American Toby Jug Museum 

Mrs. Gamp chalkware toby jug produced by Friar Ware of Devon, England, circa 1960. Sairey Gamp, the disreputable and garrulous nurse in the 1843 novel Martin Chuzzlewit, is one of Charles Dickens' greatest comic creations. A fat old widow with a moist eye, Mrs. Gamp has the responsible job of midwife, watcher of the dying and "performer of nameless offices about the persons of the dead." Necessary to her calling she has "a face for all occasions" and, we are told, "She went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and relish." She is famous for her excessive drinking habits and also for her large untidy umbrella, which has given rise to the word gamp to describe such an article. Her closest friend is the imaginary Mrs. Harris, a convenient invention, whose opinion always confirms her own.