• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Original 'Whale Tumour' Story?

A

Anonymous

Guest
OK- I have heard this given as an alternative name for ULs, sometimes with the elaboration that it dates from WW2 (I think...), but I've never heard the actual tale. Does anyone know it?
 
My mum told me the story years 'n' years ago. She never said it was true but she did say it was a 'popular' tale during WW2.

During the war, alternate sources of food were needed and many otherwise 'unusual' or oddball foods were utilised. One was whale meat which, apparently, was cooked like brawn or tongue then tinned. The UL goes that a housewife opened a tin of whalemeat and the stench almost made her faint. The meat was found to be a tumerous growth from a whale that 'got through' the system.

My mum, who was fairly down-to-earth said she'd never seen a tin of whalemeat during the war and she thought it was a stomach-turning legend springing from disgust at the various foods we were made to eat.

I must add that my mum was in the army during the war ... so she had plenty of opportunity to eat some really vile crud!
 
I now feel very, very sick. Just the thought of it (I know it's not true but I have a vivid imagination) :cross eye
 
Thankyou!

It sounds a little similar to the chicken-tumour story (sandwich ordered without mayonnaise which, when eaten, is found to contain the offending condiment- but no! it's actually pus from a growth in the chicken... apologies for further disgusting-ness), but is never mentioned as a possible forbear.
 
Apparently my Grandmother got hold of a cheap tin of sliced pineapple during the war which contained four slices of pineapple and one slice of boa :cross eye
May or may not be true :D
 
There are two connotations to "whale tumor story":

- a specific story (of the sort now known as an urban legend) involving canned whale meat during the WW2 era, and ...
- a label for the class of such stories which was eventually supplanted by the label "urban legend."

The latter use of the label to denote a class of stories seems to have been popularized, if not criginated, with Rodney Dale's 1978 book The Tumour in the Whale. In the Preface of the revised / updated version of the book (The Wordsworth Book of Urban Legend, 2000) - Dale attributes his knowledge of the label to a 1976 conversation with a George Melly. Here's the relevant excerpt from the 2000 Preface:

whale-tumor-excerpt.jpg

SOURCE (Full Book Accessible @ Google Books):
https://books.google.com/books?id=Hh3-sqILs6wC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=whale+tumor+OR+tumour+meat&source=bl&ots=QO2M2MNxMT&sig=ACfU3U0bwTQTmQxLSNoHB9Sn8j78K7-ebQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjNybLDjb7nAhUFRqwKHR2-AUAQ6AEwC3oECC8QAQ#v=onepage&q=whale tumor OR tumour meat&f=false

I don't know whether the tale quoted herein is the original / oldest version of the story per se.

References:

The Wordsworth Book of Urban Legend
By Rodney Dale
Wordsworth, 2000

A revised and updated version of:

The Tumour in the Whale
By Rodney Dale
Duckworth & W. H. Allen, 1978
 
Last edited:
That living tumour story reminds me so much of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart"
Suddenly I knew that the sound was not in my ears, it was not just inside my head. At that moment I must have become quite white. I talked still faster and louder. And the sound, too, became louder. It was a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall, a sound I knew well. Louder it became, and louder. Why did the men not go? Louder, louder. I stood up and walked quickly around the room. I pushed my chair across the floor to make more noise, to cover that terrible sound. I talked even louder. And still the men sat and talked, and smiled. Was it possible that they could not hear??
No! They heard! I was certain of it. They knew! Now it was they who were playing a game with me. I was suffering more than I could bear, from their smiles, and from that sound. Louder, louder, louder! Suddenly I could bear it no longer. I pointed at the boards and cried, “Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up the boards and you shall see! I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?! Why does it not stop!?”
Click to expand...
 
Stormkhan said:
During the war, alternate sources of food were needed and many otherwise 'unusual' or oddball foods were utilised.
Click to expand...

Every army thinks that its own rations are vile, and that the opposition’s/allies’ stuff is delicious.

An exception was some tins issued to the Wehrmacht in WWII. lt was Italian military scoff, and arrived in tins stamped “A.M.”, which stood for Administrazione Militare (~“War Department”). The contents were so rank that even hardened German troops declared that A.M. was short for alter Mann (old geezer) or anisus Mussolini (Mussolini’s arse).

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Every army thinks that its own rations are vile, and that the opposition’s/allies’ stuff is delicious.

An exception was some tins issued to the Wehrmacht in WWII. lt was Italian military scoff, and arrived in tins stamped “A.M.”, which stood for Administrazione Militare (~“War Department”). The contents were so rank that even hardened German troops declared that A.M. was short for alter Mann (old geezer) or anisus Mussolini (Mussolini’s arse).

maximus otter
Click to expand...
Surprising that the Italians would put up with that. They have the best food in Europe, normally.
 
Back on topic ... I've been searching for pre-1976 evidence of the story.

Articles and / or discussions at both The Straight Dope and Snopes point back to Dale's 1978 book and the Melly conversation as the earliest documented reference to the whale tumor category label and the whale tumor story.
 
Regardless of the provenance for the whale tumor story, the context in which it was alleged to have arisen is a classic basis for urban legends.

Reminiscences posted online by UK folk who lived through the wartime and post-war rationing years universally criticize the whale meat that was made available without ration restrictions. Here are some examples of the claims made ...

- The meat was so foul-tasting it was rejected by the testers / tasters who tried it prior to being approved for promotion.
- The meat was quite tough - to the point multiple reminiscences mention its having to be soaked overnight.
- The meat had a "fishy" flavor and / or an otherwise odd taste that repelled many consumers.

The introduction of whacon (corned whale meat, allegedly free of the fishy flavor) in the post-war era did nothing to make whale meat more popular.

Finally, multiple comments / reminiscences clearly indicate folks confused / conflated whale meat with the similarly un-rationed snoek (snake mackerel) imported from South Africa. Some go so far as to claim whale meat was called "snook" (actually the variant street term for snoek).

It's common for urban legends to impart off-putting, fear-inducing, or otherwise negative ascriptions to key elements (people, products, practices, etc.) in their storylines.

As such, it would be no surprise that an urban legend casting the universally reviled whale meat as something even more disgusting than was already believed would arise.

We may never know whether this story arose during the war / post-war era versus some later period.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Reminiscences posted online by UK folk who lived through the wartime and post-war rationing years universally criticize the whale meat that was made available without ration restrictions. Here are some examples of the claims made ...

- The meat was so foul-tasting it was rejected by the testers / tasters who tried it prior to being approved for promotion.
- The meat was quite tough - to the point multiple reminiscences mention its having to be soaked overnight.
- The meat had a "fishy" flavor and / or an otherwise odd taste that repelled many consumers.
Click to expand...

According to Marguerite Patten, who worked for the Ministry of Food:
"the raw meat had a strong and very unpleasant smell of fish and stale oil, I loathed handling whale meat to create recipes or in demonstrations. When cooked the smell was not apparent."

Neither she nor the Ministry recipes suggest that it needed soaking.

multiple comments / reminiscences clearly indicate folks confused / conflated whale meat with the similarly un-rationed snoek (snake mackerel) imported from South Africa. Some go so far as to claim whale meat was called "snook" (actually the variant street term for snoek).
Click to expand...

This makes sense: they were around at much same time. Whale meat was introduced in 1947 - not during the war - and snoek in 1948.
 
oxo66 said:
... Whale meat was introduced in 1947 - not during the war - and snoek in 1948
Click to expand...

I wasn't sure about the timeframe when whale meat and / or snoek were being marketed, because the sources I reviewed didn't agree at all.

I found some sources that clearly stated they were marketed during the war, and I found others that clearly stated they weren't marketed until after the war. The latest post-war claims I found gave the introduction timeframe as circa 1950 or 1951. I even found one reminiscence which claimed whale meat was tested but never approved for public marketing (which seems odd, considering it also referred to consumers hating the product).
 
EnolaGaia said:
I wasn't sure about the timeframe when whale meat and / or snoek were being marketed, because the sources I reviewed didn't agree at all.

I found some sources that clearly stated they were marketed during the war, and I found others that clearly stated they weren't marketed until after the war. The latest post-war claims I found gave the introduction timeframe as circa 1950 or 1951. I even found one reminiscence which claimed whale meat was tested but never approved for public marketing (which seems odd, considering it also referred to consumers hating the product).
Click to expand...

Didn't Vera Lynn keep the home fires burning with that glorious old wartime ballad "Whale meat again?"
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Didn't Vera Lynn keep the home fires burning with that glorious old wartime ballad "Whale meat again?"
Click to expand...

Apparently a joke at the time was Woman in butchers: "A whale steak please, and the head for the cat"

I've got two sources that give that give three dates for introduction of whale meat. Patton says it was introduced in 1946 but became more widely available, in 1947. The other book just says 1945.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I've no idea. Dale doesn't offer any clues as to whether the whale tumour informant is the same as the famed one. I suspect they're one and the same.
Click to expand...

George Melly wrote plenty of anecdote-filled books, if this rumour started with him he must have mentioned it in one of those, you would have thought.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Finally, multiple comments / reminiscences clearly indicate folks confused / conflated whale meat with the similarly un-rationed snoek (snake mackerel) imported from South Africa. Some go so far as to claim whale meat was called "snook" (actually the variant street term for snoek).
Click to expand...

Snook (as opposed to Snoek) is a great tasting fish, and if you like sport fishing, a real fighter.
I mean, check this out, couldn't you just sink your teeth into that? And the fish...

 
I think I may have found the ultimate evidence for the origin of the whale tumour / tumor story and label.

I hadn't noticed that Melly wrote the Foreward to the 1978 Dale book that took its title from his anecdotal reference (cited earlier). Here's Melly's own explanation of the phrase, from page 15 of the 1978 edition.

It seems to indicate the label originated among Melly and his band mates while touring. It's less clear whether the tale itself originated among the musicians versus being someone's reconstruction of an earlier story. Melly seems more than a little oblique on this latter point.

WhaleTumor-Melly.jpg

​
SOURCE: https://books.google.com/books?id=H...=onepage&q=whale tumor OR tumour meat&f=false
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top