Bagpuss Bagpuss Bagpuss is a British children's television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The series of 13 episodes was first broadcast from 12 February 1974 to 7 May 1974. The title character was "a saggy, old cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams". Although only 13 episodes were made, it remains fondly remembered, and was frequently repeated in the UK for 13 years. In 1999 "Bagpuss" topped a BBC poll for the UK's favourite children's TV programme. Each programme began in the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the
There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe as she leaves for her honeymoon, or tying shoes to the departing couple's car. Archaeologist Ralph Merifield has pointed out that in Lancashire it was the custom for females who wished to conceive to try on the shoes of a woman who had just given birth. Debates over the meaning of the rhyme have largely revolved around matching the old woman with historical figures, as Peter Opie observed "for little reason other than the size of their families". Candidates include Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II (1683–1760), who had eight children, and Elizabeth Vergoose of Boston, who had