Why do we say it?

Southland Times, Issue 21089, 22 May 1930, Page 6

Why do we say it?

“Gone to Pot” There was an old tailor of Samarkand who lived near to the City gate and the road leading to the buri"’ ground. This “knight of the shears” had standing before his cottage an earthenware pot, and it was his habit to drop therein j pebble for every corpse that passed his way. At the end of every month he counted up the pebbles, emptied the pot and started again. At length the’tailor himself died, and a stranger, enquiring after the eccentric unoftical registrar of deaths, was informed “Ahis! he, too, poor fellow, has now gone to pot.” The saying has now come to mean something less conclusive. We speai*, of a house having “gone to pot” when it becomes rather dilapidated. A person who has “gone to pot’’ i> a worthless character who was once something better. The phrase is in most common use, however, among business men in times of bad trade. .“Haven’t made a penny for weeks,” they say, “market’s completely gone to pot.”