"HERE COMES LUMPY!" EXE ESTUARY, 1882

At twenty past one in the afternoon of Sunday 9th July 1882,  Henry Luxon, poacher turned water-bailiff  known to the Exe fishermen as "Lumpy",  saw five local lads ( all with good Devon names viz: Luxton, Pinn, Heard, Sanders and Edworthy)  go away from Topsham in a boat.  They had with them a bass-net.  Lumpy gave them ten minutes start and then rowed himself across the Exe to Turf, where he left his boat and walked cautiously along the banks of the Exe to watch them shoot their net.  They were at a place betweem Starcross and Powderham known as "the Canal". Four of them shot the net and one, Edworthy, was on the road as a lookout.  Lumpy climbed into a tree to observe them and thought he saw them catch a small salmon and kill it and place it in the boat. The stalwart bailiff climbed down from his tree and was seen.  "Here's Lumpy!" was the cry.    The bailiff thereupon read his warrant to them and demanded to search the boat but the famous five pushed off until there was "about ten fathoms" of water between them and the bailiff.   After a while, and some name-calling, the poachers offered to let Lumpy search their boat but Lumpy was quite sure that a dead salmon had by then gone overboard.  He took their net and walked back to the Turf. 

When the  case came to court, at the Castle of Exeter, the charge was netting a salmon on a Sunday.  The  five defendants'  lawyer, Mr Friend, contended that the case had failed through want of proof but the Bench had no doubt that the case had been proved and fined each defendant 18s. 6d., including expenses. (about £120 in today's money,) and confiscated their net,

"Lumpy" is a great name for a water-bailiff.  In Devon it is the adjective given to the sea when it is troublesome.        

Source:   Exeter and Plymouth Gazette. 12th July, 1882.

COCK-FIGHTING AT THE MOUNT PLEASANT INN, 1835.

 From The Western Times, 18th April, 1835:

"COCKING.  -   Lord Lisle and -- Newman Esq. of Exmouth....last Monday gave an unusual treat to the fancy by getting up a grand Cock Fight at Mount Pleasant Inn, above the Dawlish Warren.   Of course the birds were duly trimmed, and also spurred with thick needles bent upwards, two inches and a half long.  A good company was assembled in the pit, though 2s a man was demanded for admittance.   Mr Newman wan the main of 7 fights against his Lordship, by 4 victories and one drawn game.  The stakes £5 the game and £50 the main.  Besides these 4 byes were also fought, 3 turning out in favour of Mr Newman.  The favourite of the day seemed to be a Ginger Cock bred at Kenton.  The drawn game lasted an hour and a half, at the end of which neither bird being able to stand up longer, and therefore not strong enough to kill each other, but only to peck now and then, the noble Lord and Mr N. humanely agreed that it should be a drawn game.  The birds bred by Mr. Matthews, of Brixham, uniformly shewed great spirit, holding their tails high and throwing their spurs up determinedly; rushing at their antagonists at the onset, and never ceasing to worry them till one was disabled and the pair fresh pitted.  Many of the Cocks suffered a good deal of punishment, having their eyes picked out and bleeing tenderly,  but owing to judicious treatment, we understand only 3 or 4 were found dead in their coops the next morning.  Altogether the whole party had much enjoyment of the sport, and the only feeling was that in these degenerate days the neighbourhood might furnish a few more gentlemen of the tastes and sympathies that animated the gallant principals."

I'd like to think that the Western Times reporter had his tongue in his cheek when he was writing this column, particularly the last line looks as though it ought to be pure irony but I fear that it probably is not.  I suppose someone ought to apologise to the bleeding and blinded Cocks for the cruelty of our cocking fathers,  -  the landlord of The Mount Pleasant Inn perhaps! 

It was heartening to discover that cock-fights, as this report indicates, were rare in and around Exeter. In North Devon and Somersetshire they were a regular entertaiment.  I  am surprised that I cannot discover anything more about the two principals.   Who was this Lord Lisle?   Who was Mr -- Newman?  They seem to have left no other trace than the above.  I don't think I would have warmed to either of them.

The Mount Pleasant Inn, from its remoteness, would lend itself to dark deeds but there was clearly no shame felt by the party that had much enjoyment of the sport.   Apart fron the decadence of it, imagine the tedium of watching two cockerels locked in mortal combat for an hour and a half!  By comparison  a BBC social-documentary would seem to be wildly entertaining.    

     

MR BACON'S SALMON, 1803.

On a Saturday in May, 1803, three days after Britain once again declared war on Napoleon's France, the ingenious Mr D. Bacon Esq. went fishing on the River Otter.     This report of his catch was squeezed between loyal, martial notices in the following Thursday's Exeter Flying Post, : 

"A Salmon, weighing 18lb. was killed in the river Otter by D Bacon Esq. with a small trout fly; after playing the fish twenty minutes, and making many attempts to land it, the fish always making to a hole in the bank, by the assistance of a boy he pulled off his boot and placed it in the hole, so that the fish forced itself into the boot and was there taken."

I don't see why the small trout-fly deserves a mention.  Mr D. Bacon Esq. caught the salmon in his boot for goodness sake!   And I'd like to know more about what that boy did.   Did he just pull off Mr Bacon's boot or was he up to his waist in the river shoving it into a hole?  I suspect he deserves more credit than he is here allowed.  

A STRANGE ACCIDENT, EXETER ,1653.

At Exeter in the year 1653: 

 "A strange Accident happened in Paris-street, without the East-gate of this City and parcel of the Suburbs thereof; one John Bettison Clerk, Rector of the Parish of St. Mary Clist, about three Miles distant hence, 11 Januaris, about six o' th' clock in the Evening of that Day, returning homewards from this City, being mounted on a good Gelding, and having his Wife behind him thereon, (the Well in the said Street about 40 foot deep, being decayed, and the mouth thereof being covered only with a few Thorns or Brambles)  the Gelding with his Riders still sitting him, fell down therein:  The Neighbours hearing a Noise and Outcry, the Evening being dark, presently brought forth Lights, and perceiving the sad Disaster, suddenly procured Means to help the Parson and his Wife out of the said Well, who were both recovered up safe and sound, without the least harm, the Fear being greater than the Danger: then was the Gelding likewise taken up, but so much bruised that he soon died."

This wonderful story had been remembered, in all its glorious detail, for seventy-one years when it was published in the Isackes' Antiquities of Exeter.     When the parson of Clyst St. Mary fell down the well,...  with his wife!,... on his horse!, the city was still suffering from the aftermath of the Civil War;  four years earlier the king's head  had been chopped off;  the Commonwealth judges were still condemning to death honest men who had supported the Royalist cause and trade had suffered desperately.  It must have cheered everybody to tell and retell the story of Parson Clerk's accident, especially as there was a happy ending, to it, except, of course, for the poor, bruised gelding.    

URCHINS IN EXETER. 1837.

I tend, fondly, to make bizarre associations between places I know and the, mostly inconsequential, small gobbets of story that I find in the newspapers.  This from The Western Times, Saturday 11th November 1837 probably means I shall never walk past Mary Arches church again without thinking of these two children.  I think they must have been street children.  No mother or father gets a mention.  But why were they in church?  Did they attend a service?  (it was a Sunday.) or were they sheltering from the cold? (it was November.)   They were certainly resourceful and vigorous infants:

" On Sunday night, two children who had fallen asleep, were locked in Saint Mary Arches church.  The little urchins woke up soon after the doors were locked and , groping their way to  the porch were fortunate enough to get hold of the bell rope, which they pulled with such vigour that the whole parish was speedily alarmed.  Search was made for the worthy clerk who was found with some difficulty and the poor sufferers were released from their thraldom." 

 I like the word urchin.  Its first meaning in the nineteenth century was hedgehog.   It had come to mean a child, not necessarily a poor child or a waif, and there were certainly plenty of urchins on the streets of Exeter, day and night.   On Twelfth  Day, the Feast of Epithany,1828,  according to The Flying Post of the 15th January: 

"The accustomed Display of Frosted Cakes, Kings and Queens &c. was made by the various confectioners of this city,....to the admiration of many hungry urchins who with longing eyes and watering mouths, crowded the different shop windows."

King cakes were gorgeously decorated kings' crowns, to remember the Magi.  Queen cakes were not, I suspect, those trifling cup-cakes that now bear that name but something much grander. 

I hope the hungry urchins of Exeter eventually had a crumb or two. 

AN ELEEMOSYNARY ACT, EXETER, 1228?

 In Izacke's Antiquities of Exeter,  1724,  appears this wonderful legend, recorded as being from the reign of KIng Henry lll:

"An Inhabitant of this City (for so the Story goes, and 'twill hardly perswade Credit) being a very poor Man, and having many children, thought himself blest too much in that kind, wherefore to avoid the Charge which was likely to grow upon him that way, absents himself seven Years together from his Wife, and then returning again, and accomanying her as formerly, he was within the space of a Year thereafter delivered of seven Children at one Birth, which made the poor Man think himself utterly undone, and hereby despairing, put them all in a Basket, with a full Intent to have drowned them; but Divine Providence following him, occasioned a Lady (then within the said City, and thought to have been the Countess of Devon) coming at this instant of time in his Way, to demand of him what he carried in his Basket, who replied, That he had therein Whelps, which she desired to see, purposing to make choice of one of them; who, upon view, perceiving that they were Children, compelled the poor man to acquaint her with the whole Circumstance; whom, when she had sharply rebuked for such his Inhumanity, presently ordered them all to be taken from him and put to Nurse, then to School, and so to the University, and in process of time being attained to Mens Estate, and well qualified in Learning, made means and procured benefices for every one of them:  But such like Eleemosynary Acts in this our Age (wherein the Charity of too too many is waxed cold) are almost vanished."

COMMON BEGGARS IN EXETER, 1625.

Richard and Samuel Izacke, father and son, successive Chamberlains of the City, wrote a wonderful eighteenth century collection of Memorials of the City of Exeter.  The very much Enlarged, second edition, from which  the following is borrowed, was published in 1724.  Of the year 1625, in the reign of Charles 1, it was recalled:

" A Pest-house in the Parish of St Sydwell's was purchased by the City, for the Benefit of such Poor People as were or should be infected with the Plague.

No common Beggars in the open Streets were permitted, but presently sent to the Work-House, or House of Correction, to get their bread by the sweat of their brows, Idleness being the root of all evil;  it being no less true, than a witty Saying,  That the Devil tempts all Men but the Idle Man, who tempts the Devil,  the Idle Man's Brain being a Shop for the Devil to work in."

There are no beggars in Exeter now.  The politically correct term for idle men and women who sit on the open streets and ask passers-by for change is the homeless.   The devil is still at work though, witness the number of roaring-drunk, cursing, aggressive homeless who, all too often, seem to take command of the city's streets and gardens. 

EXETER IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, 1849.

 From:  The Exeter Flying Post, Thursday, 6th September 1849:

"THE CHOLERA

"Surrounded as we are on every side by cities and towns, and villages and hamlets, in which this mysterious messenger of death has entered, Exeter continues, through the Merciful Providence of the DIVINE RULER over all, to be almost entirely exempt from the dreadful scourge.  In the Metropolis, and in some of the large manufacturing districts of the North, and even in our neighbouring town of Plymouth, there is mourning, and lamentation, and woe; thousands upon thousands of our fellow creatures have been hurried to  "that bourne whence no traveller returns" and hundreds are daily being added to the number.  The disease baffles the skill of medical men, - they comprehend not its character, - they trace not its origin:  all that human wisdom can devise or human skill execute, has been done to stay its ravages but without avail;  its course is unchecked -  its dread progress cannot be arrested.  

All classes alike become its victims; although the deaths are most numerous in the crowded, badly ventilated, and undrained localities. and amongst the poor, ill-clad, half-fed population,  yet the devestating influence of cholera has been felt in some of the most salubrious parts of the kingdom; and many who had at  their command all that this world can produce, and could summon to their aid the best medical advice, have also sunk under this most mysterious malady."

---------------

I imagine some might consider that the DIVINE RULER of all is still standing by Exeter in the present pandemic.   The Flying Post's editor had little faith in medicine and went on to recommend that we, as a nation, humiliate ourselves "before the ALMIGHTY and implore HIS merciful interposition."   In fact,  the father of modern epidemiology, an Englishman, John Snow, was already on the case and, within a decade, cholera was no longer such a mystery and its dread progress had been arrested.   John Snow's work, so Wikipaedia, led to "a significant improvement in general public health around the world".   (my italics)

I like it when newspapermen quote our national poet.  (It's usually Hamlet!)   These days it doesn't happen often enough.

"COUSIN JACKEE " IN EXETER, 1882.

"Cousin-jacky", according to Jago's Glossary of the Cornish Dialect, Truro 1882,  was current in Cornwall as "a local term of contempt".    In the Exeter newspapers of the first half of the nineteenth century, Cousin Jackey or Cousin Jackee was used to mean a Cornishman or Cornishmen and, as often as not, contempt was  implied. 

Cornishmen in Exeter two hundred years ago, at least those who made news,  seem in the main to have been either those wrestlers who visitied the city to contend for a prize,  and the many who came up from Cornwall to support them, or innocent peasants,  simple countrymen, come to Exeter to be duped and robbed and thus to amuse the sophisticated citizens of this city.

The nickname "Cousin Jackey" was used as a plural  as when Olver, a  famous Cornish wrestler, came  from London to compete in The Ring that had been established behind the Countess Weir Inn,  (Olver, by the way, was also a founding officer of Peel's Raw Lobsters, the New Police of the Metropolis), and  "much interest was excited in "Cousin Jackey" to see the man whose fame had flown so far before him." (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 31st July 1830)   When used as a singular Cousin Jackey was for the Exonians the very idea of a rustic simpleton.

As I write this the Cornish are filling in their 2021 Census forms and Cousin Jackee is being encouraged to write down Cornish as his nationality.    It pleases me therefore to add here that when, in 1848, an unfortunate vagrant, Richard Gillard, his wife and two children  were up before the magistrates at the Guildhall in Exeter, charged, believe it or not, with singing in the Black Boy (sic) Road.   Dr, Miller, the magistrate, asked  Gillard,  "Are  you a Cornishman?"  and Gillard stood tall,  pulled back his puny shoulders, puffed out his insignificant chest and replied, "No yer honour, I'm an Englishman."  (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 18 March 1848) 

THE LITTLE LAD FROM FROG LANE, EXETER 1913

Some short news-items from the past seem to me to be charged with irony., such as this from the Western Times of 26th June 1913: 

 "Last evening, a little boy named Jack Hannaford, living in Frog Lane, was playing at the Basin in Exeter when he fell into the water.  The mate of the ship "Rothersand", a German named M Coobs, who saw the accident, at once plunged in after the lad and quickly rescued him.  Hannaford thus escaping with a ducking."

Well,  I'm pretty sure the mate of the Rothersand was not called Coobs,  Kurtz perhaps!  His ship was a cargo-ship from Bremerhaven.  He carried out his heroic rescue of the boy, Jack Hannaford, and sailed away.  He almost certainly saved Jack from a watery grave.  

The irony?  Almost exactly twelve months later (28th June 1914)  the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo and the next month we were at war with Germany.   After some forty-million deaths,  casualties of the Great War, I dare say Jack Hannaford was still going strong.   I wonder how his rescuer, "M Coobs," fared. 

A RHYMING INNKEEPER, LYMPSTONE 1845

In February 1845 an absent-minded visitor to  The Swan Inn at Lympstone forgot to take away his water-spaniel.  Mr Coombe, the landlord of The Swan, advertised the dog in The Flying Post  (11th February)  and, such his panache, he composed for the occasion a verse in rhyming-couplets:

"LYMPSTONE

A WATER SPANIEL DOG left at the SWAN INN  

Should this meet the Owner's eye it's there to be seen.    

His marks are liver colour, mixed with white. 

The owner might have't again by paying what's right 

- shaggy hair is his coat, and a stump for a tail,  

If not owned in three weeks he'll be put up for sale,   

So let his master look out and be wide awake, 

He'll be sold for the expences and no mistake."

There is, I sense, an admirable,  Miller-of-the-Dee spirit of self-confdence and independence about Mr Coombe, the rhyming Victorian innkeeper.   He was clearly a no-nonsense, free man, with an eye to business and no doubt a man who rejoiced in his liberties as a true Briton.

A VIRTUOUS PIG: EXETER, 1859

In January 1859 at Exeter Crown Court, John Staddon,  a farmer  of Colaton Raleigh, was sued for compensation by a cheese-dealer who had been wounded in the thigh by Staddon's boar-pig when he, the pig , was being shown at Newton  Poppleford Fair.  The judgment of the court turned on the character  of the pig; indeed The Exeter Flying Post (27th January 1859) called the case PIG "TEAR-EM v. THE VIRTUOUS PIG.   The  plaintiff gave the court much amusement for which I have not found room  but the  defence was formidable and the merriment in the court-room seems to have been unconfined. The Staddon family and friends had come to town in force to uphold the character of their pig:

" - Mr Staddon the elder, was then called and said he had known the boar in question "from a zooker."  (laughter)  - "had druv it to Newton for shaw; nivver zeed the peg bite, zeed the plaintiff in the vair who zed to ma, 'your peg bite ma.'   Bite you, zed I, why he nivver bite a living Christian in es life." -  (Laughter,)

Mr FLOUD,  (the defending counsel) Did you ever know him bite a converted Jew?

Witness,  Naw, zir.

Mr FLOUD,  or an orthodox Christian Jew?

- Witness,  Naw. [It is due to the witness to state that he did not seem thoroughly to understand this question.....]

To show the lamb-like character of the animal, witness produced two youngsters who, he said, had driven the boar to the fair.  One was his grandchild and some merriment was caused in Court by the grandmother bringing in the boy in her arms.

Henry Staddon, the younger, stated that the plaintiff whipped the pig and that was the reason for his biting.  The pig never did it before.

Ann Staddon, senr, said that when the pig returned from fair "he failed at his meat" and the boy (last witness) had told her that a man had "at en about the head".  There were marks on the animal.

Herman Staddon, jun,  said  "the peg was quiet and honest."  (Laughter)

Samuel Crook, Elizabeth Sanders and a man called Pengelly also gave the pig a good character for docility.

Mr Carter,  another witness, said,  "I niver heerd any harm of the pig in my life."   (Laughter)

Fulford,  under bailiff of this Court, said,  "When I went to serve the summons on the defendant, he implored me to look at the pig.   I did so and the animal did not appear to be a savage pig but looked fat and happy."  (Laughter)

This was the defendant's case.

HIS HONOUR said that under all the circumstances he must non-suit the plaintiff.  A verdict for defendant was then entered.  but an application for costs, by Mr Floud, was refused."

THE ROBIN WHO SUNG IN EXETER CATHEDRAL, 1788.

 In 1788 King George lll went mad.   He was a popular king and the loyal and the devout of the nation were conscientiously praying for his recovery.   Indeed, congregations were offering up prayers all across Europe.  Up, of course, because that's where Heaven is.

The citizens of Semper Fideles prayed as sincerely as any and on Sunday 23rd November a small miracle occurred in Exeter cathedral which was briefly reported throughout the kingdom.   This from The Ipswich Journal of 29th November 1788:

"In Exeter cathedral while the congregation were praying for the King , a robin perched on the altar and sung through the whole prayer,"

Ring/rung, sting/stung, cling/clung, swing/swung, so why not sing/sung?

It was touch-and-go with the monarch's mental health but soon enough after this he was his old self again, just in time to give a clear mind to the consequences of The French Revolution.  Our good King George more or less stayed sane for a further twenty years or so.

I may be wrong but I think it was this famous Exeter robin who perched on the altar and sung who made all the difference.

EXETER AND SLAVERY, 1846.

It is, of course, altogether ridiculous to apologise for events that happened and circumstances that pertained two centuries ago at a time when the world was chock-full of primitive cruelties.  The overwhelming impression made on me by a reading of Frazer's Golden Bough  {1900}  is how incredibly cruel all human societies were only one hundred and twenty years ago and we should never forget the cruelty of events in Russia, say, or in Germanys' Third Reich in the lifetime of us 'seniors'.  Nor, I have noticed, have cruelties and enslavements yet disappeared from the world.  Even if such apologies were not wholly ridiculous the citizens of Exeter would have no reason today to apologise for the slave trade.   Since the early nineteenth century Exeter has consistently carried a torch for the abolition of slavery.  First to support  the Acts of 1807  and 1833,  then to protest at the loopholes in the Acts exploited by British planters in the colonies and then to protest against the evil of slave-owning in the antebellum United States.    

Successive crowded public meetings were held in Exeter, often chaired  by one or anothert of our Mayors, to address the subject of slavery and to lobby Parliament for action.   Notably, in 1846  William Lloyd Garrison came across the ocean to  Exeter to speak and with him came Frederick Douglass.   Their names ought to be known to every American schoolchild, though I doubt if many of the history-starved, Black Lives Matter, young people who recently marched for they-knew-not-what, had ever heard of them.  The  next day after the 1846 meeting The Western Times  reported it in its leading article.  The meeting was, the editor wrote,  "one of the most important, unanimous and decided public meetings that this city ever witnessed".  It was held on Friday September 4th 1846 and Garrison and Douglass and others spoke to good effect to a crowded hall.

Rather quaintly, the writer of the Western Times article adds:  "We hope any Americans into whose hands this paper may fall....will not think that the people of Exeter are intermeddling improperly in their affairs but that they are animated by a spirit of pure benevolence and enlightened philanthropy."

And so I'm sure they were - purely benevolent and enlightendly philanthropic; and so they are still.    Good!  No need for apologies!  No need to take the knee!  Not that my rheumatism would allow it!

A SIDMOUTH LOVE STORY

Sometimes the inscription on a tombstone seems to want to tell a story, the composer of the text being, as it were, an author pushed for space.  On a  horizontal slab of granite in Salcombe Regis churchyard  can, with difficulty, the inscription will soon be illegible, be read the following:

Sacred to the memory of

CHARLES SATTERTHWAITE

of Lancaster

who departed this life

at Sidmouth

?  ?  1815

Aged 26 (?) Years

and of Frances Nannette Sheridan

the daughter of

Charles Francis Sheridan

The Secretary of War in Ireland

14(?)  October  1816

Aged 27 years

Surviving her Husband 

Only one Year 

She returned to Sidmouth

for the purpose of being laid

in the same Ground.

They were married in Cheltenham on 14th December 1809.    They were young and wealthy.  He was of Rigmaiden Hall in Westmorland.  His father was John Satterthwaite , a prosperous West India merchant, 

of Castle Park, Lancaster.  She was the eldest daughter of Charles Francis Sheridan, a colourful character with a distinguished literary wife.  Frances Nanette was, moreover , a niece of  the great and famous Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright and politician.  I think I have read somewhere that she too was devoted to the stage.  There was a boy born  to them in 1810 and another in 1812.  Charles and Frances must have seemed an enviable couple but they were both to die tragically young.    

The story that their churchyard tomb tells is surely a love story.   They came to Sidmouth in 1815, probably for the sake of Charles' health.  I like to think that they loved the place.   Salcombe Regis must have held some special significance for them;  Charles was buried there.  A year later Frances Nanette, knowing that she was dying, made the journey to Sidmouth  to see the town again and to lie at her husband's side.