‘The Qu-air-kers: A story for children’: Caroline C Graveson, told her by an elderly woman Friend

‘And what will Friends say when we take duck into Meeting?’

by Caroline C Graveson 23rd December 2022

John and Jane Jessup lived more than a hundred years ago, when Quakers wore a peculiar costume of their own.

One First-Day morning they had to go to Meeting, all by themselves. Their mother was ill and their father away. They did not mind the two-mile walk each way, for they were sturdy children; but they minded very much having to pass the end of Biggins Alley just before they reached the little town. Those horrid children, how they ‘quacked’ at them! Why, oh why, did their parents have to dress differently from other folk so that everyone knew they were Quakers (‘Qu-air-kers’ those Northerners pronounced it)?