_Births_. _Deaths_. _Marriages_. Baker 1033 839 513 Cook 910 742 483 In the London Directory for 1871, there appeared 277 Bakers, 56 Baxters, and 2 Bagsters, as against 194 Cooks, 89 Cookes, 1 Coke, 2 Cookmans, and 9 Cooksons. This preserves the same proportion. In the couplet quoted above occurs the trade name of “Waferer.” This may possibly sound an obsoletism to the reader. But if as a distinct occupation the making of bread wafers is gone, or has fallen into the hands of Messrs. Peek, Frean & Co., and other of our biscuit manufacturers, it has left many memorials behind. Our “Wafers” have fossilised its story in the Directory, and even in our Authorized Version of the Bible (Lev. ii. 4). I have known one or two sturdy Protestants who have objected to the translation: “And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened _wafers_ anointed with oil.” There can be no doubt this is one more relic of Papal days in England. I have seen an old will of the thirteenth century, in which the then Archbishop of York made a small bequest to two “waferers,” who for many years had honestly plied their trade of selling wafers at the Minster gate. Not that the “waferer” confined himself to these. The author of Piers Plowman, not to mention Chaucer himself, puts him among certain disreputable street hawkers, who sold small spiced cakes; but then we must remember that the “Malvern Dreamer” wrote his poem against the lewdness of the priesthood—in fact, he was a trumpeter of the Reformation to come—and he would not object to set down the humblest servitor of the papal establishment, even a waferer, in as low a scale as he could. It is this that to my mind makes the history of English surnames so interesting. If we visit Pompeii we see in the streets and chambers that have been cleared of débris the very accidents of life and thought well-nigh 2000 years ago. We have but to clear away the little corruptions of spelling or pronunciation which have befallen these old-fashioned names, and spell-bound we are gazing into the life—the every-day religious and social life—of our English forefathers four hundred years ago. The antiquary and the philologist alike may take up the London Directory with reverence, for therein lies a fund of information to his hand, which it might occupy months of pain and trouble otherwise to accumulate.