Trashing

A correspondent writing from Morley on 21 July 1827 described a wedding custom common in parts of Yorkshire called trashing: pelting the couple with old shoes as they came home from church. He understood that it had once been kept for people who had given offence, such as refusing to pay towards the scholars’ drinking, but the reason had been forgotten and it was done to anyone. Sods of turf or mud served when there were no old shoes, and they were thrown in jest rather than in anger. An old shoe was still called a trash, but the writer thought the name came from the verb to trash, to clog or hinder, as with the trash-cord tied to a pointer to slow it.