I was wondering if anyone had the straight dope on this term. According to several online sources (including today’s Word of the Day, which inspired my question), the term comes from a 16th/17th-century stable owner in Cambridge.
While I’m perfectly willing to believe that area wordsmiths coined the term, these kinds of folk etymologies always seem to trip my B.S. detector. I mean, how many people could a) have come into contact with Mr. Hobson and b) had enough regular interaction to be familiar with his policy?
For what my uninformed opinion is worth, it seems more likely to me that this site is closer to the mark. “Hobson’s choice” starts life as nonsensical Cockney rhyming slang, then has a definition retrofitted to it. Sort of like Cecil’s explanation of Uncle Sam.
The Cockney rhyming slang probably postdates the original “Thomas Hobson” explanation, as its meaning ("voice’) has nothing to do with the meaning of the expression. In accordance with typical rhyming slang, I expect that the expression for “voice” is actually just “Hobson” or “Hobson’s.” The rhyming slang is never nonsensical;’ if it were, it wouldn’t work.
It’s no surprise to me that the term “Hobson’s choice” was memorialized and popularized from Cambridge; perhaps one of the more famous alumni wrote about it.
Arthur: “I’ve decided to take a bath.” _
Hobson: “I shall alert the media.” _
Arthur: “Do you want to run my bath for me?” _
Hobson: “It is what I live for.”
As Nametag says, the rhyming slang almost certainly postdates the phrase itself.
The first recorded use of the phrase is (as mentioned by The Mavin) by Richard Steele in the Spectator in 1712 and Steele mentioned it in order to explain its origins. This is the story which has since been endlessly repeated. Now, Steele was writing several generations after Hobson’s death so some of the details may have become distorted, but there is nothing, in itself, implausible about the story. Hobson certainly existed and had been something of a local celebrity. His business was an important one, as it provided transportation between London and one of the major provincial towns in England; it was one of the biggest carrying operations in the country. As is always mentioned, he is also famous because Milton wrote two poems about him. These however were just two of a large number of poems on him written by Cambridge undergraduates at the time of his death - this seems to have been something of a student craze, the joke being that they were using the most formal poetic styles to commemorate a mere tradesman. As the intention was satirical, this tends to confirm the suggestion that Hobson was not a popular figure.
With student populations which were, by definition, literate and well-connected, Oxbridge slang has a habit of passing into wider use and the assumption is that this is what happened with ‘Hobson’s choice’.
Thomas Hobson certainly was (still is!) a well-known figure here in Cambridge. His name lives on not only through “Hobson’s choice” but also though “Hobson’s Conduit”, a slightly bizarre and ultimately ill-fated attempt to build a water-course from a local spring to the city centre.
He’s probably better known here for the conduit than for the ‘choice’, to be honest - mainly because his efforts to build this “New River” have left two huge gutters along Trumpington Street into which unsuspecting cyclists and those attempting to park their cars still routinely vanish.
Hobson also ran a mail delivery service to London and back, so I should think he would have been well known in the capital even without the students’ reports…
I’m not sure that I would call Hobson’s Conduit ‘slightly bizarre and ultimately ill-fated’ as it remained the main source of fresh water in the town centre until the nineteenth century and it still supplies water to the gardens of some of the colleges. The odd thing is that no one is quite sure that Hobson was the person responsible for its construction. What he did do was to build the local workhouse (on the site of the old police station, which has small blue plaque recording the fact) and it has been suggested that all he paid for was the branch of the Conduit built to supply it. This article from the local paper gives a good summary of its history and includes photos of the infamous gutters.
There is also a book about it, which discusses Hobson’s life, by E. A. Gray, called simply Hobson’s Conduit (1977). This will tell you everything you could conceivably want to know about water supply in early-seventeenth century Cambridge.
And yes Hobson was well-known in London - the Cambridge corporation has an early portrait of him which is believed to have come from a London pub - and, as I tried to imply in my previous post, supplying horses to students was only a small part of his business, but the phrase itself sounds more like a student joke and that is how it has usually been interpreted.
There is a reasonably extensive scholarly literature on the origins of the phrase, mostly written by Milton experts wanting to contextualise the poems.
When I lived in Chicago, over 25 years ago, there was a bar that served oysters very cheap. It was called “Hobson’s Bar” and was located near the Chicago River downtown. I don’t think this has any connection with Hobson’s choice and doubt whether it is still there.
Hobson’s Choice is NOT no choice at all. If you did not like the horse offered to you in rotation, you could wait till a better horse came along. Why Hobson was popular was the fact that even if you were wealthy, you could not rent the best horse until its turn. Even commoners had the same odds as the wealthy. Very unusual, even now!
samclem, by popular I mean well known, not necessarily well liked. Obviously, those with wealth were used to getting their way, and were irritated by Hobson’s behaviour. And this would include the esteemed students from Cambridge who most definitely were upper class.
I tend to believe that Hobson was rather liked by the lower classes who saw him as a hero of sorts who stuck it to the lords!
