpose.

E.K. was, it seems, quite politically active—recall that the April, 1832 letter is itself describing a public meeting, which they evidently attended. They were upset about the treatment of the Irish as well as the poor; they wrote about their dislike of Tories (“improvements he hates; they are innovations! Corruptions and frauds he loves; they are sacred vested rights!”), and the need for reforming “the abuses of the church.” In 1833, they wrote a public letter to a newly elected government official beseeching that they, “about to have the command and government of nearly two thousand paupers, orphans, and destitute persons, do not forget the importance of the task you have to perform.”

Before the election in 1832, they even went so far as to write a poem, titled “LIVERPOOL ELECTION, 1832” with real bangers like—

And is it thus ye sell your charter’d rights?
And is it thus that low-born wealth invites?
What! does the demon gold thus blind your eyes?
Demas forsakes us, and the patriot dies

Uh. Anyway. If it seems like I’m making the assumption that all of these E.K.s are the same E.K., it’s because all of their letters touch on the same topics, and are written in the same style. Sometimes, they apparently went too far; there are a couple of times when the Mercury simply says they received a letter from E.K. and they’re not going to print it because of its content.

On May 18th, 1832—again, while the “cottage owners bill” was still being discussed—E.K. crossed a bridge with someone, because under the name “Argus” that person complained about “a letter signed E.K. which appeared to be put forth chiefly for the purpose of attacking the character of Dr. Collins, with a view to influence the parishioners to vote against that gentleman this day.” That would, as it happens, be the same letter as the one which coined the Jerry Building Society, which ends:

I cannot conclude this brief note without adverting to Dr. Collin’s impolitic, if not insolent mode of conduct. It was not sufficient for him to attempt to degrade such names as Cropper, Rathbone, Jordan, Currie, and Formby, but he must add, in public Vestry, such an insult, as gross as it was unjust, to Mr. H. Earle. That gentleman, although not practised in a debating club, was never yet discovered to be deficient in talent, nor in the urbanity or courteousness that displays true gentility, yet Dr. Collins must, forsooth, before a thousand or fifteen hundred respectable parishioners, tell Mr. Earle, “if you have not brains, I cannot give them to you.”

Now, remember I quoted Francis Jordan calling out “Jerry-Hill” in 1833? See, minutes of these meetings are often available. Minutes of this meeting, in particular, are available. And, in searching for where a Dr. Collins shows up, we find: “After a good deal of desultory discussion, in which Mr. Neville, Mr. Theakstone, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Hardman Earle, Dr. Collins, Mr. E. Keet, and Lieutenant Morrison took part...”

Edwin A. Keet, born in 1796 on the Isle of Man, moved to Liverpool in the 1810s and spent a couple decades there, making a living as a draper and seller of linens. He was politically active at public meetings, where he made good use of his wit; in 1833, inveighing against bribery, he claimed that “the practice of bribing the Dockmasters was as notorious as that of bribing the freemen.”

Mr. PURNELL—I never received £5 from a Captain of a vessel in my life.
Mr. E. KEET.—Why, did you not say that you received £50 the other day? (Laughter)
Mr. PURNELL.—Yes, but that might be for 50 or 100 vessels.
Mr. Commissioner WILKINSON said the Court would be ready to receive evidence as to the bribery of the Dockmasters.
Mr. RADCLIFFE said that was a subject which it would be better to avoid, if possible.

In early 1834, he ran for office; winning that election, he became secretary of the “Committee of Gas Consumers.” He shows up in the papers recommending petitions to parliament for relief, and pointing out discrepancies in the book-keeping over how much money was being spent to help the poor. Later, having retired, he kept himself busy; he even went so far as to write a poem about a castle he saw, with real bangers like—

Sueno, the Dane! where now is thy proud boast?
No more thy hostile fleets infest our coast.
Duke Bertold, Godwin, William, fallen to dust,
No more prevail thy murderous spoils unjust.
Here sons of science talk of a bygone age,
Discuss, compare, review the historic page.
And thou, dear Cynthia, with thy lamp on high,
Calmly invit’st to mansions in the sky.

He passed away in Kensington, London—comfortable and far from any jerry-built cottages—on July 26th or 27th, 1867. Several of his daughters had moved to New Zealand, and a genealogist over on ancestry.com transcribed a letter he wrote to one of them, in which—no surprise—he spends a paragraph talking about how someone having been appointed to take care of the downtrodden seems to be doing a decent job of it.

I would not put much money on a definitive answer as to where the phrase we’ve been trying to investigate comes from. However, I am convinced that there is no scenario in which “E.K.” the social-reform-obsessed meddler-poet and “Edwin Keet” the social-reform-obsessed meddler-poet are not the same person.

Which means we can say that the earliest known use of the idiom “Jerry building”—and it has been the earliest known use for a while now—was by a specific, named individual. A specific, named individual who also associated with, and attended meetings alongside, Francis Jordan, the first person known to have called any part of Toxteth Park “Jerry Hill.”

My contribution to etymology being completed, I’m now going to indulge in wild speculation.

The reason I think it was a place-name first, and the reason the Raising the Wind hypothesis doesn’t sit right with me, is because there aren’t other examples of “jerry” being used in that way. And, moreover, the building societies reformers were upset with didn’t really swindle people—they were just unethical and greedy. And even if a swindle was the argument you were making, “diddle” was a far less oblique word, and in common usage—so why not the Diddlers Club, or the Diddling Builders Society, or the Brotherhood of Jeremy Diddler?

If it is a reference to popular culture, I think Tom and Jerry is more likely, by the circuitous route of “place full of jerry-shops,” which Toxteth Park was => “Jerry Hill” => The Building Society of Jerry Hill. Still and all, while there are definitely many more references to “jerry shops” and “jerry houses” before and after 1832, I’d like to suggest another possibility.

As an erudite, socially conscious, reform-minded, literate politician in the early 19th century—someone who was always going on about how to improve the ability of the government to effect positive change for its citizens, in particular the least fortunate—it’s certainly possible you’d want some kind of eponym to make a point. And maybe, as inspiration, you’d take a name that—unlike the dramatis personae of decade-old farces—was being mentioned in papers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and would have been a common reference point for the people you were arguing with.

That is to say, if you were going to coin a sardonic moniker for something as the opposite of the reform you desired, an emblem of the failing of the present sociopolitical system to achieve ends that were more… utilitarian, shall we say? I am going to suggest that Diddler would not be the first Jerry on your mind—it would be Jeremy Bentham, England’s leading contemporary philosopher until his death in… well, in 1832.

Someone, coincidentally, who espoused a lot of the same views that motivated Edwin Keet—if E.K.’s incessant letter-writing is anything to go by.

I am not going to say that I know Jerry Hill was named ironically, by reference to the failure of (and need for) the same kind of reforms Bentham would have championed—like a Khrushchevka or a Hooverville. But I will say that, as a reference, in my opinion the link between the two is a lot clearer than it is with Jeremy Diddler: Jerry Hill is the kind of place that you get if the government doesn’t follow Keet and Bentham’s principles.

And this would be where a Bad Etymologist would say “well, if this ain’t true, it oughta be” and let you tell all your friends that “jerry-building” is a reference to the Panopticon guy. Instead I will freely admit that I have no evidence for this—but then, as far as I know, there’s no less evidence for the philosophical allusion hypothesis than there is the literary allusion one.

All we can say, and be reasonably sure about, is that we owe this bit of etymological debt to Liverpool, in the early 19th century, but the exact reasons are unclear and may remain shrouded. Oh, save for one certainty: nothing about jerry-building, jerry-rigging, jerry-housing or Jerry Hill runs through Berlin.

So don’t let anyone diddle you on that.