HORATIO NELSON IN EXETER, 1801

Early on Thursday 15th January 1801. Horatio Nelson, "one arm, one peeper, vain as Pretty Poll",  was on his way to Plymouth to make preparations for his ship to put to sea.  He was expected to pass through Exeter. The British victory at the Battle of the Nile had made his a household name.  He was the hero of the hour.  The Mayor and Chamber of the City of Exeter wanted to present him with the Freedom of the City and thus"to add (his) illustrious name to the number of their Fellow-Citizens."

Nelson made no objection to this and the city made ready to receive him.   Sir Stafford Northcote's  troop of the 1st Devon Volunteer Cavalry rode two miles out to meet him and to escort his carriage into town.  The citizens turned out in force to see the nation's hero.  The bells of the Cathedral and of all the churches were rung and little Lord Nelson came to the Guildhall and was formally made a citizen.

He made a short speech which included the stirring lines about the Battle of the Nile in which he famously said that his directive from the Lords of the Admiralty had been very concise:  "It was to take, burn, sink and destroy the French fleet wherever he should meet them" 

"A grand dinner was prepared by the Right Worshipful the Mayor and Chamber, for his Lordship's entertainment."  But Nelson would not stay for it.   His carriage drove off at one o'clock.  He had been in Exeter for only a few hours.  The mayor's grand dinner must have been a Hamlet-without-the-prince occasion but "his Lordship set out on his journey, apparently much pleased with the attentions he had received."

Anyway, let us rejoice that we can count Lord Nelson as one of our fellow-citizens.  There's glory for you!

Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 22nd January 1801. (and Robert Graves!)

 

THE DEATH OF A GRAMPUS, BUDLEIGH, 1828

 From The Exeter and Devon Gazette   May 10th 1828:

"A very large Grampus has been basking about the southern coast of this county for several days, and was killed at Budleigh Salterton on Thursday.  In the course of its gambols it has paid a visit to most of the fashionable watering places, and no summer visitor could have excited more attention.   Rumour has conferred on the animal the royal fishly dignity, and had magnified his bulk to about the size of our Cathedral tower.   But though no whale, he has got into high favor with the fishermen, having driven into their nets many thousand mackerel, of which they have made a good market, and supplied the neighbourhood with a cheap dainty." 

The lovely word grampus derives at long-range, believe it or not, from the Latin crassus piscis meaning fat fish.  Fishly is a nice original-looking word.  It seems a pity the grampus had to die.  It was boosting the tourist trade, supporting the fishing industry and, incidentally, providing cheap and dainty food for the population until some bloody-minded Budleigh Salterton fishermen felt they needed to chase and kill it.  The very large Grampus would have fared better these days.

EXTREMELY VICIOUS ASSES, EBFORD, 1802

 On 10th June 1802, The Exeter Flying Post reported:

"On the fifth inst. an inquisition was taken at Elford (Ebford) Barton, near this city, by Henry Pugh, gent. coroner, on the body of John Tucker, son of a Tenant to T. H. Lee, Esq. a lad between nine or ten years  of age, the verdict was death occasioned by the bite of an Ass, the beast is forfeited as a deodand.  This paragraph is inserted to caution the public; at this time of year asses of this description are extremely vicious, and it is hoped will be noticed by those persons in particular, who permit them to rove at large on the highways, to the great annoyance and danger of the passengers." 

Shed a tear for poor little John Tucker!   

But how words change!  To take an inquisition sounds much more serious than to hold an inquest. 

Deodands  (Latin,  deo dandum = to be given to God)  have gone out of fashion.  They were removed from the legal code in 1846, 

These days asses, if there were any, would roam at large rather than rove, although the latter word seems to me to be more fun.  

It is hard to imagine those Devon highways where, in June at least, extremely vicious asses roved to the great annoyance and danger of passengers..    

WIFE-BEATING, EXETER, 1827

 On Friday, February 16th, 1827, Mrs. Squire, mother of two small children, who lived in Heavitree, came before the magistrates to charge her husband with violent assault.   Her landlady, Mrs Tothill, also came along to give evidence that Mrs Squire had been ill-used by her husband for the past two years.  Mrs. Squire swore that her husband had come home at midnight fighting drunk and, for no reason, had pushed her and her two-month-old child out of the marital bed and had punched her dreadfully about the face. 

Mr. Squire did not deny striking his wife "but pleaded the provoking language so commonly used by scolding ladies, and that she did not provide him with comfortable meals, absenting herself to gossip with the neighbours, so that he was driven of necessity to seek recreation in an ale-house.   He furthermore laid a most grievous charge against his wife of disturbing his rest whilst in bed, by working him about with her elbows and knees.

The magistrates had  heard all this many times before.   The pattern was established.   The husband went to the pub and came home drunk,  The wife protested and he beat her.  Wife-beating was, for the working class, commonplace.  Most such assaults never came to court but Mrs. Squire of Heavitree had suffered enough!

The Squires were taken into a room adjoining the Court where they agreed to a judicial separation.  Mrs. Squire was to have the furniture, the children and six shillings a week for maintenance.   Nothing more needed to be said about the violent assault.

Source:  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 17th February, 1827. 

 

A CIVIC BOAT-TRIP, EXETER, 1827

At ten o'clock on a Monday morning in September, 1827, the Mayor of Exeter and the Chamber and a party of their friends, including many ladies, went down to the Quay and boarded a barge, accompanied by a band of music, and set out for the Turf where was the outlet of the New Canal.   The occasion was the completion of the new extension to the Exeter Canal which was expected greatly to increase the prosperity of the city.   

At the Turf was a fine schooner. The Dispatch, freshly arrived from Charente with a full cargo of brandy,  Captain Barrett, was waiting to welcome the Mayor and his party aboard.  They were also  greeted by cannon fired from the ships at the canal mouth.  On board Dispatch the party admired the beautiful prospect of land and sea which is there open to view and then the ship, followed by the barge and various coasters and lighters, processed along the canal to Exeter.  Thousands of spectators crowded the banks to cheer.  

It was eight o'clock and already dark when Dispatch reached Exeter Quay.  The Mayor's party had lunched on deck beneath an awning at a table spread with an elegant cold collation and  the guests had amused themselves with quadrilles.

As the ship approached the Quay, the occasional discharges of cannon ....continually shot their vivid flashes across the gloom,....the flame of numerous torches gleamed upon the water and displayed  the dense mass of people which crowded either bank.

 Source: The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  22nd September 1827. 

A RUNAWAY, TOPSHAM 1800.

Two days into the nineteenth century. the second of January 1800, Mr Amos Govier, blacksmith of Topsham, advertised in The Exeter Flying Post that his apprentice, Edmund Chown, had run away.  He described the runaway as follows:  

 "He is about 5 Feet 6 Inches and Half high, and nearly twenty Years of age, brown Hair, long Nose, long-favoured, rather pock fretten, and roach morphled on his skin; he is strong grown, and has a Lounge in his Walk.   He wore away a blue Coat, and brown Corduroy Breeches."

The term pock fretten seems wonderfully archaic now but is good English for a face eaten by small-pox but roach morphled  is surely obscure.  I take it to mean that his skin had red spots similar to those on a roach but I can't find morphled in any of my dictionaries.   The old word morphe is referred to in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary as s fourteenth-century word for a leprous or scurfy eruption .

Mr. Govier's advertisment concludes:

"Whoever harbours or employs the said Apprentice after this public notice, will be prosecuted as the Law directs:  but whoever will give Intelligence of him to the said AMOS GOVIER, shall be handsomely rewarded for the same."

I find myself unreasonably taking sides.  I very much hope that the nineteen-year-old, long-nosed, pockmarked Edmund Chown escaped his apprenticeship with Amos Govier and lounged away to find a new life where Amos and his bounty-hunters could not find him.       

CAPTAIN PEACOCK'S FUNERAL. STARCROSS, 1883

That hero of the nation and of the Exe estuary, Captain George Peacock, R.N., F.R.G.S. died at Liverpool on 6th June 1883.  His corpse was brought to Starcross for burial.   The funeral took place on Tuesday, 12th June.  Many of the shops in the place were closed and the residents respectfully drew their blinds and "the majority of the inhabitants of the town either followed the corpse to the grave or assembled  in the cemetery to see the last of one who was held in such esteem by all parties."  The many mourners, Peacock's only daughter being the chief-mourner, walked behind the hearse from Regent House, his home, to the churchyard.

The open hearse, a novelty at the time, was drawn by four horses with silver-mounted  harness.  It was profusely decorated with flowers supplied by Veitch of Exeter. It was a three-coffin funeral. The body lay in a shell coffin  (a thin, inferior coffin) within one of lead, within one of brass-bound oak.  The flags on the Quay and of the vessels in the harbour flew at half-mast.  At the end of the service the organist played the Dead March from Handel's Oratorio, Saul, and Peacock was laid to rest, where his wife and his three sons were buried or remembered, in the family vault on the south side of the churchyard 

The newspaper report in The Gazette ends: "Captain Peacock died rather suddenly, as is shown by the fact that his yacht the Swan of the Exe and the little Cygnet boat were being prepared for his use this summer."

("For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net.")

Source:  Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 13th June 1883. (and Ecclesiastes!)

THE EVIL EYE. CREDITON, 1842

William Harding was a simple soul.  He lived in Sandford, kept a cider-house and worked as a labourer for Richard White, an innkeeper in Crediton.  He had been feeling ill and so, one evening in April 1842,  he went, secretly, to meet Elizabeth Small,  a gypsy of his acquaintance.  They met on a common near Sandford.  He believed she could cure him. 

"I was very ill," he told Exeter Crown Court, "She told me I was hurted by some person and that she could do me good if I would give her half-a-crown.  She said she would bring me the person who had done me the evil.  She told me I was to get as much money as I could - the more I could get, the quicker I should be cured.  A day or two later I met her by appointment, when she demanded 5s more, which I gave her.  I saw her again a few days afterwards, in a bye road; she asked for 5s more.  The person who was to do me good was not yet produced," (Laughter in Court!) 

On the Monday following I met her again, when I told her I had borrowed £22; and she told me she did not want it, but I was to return it to the person of whom I had borrowed it.  I returned it to my master the next day.  On the Thursday following she came again, and told me I was to kiss her hand, and I was not to tell my wife or anybody about it" - (roars of laughter!)  She told me to get more money - and then appointed to meet me again on the common,  I borrowed £28 from my master again, for I wanted to see the evil one - (shouts of laughter).  When I came to the common she asked me how much money I had got.  I held back a little.  She said she must have it. I took it out in my hand, when she snapped it from me, and I was too ill to overtake her."  I have not seen the person yet who was to do me good,"  {more laughter.)

The Learned Judge, the jury and everyone in the Courtroom seems to have found the proceedings highly amusing.  They were not so amusing for Elizabeth Small who was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment,  

There was a large gathering of the prisoner's swarthy tribe  outside the courtroom and when the sentence was pronounced on the prisoner several of the party of either sex gave expression to their chagrin in muttered imprecations upon the Learned Judge, the jury and all whom it might concern. 

Source:  The Western Times. Saturday July 30th, 1842

HAPPY EASTER!

 

From The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette.

Saturday 30th March 1850

"It was formerly the custom at this season for Corporations to play at ball, and the Mayor and Aldermen, attended by the Burgesses, with all the civic insignia, would proceed in state to the accustomed place and take active part in the amusements of ball-playing, dancing, &c.

Times however have changed and we can hardly fancy the Mayor of our goodly City attired in his scarlet gown accompanied by the Town Council patronising the games in Bury Meadow or the ruder sports of Exe Island."

ERNEST KIVELL HAS FUN, HOLSWORTHY 1910.

In  August 1910, Ernest Kivell, a cattle-dealer from Pyworthy and well-known in the district, came before the Police Court in Holsworthy charged with allowing a bull to be driven without a staff.  

The law required that a bull must be led on the public roads with a long, strong bull-staff attached to the ring in his nose to keep him out of mischief.  This was no frivolous regulation; cases of bulls killing or maiming people were all too common.

P.C. Clements told the Court that Mr Kivell's lad told him the animal was going to be trucked to Exeter and the  constable advised him to take the required precautions.  No such precautions were taken and later the constable asked Ernest Kivell how he had got on in Exeter.  Ernest said there had been no problem.  P.C. Clements no doubt felt his authority had been slighted.  Ernest was summoned  to appear before the Court.

Ernest Kivell conducted his own defence.   He cross-examined the constable: 

Ernest:  Do you know a bull from a steer?  (a steer is a bullock, a castrated bull,  mild-mannered because neutered!)

The Constable:  I think so.

Ernest:  I did not have a bull in my possession that day.

The Constable:  You never disputed it.

Ernest:  You said I was offending the law, and that you were going to summon me.  I thought I would let you have a go.

The Constable:  Why did you not dispute it?

Ernest:   Not a bit of it.  I thought if you didn't know a bull from a steer that was your misfortune and not my fault.

Police Sergeant Tooze asked Ernest Kivell: Why didn't you tell the constable it was not a bull?

Ernest:  If the police make fools of themselves I can't help it.  Any schoolboy would have known different. 

Sergeant Tooze:  You did not tell the constable so?

Ernest:   It is not our business to educate the police as to what is a bull and what is a steer. 

Ernest called witnesses to prove that his bull was a steer and then he made an outrageous speech: 

It was a monstrous thing, he said, that because the police did not know their business better, farmers and dealers should be interfered with in this way and have summonses issued against them and people brought there to disprove what they tried to prove.  Many business and professional men had had to waste their time there that morning.  Anyone who saw the bullock a hundred yards away could have seen it was a steer.

The Court seems to have enjoyed the joke.  It dismissed the case.  Nobody pointed out to Ernest that a timely word from him would have made the whole charade unecessary.  He had played the part of a free-born Briton, rejoicing in his liberties.  He had his fun.  I imagine that in no other nation in Europe would  he have got away with it!  In Holsworthy Police Court in 1910 not a word was said about his misleading the police and wasting everybody's time.      

  Source:  The Western Times,   Friday, 19th August.

  `    

THE CAT AT THE SCAFFOLD, EXETER 1869.

In July 1869,  on the drill-square of Raglan Barracks in Devonport,  Private William Taylor of the 57th Regiment, aged twenty-three. did what, at one time or another, most young soldiers are tempted to do.   He shot dead his drill NCO.  His execution, three months later, at Exeter Prison was singlular in that, for the first time in Exeter, it was not to be a public hanging.  Previously tens of thousands had flocked to see the death of a condemned felon.  The reporter of The Exeter and Plumouth Gazette, (26th July 1869) described the nature of the change:

"People opening their places of business. men and boys taking down shutters, were not gossiping of the execution.  There were no groups at corners of streets talking of it; and at half-past seven o' clock outside the prison walls, the only signs of a popular assembly were three policemen, about a dozen loiterers on their way to work, a few schoolboys, and a little girl who had been trundling a hoop."

The same reporter took the opportunity to describe the scaffold:

"There was the black, wooden apparatus, the same that has been used for generations past, erected upon the shingle floor of the court instead of the flat roof where executions used to take place.  The platform was about four feet from the ground, the handrail round it about four feet higher,nd the cross beam eight or nine feet from the platform floor. The ugly, ominous looking pile requires little or no building;  it is put together with bolts, screws, hooks and staples, and the operation of erecting it is something like that performed in putting together the parts of a wooden bedstead. Two or three steps lead up through an opening in the handrail to the platform. and under the cross-beam stood a pair of dwarf steps to enable the hangman to reach the beam and adjust the rope upon it.  There was no one in this little court in the interval beween half-past seven and eight, and not a movement to be seen untril a fine, fat, stealthy Cypress cat ascended the platform, prowled about the floor, scented the beams and left silently as she came," 

Curiously, it is the innocent details that I find lend horror to his account; the little girl trundling a hoop is bad enough but the fine, fat, stealthy Cypress cat (I think he meant a Cyprus cat) scenting the beams....!!!