THE QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY, EXETER, 1899

It was to be Queen Victoria's eightieth birthday and the City Council, as reported in The Express and Echo, 10th May 1899, was considering where in the city might best be fired a Royal salute and where the national anthem might be played by a military band and where the Mayor and Corporation might attend in State.  

The Mayor said: "The whole thing could be got over in half an hour, and he thought it would be a function which would be appropriate....

"Councillor FULFORD moved and Alderman WREFORD seconded that the use of Northernhay be granted for the purpose.

"Councillor PERRY did not like to throw cold water on a suggestion coming from the Mayor, but he asked the Council to consider whether, having spent a large sum of money on Northernhay and having now made it look exceedingly well, that was the best site for the purpose.  He feared serious damage to the grounds as the result of having horse artillery there and armed men marching about.  He suggested the Castle Yard as a more fitting place.

"It was explained that the guns would be taken by hand,  and the SURVEYOR (Mr. Cameron) said he anticipated no damage."

Nevertheless, it was not to be at Northernhay but at Belmont that the Council decided Exeter would celebrate the Queen's birthday.

But how impressive seems the solicitude which the City Council of the year 1899  is reported to have shown for the exceedingly well-looking Gardens on which they had spent a large sum of money.  I wonder if the consequences of the closing of Northernhay to the public for three months to serve as a winter wonderland and then as a plastic dinosaurs' parking lot were so carefully considered by today's Exeter City Council?     

 

PLASTIC DINOSAURS, NORTHERNHAY GARDENS, EXETER, 2022.

The time-honoured Northernhay Gardens, as I write, are full of plastic dinosaurs.  Until June 16th the Gardens will be closed to the public except for those times the Amusement Company from Essex which has brought the plastic dinosaurs to Exeter, chooses to open them and no member of the public will be permitted to walk in the Gardens without paying.

These Gardens are exceptional.  They are a remarkable inheritance, a remarkable survival.  We are so lucky to have them!  They are not just any park.  They could make the city of Exeter celebrated far and wide.  Together with Rougemont they offer the most wonderful 'castle walk'.  Properly gardened and cared for they would attract visitors from all over the country and beyond.  They are also the place, the 'Valhalla', where Exeter remembers those Exonians who died in war and those men whose philanthropy benefitted the city.  They are simply much too precious to be closed to the public and farmed out to 'Amusement Companies'. 

A similar constraint of the traditional liberties of the people took place at Christmas/New Year 2021/2022, when the park was for seventy-two days transformed from it's traditional ideal, viz. a charming walk for weary citizens and a playground for the young, to become an unprepossessing  funfair.  The shocking fact is that for a quarter of the last twelvemonth the Gardens qua gardens will have been inaccessible to the public.

It used to be accepted that the Gardens were one of the city's glories.  Visitors, including monarchs, were invited to admire the wonderful 'Grove' which thoughtful, famous gardeners and responsible city government maintained and improved.    

Both these new, undignified, commercial initiatives, the dinosaurs and the funfair, break new ground.  For more than four centuries, with negligible and largely benign exceptions, the Gardens have been freely accessible to citizens of, and visitors to, Exeter.  Once they were described as perhaps being : "the most romantic walk in Europe."   Alas, no more!       

The Exeter City Council, which cable-ties its notices to the Gardens' proud Victorian ironwork gates but which never gets around to giving them a lick of paint,  appears to have the right to close the Gardens to the public whenever it chooses for whatever purpose.   This would seem to be the law and, in this, the law would seem to be an ass!  

The Council's responsibilities to the Gardens; on the other hand, are not being met.  The reputed 'danger' from the 'unsafe' castle walls has not been tackled in three years,  ugly steel fencing is everywhere, the statues need repairs and cleaning, the plants and trees are sadly neglected, nothing is planted, the bandstand is unpainted and unused, the noticeboards carry ludicrously out-of-date notices, the 'maps' have been vandalised, access to Rougemont Gardens is blocked, the park is crying out for good designers, for good gardeners, for good management.  

The distressing  anti-social behaviour in the Gardens is not controlled:  litter lies for days on the lawns,  grafitti regularly appear on the monuments, including the castle walls, radios are played at high volume and unsocial hours, the homeless sleep beneath the trees, 'disturbed' citizens 'act out' and do unchecked damage, there are nefarious (often criminal) midnight practices, of which the City Council is well aware.  Nothing of this is being controlled or dealt with.  The Gardens are not policed.  The regulations that exist are simply not enforced.

The 'events' will, of course, be hailed as a success.  Nearly everybody loves a funfair  (as do I)  and there is no harm in a few plastic dinosaurs fom Essex.  Little children with happy faces will jump all over the Gardens and the Amusers and the Council will make money.  But why Northernhay?  What a short-term betrayal of the generous traditions of four hundred years of a glorious and free (but controlled) public space!  What a betrayal of the philanthropic ideals of our ancestors!  What a dumbing-down by a once great and dignified city of a unique inheritance!

This abuse of the Gardens is likely to continue, so too the neglect.  The failure, as so often with Exeter councils, lies in lack of imagination.  Can this council really find no way to improve the Gardens?  Must they become shabbier and shabbier?  Can the Council conjure up no better way to entertain children and to put a few ducats in the coffers than in the locking-up and degradation of Northernhay?   Must we really reconcile ourselves to witnessing a whittling away of the traditional liberties of the people and a neglect of the potential of an exceptionally beautiful site of considerable historic interest? 

 

  

CAPTAIN LASCELLES, EXETER, 1842.

The officers of the A Division Night Police (The A's). as reported in The Western Times, 2nd April 1842, met at the Britannia Inn, South Steet, Exeter  to present a silver snuff-box to Captain Lascelles who was leaving the A's to become 'Custodian and Sergeant of the Right Honourable Mace.''   Captain Joslin was called upon to present the snuff-box.   He said:     

 "....that of all the geat Captains of the age Captain Lascelles was the best he ever knowed.  The prigs all bolted when they seed him, and the cadgers made themselves scarce as soon as ever he came across their beat.   Them as did business in the happy lectic and parry lettic line,  notwithstanding all their sham-abraham fits and shakings "moved on" like light horsemen as soon as they heard the silver sound of his pretty voice. 

"It was a great grief to the A's to miss him, but they had this consolation remaining, that they should not be entirely without his counsel and advice."  

The Western Times is taking liberties now unthinkable in thus reporting Captain Joplin's speech. I think I recognise this voice.  Joplin sounds to me like a fifties' Bitish Army sergeant-major to whose commands I once jumped on the barrack square.  

By prigs he means thieves.  The cadgers, whom we now call 'the homeless', do business in the apolectic and paralytic line. Sham Abraham fits are acted out by Abraham-men (beggars) who, like the beggar Lazarus, (Luke, 16) end up in Abraham's bosom. 

The more things change\.....  

TOWEL AND PEPPER, ST THOMAS, EXETER ,1832.

This story of gallivanting painters,'wicked' wives and offended husbands, which was reported in The Western Times 1st September 1832,  leaves many questions unanswered but seems to me remarkable for the vocabulary the report uses and for the  acceptance of violence  it manifests. 

"Caution to Gallivanting Painters. - 

"A couple of Swells, both in the putty line, were caught, on Sunday night last, at a house in St.Thomas, breaking the seventh commandment;  the husband of one of the wicked women, set on her hapless paramour and towelled him as if he were made of board instead of flesh and blood, and then let him go; but such was his fear of a second edition that he would not venture out of the house till three o'clock in the morning - so well had the injured husband peppered him.  He is not likely to transgress again.

"The other one being a married man was turned over to the vengeance of his lawful wife, the severest punishment that can be inflicted in such cases."

The excellent Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1893,  gives only one definition of towel used as a verb: "[From the phrase "to rub down with an oaken towel"]  to beat with a stick, to cudgel."

Peppered is used in the sense of being done for as by Shakespeare, (Mercutio to Romeo  in Romeo and Juliet.)

In the putty line,  I guess, defines the 'painters' as housepainters rather than artists.  Swells, of course is ironic.  This is low-life.

Is there not something cosy about the way in which the reporter can assume that his readers, believers and unbelievers alike, will know their bible well enough to recognise his reference to the commandments?  There's Culture for you!      

A DESPERATE ATTEMPT, EXETER, 1824.

According to a report in The Exeter Flying Post of 15th January, 1824:

 "A piece of silk having been missed last week, from the shop of Messrs. J.C. Wilcocke and son, suspicion fall on a woman of this city, called Ann Lugg; who was apprehended on Saturday last, and locked up in the front room of the Guildhall, overlooking the street, while search was making at her house for the stolen goods.

"During the absence of the officers for that purpose, she made a desperate attempt to escape, by fastening her shawl, handkerchief and garters together to aid her descent from the window.  The line, however, either proved too short, or broke; she fell to the pavement, and having injured one of her legs so severely, as to impede her retreat, she was retaken."

It must be a twenty-foot drop from the upper windows of the Guildhall.  For all her sins Ann Lugg must have been a plucky woman.

Her garters will have been lengthy strips of riband (ribbon) wrapped around her stockings,

 Ann Lugg's house was found to contain  an astounding quantity and variety of stolen goods.  She  was committed for trial at the next Assises on a charge of stealing 60 yards of scarlet lutestring.

The jolly word 'Lutestring'  is a corruption of 'lustring', a glossy (lustrous), silk dress-fabric.

  

THE WAGES OF SMUGGLING, EXETER, 1822

The Exeter Flyring Post for January 16th 1822 reported:

"The twelve men taken with contraband spirits off Otterton-head....were on Friday brought up, at the Castle of Exeter, before E. P. Lyon, Esq. one of the Magistrates for the County.

"Richard Driver was first put upon his trial,....: the witnesses against him were Daniel Weld, Esq.  Commander of the Scourge,  Mr Richard Morgan, one of his officers, and Robert Holway, a mariner, who deposed that on the 2d of January about three or four miles off Otterton-head, at quarter past six p.m. observing a large boat deeply-laden making for land, with a smaller boat in tow, they gave chase; the smuggling boats divided; the larger was chased by the Scourge, and the smaller by one of her boats, under the orders of  Mr Holway, the crew of the larger boat threw her cargo overboard, which consisted of kegs of spirits; her crew consisted of six men, three of whom had gone aboard the small boat and were taken by Holway.

"The prisoner was convicted; and his two shipmates, Ellis Bartlett and Daniel French, being called in, agreed to abide by the same evidence.  - Richard Seaward, John Seaward, and Thos. Bartlett, the crew of the small boat, were also convicted. - The remaining six underwent an examination at the Castle yesterday , when the whole of them were convicted.-  

"The punishment in this case, is impressment into the Navy, to serve on a foreign station for five years." 

I'm assuming 'Otterton -head' is the same as Brandy Head where, since 1940, the historic RAF Observation Post stands.  If so the new name would seem to be very suitable.

And so the Royal Navy gained a dozen able, if  unwilling, seamen from the Exeter magistrate's sentencing.   Five years' unlooked-for service in a foreign station seems a hefty punishment for trying to run a few kegs of brandy ashore.