KITCHENER
The Word – The Man – The City – The History – The Myth
First, the meaning. The word, not necessarily the name, means just what it seems to mean.
Noun
- A person employed in, or in charge of, a kitchen.
- An elaborate kitchen stove.
The family of my city’s namesake must have done some significant social-climbing over several centuries, in Britain’s rigidly stratified society. What began as a lowly cook or scullery maid, finally gave us minor nobility, Horatio Herbert Kitchener.
He was born a mere 3rd Baronet. He followed his father into the Army, and soon showed more than average planning, tactics, and leadership ability. After he won several battles, and invented concentration camps, in southern Africa, he was raised to First Earl of Kitchener.
He was a product of his time. He had no charity for anything or anybody that wasn’t British. He barely skated past a court martial for having 9 prisoners and a German missionary summarily shot. On the other hand….
Mankind invented footwear to protect from rocks and thorns and poisonous snakes. As ‘boots’ became firm and solid, so did abrasion and foot irritation. At first, rags were wrapped around feet to help fill the footwear and prevent internal rubbing. Eventually, knitters, almost entirely women, learned how to knit socks to cushion feet in boots, and keep them warm.
For most people, (men) the seam which closed the toe-end caused no serious problem, but for Infantrymen who had to quick-march 20 or 30 miles, carrying 50 pounds of ruck, it was soon found that those seams caused pain and bleeding. Your army can’t fight, if it can’t move.
Lord Kitchener knew some knitters, and approached them with a request to develop a method of sealing the ends of socks – American, sox – which did not protrude or irritate. One of them discovered a smooth method of grafting closure. It was named the Kitchener Stitch. That’s like having the Burger King Whopper named after you, because you ordered one.
‘Sand Hills’ became ‘Ebytown,’ and eventually the city founded by people of German ancestry, became Berlin. In 1916, with much anti-German sentiment generated by the First World War, they voted to change the city name, to honor this war (?) hero who had died at sea. A newly-settled little unincorporated village of about 300, on the British Columbia/Washington border, claims that they were first, taking the name in 1898.
The three little cities of Hespeler, Preston and Galt, to our south, were forcibly amalgamated into the city of Cambridge, by the Provincial Government in 1973. Today’s Woke society, and Cancel Culture, are busy eliminating past sins. If the statue of Queen Victoria is doused with red paint, and it is demanded that it be removed, and her park renamed, then the name of a racist colonialist bully-boy will soon be removed also. I suspect that Cambridge, Kitchener, and the city of Waterloo will all be folded into the already-existing Region of Waterloo, which, like L.A. encompasses the entire County of Waterloo. Whatever they call it, I plan to still be here blogging atcha. 😀
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