Fanny Adams

Fanny Adams: Tinned boiled mutton. Fanny Adams, whose name is thus commemorated, was in real life a young woman, murdered by a solicitor's clerk named Baker in 1812, who cut her up and flung the pieces into the river at Alton in Hampshire. Seamen of the period applied the name "Fanny Adams" by way of grim jest to the pieces of salt-junk or pork supplied as rations. Later, when tinned meat became a naval ration, the name was transferred to that. In the Mercantile Marine, in a similar way, the names "Harriet Lane" and "Jane Shaw" were given to the tinned meat rations, Harriet Lane being derived from the name of the ill-fated Whitechapel woman murdered by Henry Wainwright in 1874, her body being chopped up. Tinned meat came into the mercantile seaman's dietary about that time.

References / notes

The above term is listed in our Compendium of the Great War.

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