On a recent episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Prof Rachel Cowgill said whistling was all the rage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She said it was “very, very common to be walking down the street and to hear people whistling all around you” and for music halls to host professional whistlers. Whatever happened to this tradition? Edith Andrews, Glasgow

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Whistling in the street probably took a hammer blow at the end of the 1970s, with the arrival of the Walkman. EddieChorepost

I’ve always whistled and don’t really notice I’m doing it – until my husband makes a comment (a nice one, because he likes my whistling). When I was a child, my mother tried to “cure” me by quoting this little rhyme: “A whistling woman and a cackling hen are neither good for man nor men.” Gender equality? Not in the 1960s, as my father whistled, too, and she never tried to “cure” him! Rosalind Vincent

It was class-based. You would not have heard everybody whistling in well-to-do neighbourhoods. The appearance of a professional whistler as part of a vaudeville lineup is also class-inflected. When you look at anecdotal evidence from the past of people whistling, a lot of them were tradesmen – milkmen, postal carriers and other delivery men. There were certainly signs in “better” shops warning employees not to whistle, which was a sign that many employees did it to pass the time and, again, gives you an idea where it was acceptable.

I expect its dying out was to do partly with the fact that music you can actually whistle became less popular. In fact that seems rather obvious – it’s easy to whistle K-K-K-Katy or that music hall favourite, Danny Boy. Just try it with Revolution or Stayin’ Alive. I also know that our postal carrier, who is about the only delivery person left these days, is always on his Bluetooth. I suppose it whiles away the time as well as whistling used to … Thomas1178

Easy Does It by Supertramp has a bit of whistling in it. I remember walking down the long pedestrian subway under Exhibition Road in South Kensington with some school friends when we heard the man in front of us whistling the melody; we all started to join in and it nearly made him fall over in surprise. Alf_of_All_Trades

Listen to Easy Does It by Supertramp.

As a child in the 1950s, I remember coalmen, milkmen etc whistling as they did their rounds. Were people happier then? Well, they whistled! There isn’t much to whistle about today in our miserable times, with the news filled with global warming, pandemics, the cost of living, being taken over by robots etc. Oh dear! Hugh Shrapnel

I whistle all the time – well, let me just say I whistle frequently when outside doing yard work. Sometimes I also listen to my MP3 player and whistle along to favourite tunes. I don’t give a hoot if it is in or out of style; I’m in my own yard and do as I please. I don’t whistle much, if at all, in public spaces, but I might, if it seemed to suit the situation. One of my neighbors makes a joke now and then, but he has dogs that bark too much, so his opinions don’t bother me. His dogs don’t bark at me any more, as I’ve learned to speak positively to them. And I think they enjoy my whistling. namron42

Our culture has become intensely self-conscious, making it less likely that people would make faces such as those of whistling in public. gracedwheels

Maybe a terror induced by MR James’s story “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” has engendered a reluctance to whistle. London2471

Whistling can be incredibly annoying indoors. Perhaps the loss of outdoor occupations led to its gradual fading out. nuliajuk

People like music in their lives. When music wasn’t readily available, people would whistle tunes that they heard in music halls and, later, on the radio and in movies. Throughout the 20th century, music became more and more present in everyday life, through radios appearing in workplaces, piped music in department stores, pop music blaring out from fashion shops, jukeboxes in cafes and pubs. Nowadays, people are too absorbed in their mobile phones to contemplate doing anything other than thumb text messages to social media and have their favourite music pumped directly to their brains via earbuds. As an aside, I served in the Royal Navy, where I was told that whistling was illegal because that’s how the mutinies at Spithead and the Nore were spread. TazTarr

The obligatory earworm. You’re welcome. AbsolutelyCurtains

I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman by Whistling Jack Smith, a Top 10 hit in the UK and Europe in 1967.