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.
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