Alfred David

For reasons too boring to recount here, we had to spend some time today reading an affidavit. Such a strange sounding word. An affidavit is a written account of evidence which is sworn or affirmed. The word comes from medieval Latin and it means 'she or he has stated on oath'.

This reminded me of my favourite Victorian novelist, Charles Dickens. In his novel Our Mutual Friend, a shady character called Rogue Riderhood (no-one does names like Dickens) is trying to dob in another shady character for murder and to that end he offers to sign an ‘Alfred David’. As Riderhood says, ‘Precious be the obligations of a Alfred David’.

So for me they aren’t affidavits, they're Alfred Davids.