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.
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