That's the way the money goes

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The phrase "that's the way the money goes", or "how the money goes", is used to draw attention to profligacy and waste of the public purse, church funds etc., or just the day to day cost of living. It can be found in texts going back to 1707. Around the 1840s it was sometimes enclosed in quotation marks referencing popular songs and rhymes that contained the line.

History

The first song, "That's the way the money goes", appeared in 1835. [1] It was written by Joseph Edwards Carpenter with music arranged by John Harroway and by 1837 it was being sung at City Festivals, London Concerts and the New Grecian Saloon in the Eagle Tavern, Shoreditch. [2]

Another song, "The Dollars", by William Evans Burton was published in 1837 in Burtons Comic Songster. Retitled "The way the money goes", it appeared with music in the January 1838 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine - a journal Burton also edited. It was published in Philadelphia but available in Britain. The song was being sung in concerts in New York in 1842 [3] and in 1841, again as "The Dollars", was reprinted in the book "American Melodies".

In 1839 a poem was printed in several newspapers in Britain and the USA under several titles, one being "How does the money go". [4] It is a wife's detailed accounting to her husband of the disbursement of his wages of one pound one shilling.

The line also appeared in the slip songs, "England's stagnation! Or, I wonder where the Money is gone" and "Fifteen shillings a week". [5] The latter also being a costing of the household expenses by a wife to her husband. These sheets would have been printed around 1850 [6] but the songs are probably older. [7] "Fifteen shillings a week" may reference the wage Scrooge paid his clerk, Bob Cratchit, in A Christmas Carol.

The phrase is probably best known as the penultimate line in many stanzas of the playground rhyme "Pop goes the Weasel". Pop goes the Weasel, originally an old country dance, had in 1852 become fashionable again following "the Queen's use of it at Court Balls". [8] As with "that's the way the money goes", it then, in 1853, became the subject of comic songs and possibly at concerts that year the two phrases became linked.

At the Cremorne Gardens in 1853, W. Lambert Edmonds, was singing "Pop goes the weasel" by W. R. Mandale, and may have also performed Carpenter's "That's the way the money goes" as he did sing other songs by Carpenter that year. [9] [10]

Also that year both "Pop goes the weasel" and "That's the way the money goes" were appearing in verse in newspaper advertisements. Hyams emporium in separate advertisements used both phrases. [11] [12]

The first known appearance of the two lines together was not until March 1854 in Edinburgh. At a time of preparations for the Crimean War, and referring to Nicholas I of Russia, butcher and baker boys there were singing:

King Nic has got the sma'pox,
I wish he had the measles;
That's the way the money goes;
Pop goes the weasel [13]

A stanza about a cotton reel and needle has survived through to the present day. An early version appeared in September 1854.

Up and down, about the town,
Sowing with my needle.
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the Weasel.
A halfpenny for a cotton ball,
A penny for a needle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the Weasel. [14]

The City Road/Eagle couplet was being sung in the street by April 1854 [15] but the earliest known version with the line "That's the way the money comes", was in April 1855 in James Planché's Easter Extravaganza. The word comes in italics suggesting a change from goes.

Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money comes,
Pop goes the weasel! [16]

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References

  1. ↑ The Weekly True Sun, London UK, 29 November 1835, Advertisement Page 1
  2. ↑ Wiltshire Independent, Devizes UK, 27 April 1837, Page 1
  3. ↑ New York Herald, 10 June 1842, Page 3
  4. ↑ Kentish Mercury, London UK, 11 May 1839, Page 3
  5. ↑ https://archive.org/details/analbumofstreetl00arylrich/page/n5/mode/2up
  6. ↑ The printer (Hodges) was only at the address on the sheets from 1845 to 1855
  7. ↑ "Mary Ma Chree" on same sheet as "Fifteen shillings a week" appeared in the book Treasure Trove by Samuel Lover in 1844
  8. ↑ A New Most Excellent Dancing Master: The Journal of Joseph Lowe's Visits to Balmoral and Windsor (1852–1860) to Teach Dance to the Family of Queen Victoria, Pendragon Press, 1992, page 11
  9. ↑ The Cremorne Comic Song Book, Editor W. Lambert Edmonds, London, 1853
  10. ↑ Weekly Dispatch (London), 11 December 1853, Page 14, Advertisement for Cremorne Song Book
  11. ↑ Hull Advertiser - Friday 22 July 1853
  12. ↑ Leeds Times - Saturday 19 November 1853
  13. ↑ Inverness Courier - Thursday 30 March 1854 p.6 col 1
  14. ↑ Limerick Reporter - Friday 01 September 1854, page 4, Street Ballads
  15. ↑ The Nation (Dublin) - Saturday 1 April 1854 p. 11, Groans of a Student
  16. ↑ The Extravaganzas of J. R. Planché, Esq., Editors T. F Dillon Croker and Stephen Tucker, Vol V, 1879
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