Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme) and brown paper were a home cure used as a method to draw out bruises on the body. Jack is the most common name used in English-language nursery rhymes and represented an archetypal Everyman hero by the 18th century, while Jill or Gill had come to mean a young girl or a sweetheart by the end of the Middle Ages. However, the woodcut that accompanied the first recorded version of the rhyme showed two boys (not a boy and a girl) and used the spelling Gill not Jill. The true origin of the rhyme is unknown, but there are several
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes of ninety-four pages and thirty rhymes, twenty-one of which Warne approved for future publication. When Warne died suddenly and unexpectedly in August 1905, the book of rhymes was set aside, and Potter turned her attention to other projects. Early in 1917, Frederick Warne & Co. faced financial ruin after then-publisher Harold Warne was convicted of forgery and sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor in a London prison. Potter was the company's greatest creditor and artistic property, and, when asked to do what she could to save the firm, she agreed to provide a book for Christmas: "I hope Appley