Brummagem
The word appeared in the Middle Ages as a variant on the older and coexisting form of Birmingham (spelled Bermingeham in Domesday Book), and was in widespread use by the time of the Civil War.
Around 1690 Alexander Missen, visiting Bromichan in his travels, said that "swords, heads of canes, snuff-boxes, and other fine works of steel," could be had, "cheaper and better here than even in famed Milan.
"[citation needed] Guy Miege, in The New State of England (1691), wrote: "Bromicham is a large and well-built Town, very populous, and much resorted unto; particularly noted, few years ago, for the counterfeit Groats made here, and from hence dispersed all over the Kingdom.
Around 1750, England's Gazetteer described Birmingham or Bromichan as "a large, well-built, and populous town, noted for the most ingenious artificers in boxes, buckles, buttons, and other iron and steel wares; wherein such multitudes of people are employed that they are sent all over Europe; and here is a continual noise of hammers, anvils, and files".
[8] Matthew Boulton had taken part in the first British trade missions to China and the city was one of the most advanced, diverse and productive manufacturing centres in the modern world.
Charles Dickens's novel The Pickwick Papers (1836) mentions it as a term for counterfeit silver coins; but Samuel Sidney's Rides on Railways (1851) refers to it as "an old-fashioned nickname for a Birmingham workman".
It was used figuratively in this context to refer to moral fakery: for instance, the Times leader, 29 January 1838, reported Sir Robert Peel's slur on an opponent: "[who] knew the sort of Brummagem stuff he had to deal with, treated the pledge and him who made it with utter indifference".
One particularly negative use of the word is "brummagem screwdriver", a term for a hammer, a jibe which suggested that Brummie workers were unskilled and unsophisticated, though it was similarly applied to the French and Irish.
[citation needed] Carts were passing to and fro; groups of Indians squatting on their haunches were chattering together, and displaying to one another the flaring red and yellow handkerchiefs, the scarlet blankets, and muskets of the most worthless Brummagem make, for which they had been exchanging their bits of gold, while their squaws looked on with the most perfect indifference.
[12]The furs, fossil ivory, sheepskins and brick tea brought by them after voyages often reaching a year and eighteen months, come, strictly enough, under the head of raw products.
Richard H. Barham: He whipp'd out his oyster-knife, broad and keen A Brummagem blade which he always bore, To aid him to eat, By way of a treat, The "natives" he found on the Red Sea shore;
[18] A Punch book review for December 1917 said: "But, to be honest, the others (with the exception of one quaint little comedy of a canine ghost) are but indifferent stuff, too full of snakes and hidden treasure and general tawdriness – the kind of Orientalism, in fact, that one used to associate chiefly with the Earl's Court Exhibition.
The Housing Design Awards 1998 said of one Birmingham project, City Heights, "this gutsy Brummagem bruiser of a building handles its landmark status with ease and assurance".
[citation needed] In The Guardian "Notes from the touchline" sport report, 21 March 2003, journalist Frank Keating used the headline "World Cup shines with dinkum Brummagem" to praise the performance of Birmingham-born Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds.
A particular activist in reclaiming the term as a traditional name reflecting positive aspects of the city's heritage is historian Carl Chinn MBE, Professor of Community History at the University of Birmingham, who produces Brummagem Magazine.
Gilbert Seldes, in his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, wrote in praise of Krazy Kat: "everything paste and brummagem has had its vogue with us; and a genuine, honest native product has gone unnoticed".
Mencken's influence is apparent when the term appears in John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust: "The church must go, it is the haven of the booboisie, of boobs and bounders and all brummagem mountebanks."
