Just down the road from me there is a blue plaque commemorating the foundation in 1897 of that excellent organisation, The Distressed Gentlefolks’ Association, since rebranded as something more egalitarian. The gist of it was that ladies and gentlemen could become poor too when their circumstances changed but unlike the working class they were assumed to be well-off and therefore didn’t get help; besides, back then, they were too nicely brought up to beg.
I am far too common to be a Gentleperson, but I wonder whether there might be a case for creating the Distressed Bourgeois Association, or Society for the Middle Class Broke? And I’m not talking no-skiing-holiday-this-year broke (besides, I can’t ski); I’m talking the kind of broke that looks instinctively for yellow discount labels in the supermarket.
