Tricoteuses

[incitatus]

What would be the modern equivalent?

[thewillow]

Rubberneckers? Or perhaps people who watch car crash television?

[woofgang]

the people who pack the gallery in notorious trials...no, not really...sorry can't think of one

[Quizmonster]

I like Willow's 'rubberneckers', albeit it's an unfortunate word to use in connection with the guillotine. One has visions of the blade bouncing back up if the victim, too, had a 'rubber neck'!

[woofgang]

Maybe I have this wrong, but I thought the point of the tricoteuses were that they weren't like the rest of the mob who went for the exitement and jeered and yelled. There's a very good bit in Terry Pratchetts "Small Gods" about the church of Om's torturers having mugs with "a present from Quirm" on and boiling their tea kettle on the same fire that they heat the instruments in...that sort of deadness of feeling. Rubberneckers and people who watch car crash tv at least do it for the buzz. As I understand it, the tricoteuses just sat there more or less as one might sit near a cricket game on a summer day..."not particularly interested or moved by the game, but its quite nice to have it going on in the background while I chat and do my knitting"

[woofgang]

I've just done a bit of looking up. Apparently the knitting was a badge of their domesticity ie virtue. Les Citoyennes Tricoteuses seem to have been the wives and mothers of the working class revolutionaries who got involved for themselves rather than leaving it all to their menfolk... so a bit difficult to analogise in this age where women are expected to have opinions and act on them...maybe people who man picket lines with their striking partners?

[woofgang]

Inci, can i ask why you are asking....this has been a good q. by my definition, ie it has made me think a bit

[incitatus]

Because the gathering of relatives around a deathbed I have been attending recently reminded me of them.

[woofgang]

then I guess my first response may have been appropriate...I hope not too appropriate