Different moods through the week 😚
For your entertainment 😁 (sound on)
Peppercorn Rent - Ripper Street Season 1 - Our Betrayal : Part 2
“Are you a policeman alone, Inspector?”
“How is it Obsidian came by its holdings at St Paul’s Wharfside? The Basin Slum? Hm”
“It was yielded to me by a young man - Stephan Vere-Lyon.
“Vast acreage of rented tenements, yielded for a peppercorn.”
“No, sir, no peppercorn - repayment for a debt. Heavy debt.”
________________________________________________________________________________ Peppercorn refers to the dried berry of the pepper plant, and the word later became generalised, or semantically broadened, to also mean “a small or insignificant thing” “something trifling” (Collins), “anything very small or insignificant” (Random House), etc.Peppercorn rent is a phrase in its own right, dating back several centuries, meaning a very low, nominal or token rent given as “a simple acknowledgement that the tenement virtually belongs to the person to whom the peppercorn is given”, as Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has it. But this negligible financial exchange was once quite literally pepper-based.
Oxford Dictionaries labels the phrase British and say it originates in a once-common practice of “stipulating the payment of a peppercorn as a nominal rent”. Merriam-Webster has similar information: (1) “a rent formerly often stipulated in deeds and consisting in supplying a certain amount (as a pound) of black peppercorns at stated intervals”; (2) “a merely nominal rent in kind operating to keep alive a title.”
In legal parlance, a peppercorn is a metaphor for a very small payment, a nominal consideration, used to satisfy the requirements for the creation of a legal contract.
i finally started watching Ripper Street mainly because i miss Tom Wambsgans. even though the show is good so far, and its nice seeing Matthew again, aint no one can replace my boy Tommy
