Cathar’ning

St Catherine was the patron of spinsters, and on her day young women met to make merry together, which was called Cathar’ning. Something of it still lingered in remote parts of England in Hone’s time. At Woolwich the arsenal workmen used to bring out a man in woman’s clothes with a large wheel beside him, to stand for the saint, and carry him round the town in a chair with speeches at the houses, as the smiths did for St Clement. That procession had stopped some eight or nine years before 1825.