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2014 August 15, Nicholas Fogg, Stratford-upon-Avon: The Biography:
The Mop Fairs attracted the attention of moralists. The hiring system was seen as a means to acquire girls for prostitution; although there is no evidence that this occurred in Stratford, where girls plying for hire were generally accompanied by their formidable mothers.
2022, Graham Sutherland, Secret Warwick:
Mop Fairs: Today's annual events are the modern version of the old hiring fairs, where people attended seeking employment or to change it. They are named after the practice of hopefully skilled employees carrying tassels, known as mops, in their buttonholes indicating their occupation. Those who had no trade carried a mop head. At the end of the following week, they could change employers or employees, at what was called the Runaway Mop.
(British,obsolete) A tassel worn in a buttonhole to indicate ones occupation in such a fair.
2022, Graham Sutherland, Secret Warwick:
Mop Fairs: Today's annual events are the modern version of the old hiring fairs, where people attended seeking employment or to change it. They are named after the practice of hopefully skilled employees carrying tassels, known as mops, in their buttonholes indicating their occupation. Those who had no trade carried a mop head. At the end of the following week, they could change employers or employees, at what was called the Runaway Mop.
Left his pa's farm and is now working at the city water works. Some say he's got to drink 'cause he works with blue vitriol and that kind of stuff. He was a drunken mop always.
By “mopping” (stealing) the clothes and accessories necessary to effect their look, or by buying breasts, reconstructed noses, lifted chins, and female genitals, the children turn traditional ideas of labor around: […]
Flibbertigibbet,[is scared of]moping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women
1904, Stanley J. Weyman, “XII. The Peasants' Camp”, in The Abbess of Vlaye:
There were women and children as well as men in the place, and all, ragged and half naked, mopped and mowed at the passers, or, leaping to their feet, defied them with unspeakable words and gestures.
The now-obsolete sense brick, attested from the 17th century, appears to be the oldest, with the sense cookie following in the 18th century. The exact relationship between the various later senses is unclear. The ultimate origin is unclear, but possibly corrupted from mok(“mug, cup”).[1]
The use as an affectionate term of address is often as a diminutive, and specifically in the non-standard form moppie. The standard diminutive mopje is never used for this sense.