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What was Kingcough?


histreal

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Does anyone remember our Mums telling us not to sit on cold steps or concrete as we'd get Kingcough in our bums!

Dont know what it was suppose to be but it certainly scared me to death when I was young.Other horrour stories were dont go near the drains or you'll end up in the Fever Hospital and horror of horrors if you swallowed chewing gum it would wrap around your throat and choke you.First time I swallowed the stuff I was on tenterhooks wondering how long it would take to choke me!

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As I understand it, it's whooping-cough. (the "King" of Coughs)

 

up in Northumbria, there was a place calles "hob-hole", where a hob (very like a brownie or an elf or sprite) lived.

 

If a child got "King Cough" the parents would take it to the hob-hole, hold it over the hob-hole (a cave?) and chant

"Hob hole hob, Hob hole hob,

Me bairn's gotten King cough

tak't off, tak't off!"

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Does anyone remember our Mums telling us not to sit on cold steps or concrete as we'd get Kingcough in our bums!

Dont know what it was suppose to be but it certainly scared me to death when I was young.Other horrour stories were dont go near the drains or you'll end up in the Fever Hospital and horror of horrors if you swallowed chewing gum it would wrap around your throat and choke you.First time I swallowed the stuff I was on tenterhooks wondering how long it would take to choke me!

 

Yes, I certainly remember being told that and often wondered what it was, I guess, as someone else has mentioned that it was whooping cough but can't think why? Funny what things we were told as children - I also remember being told not to swallow chewing gum or it would stick in our insides!!

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My mum and nan always called it ' chinkoff'! I once dared to ask what it was, and my nan said, "it's like piles only worse". I left it at that!!

My OH is from Leeds and his parents said Kingcough, however, his grandad was from Sheffield and said the same as mine - chinkoff - strange people!

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