Portrait of Fanny Adams from the Illustrated Police News, 1868 Source: Wikimedia Commons
“Sweet Fanny Adams” is an English phrase that has come to mean “nothing at all”.[1]
Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old English girl who was murdered by solicitor’s clerk Frederick Baker in Alton, Hampshire, on 24 August 1867. He subsequently butchered her body into several pieces, some of which were never found.[2]
At about the same time as Fanny’s murder, the Royal Navy was switching from its traditional fare for sailors of salt tack – barrels of salted beef or pork – to a cheaper tinned meat known as preserved mutton. A gruesome joke started to circulate that the tins actually contained Fanny’s chopped-up remains, perhaps initiated by a rumour that a sailor had found a button in his meal. The new rations were given the girl’s name by the men, and as her initials were the same as a crude phrase meaning “nothing at all”, the phrase “sweet Fanny Adams” or “sweet F. A.” became a more acceptable substitute for “sweet fuck all”.[1]
Cansfield, Peter. Sweet FA: The True Story of Sweet Fanny Adams. Peter Cansfield Associates, 2000.
Kingshill, Sophia, and Jennifer Beatrice Westwood. The Fabled Coast: Legends & Traditions From Around the Shores of Britain. Random House Books, 2012.
Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website and our service. By clicking on “All cookies”, you consent to us using all cookies and plug-ins as described in our Cookie policy.
Functional cookies
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.