Gamp (Mrs.)
,or Sarah Gamp (g hard). A monthly nurse, famous for her bulky umbrella and perpetual reference to Mrs. Harris, a purely imaginary person, whose opinions always confirmed her own. (Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit.)
“Mrs. Harris, I says to her, if I could afford to lay out all my fellow creeturs for nothink, I would gladly do it. Such is the love I bear ʹem.”
Punch caricatures the Standard as “Mrs. Sarah Gamp,” a little woman with an enormous bonnet and her characteristic umbrella.
In France it is called un Robinson, from Robinson Crusoe’s umbrella. (Defoe.)
