I've heard that theory before, but I've not seen any evidence for it, and it seems directly contradicted by this quote from Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (early 1

I've heard that theory before, but I've not seen any evidence for it, and it seems directly contradicted by this quote from Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (early 1700s): "He related to me the following minute anecdote of this period: 'In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it; the peaceable and the quarrelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked me, whether I was one of those who gave the wall, or those who took it. NOW it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; or, if one is taking the wall, another yields it; and it is never a dispute.'"