According to the court report of the City Assizes in the newspaper, (The Exeter Flying Post of Thursday 5th July,1855.) Robert Potter was charged with wickedly and maliciously persuading John Blackmore, a gunner in the Royal Artillery to desert.
Potter was a newsman, a traveller employed to sell Exeter newspapers in the fashionable watering places. It doesn't seem to me that he was very wicked or malicious. I think he just liked a bit of fun. He met Blackmore at the Bear Inn and they were drinking together. According to the evidence, (we do not learn who provided it) their extraordinary conversation included this:
"Blackmore mentioned that he could play the fife, and prisoner offered him a situation as travelling fifer to a peep-show, of which he was possessed, with which he travelled at country fairs, if he were free."In this situation he was assured he would be able to get a great deal of money.
Subsequently Potter said he was going a journey in the country, and advised Blackmore to draw a week's pay fom his serjeant and under pretence of going to see his friends to desert. Blackmore hesitated, and Potter assured him that he was acquainted with a man who could rule the planets and who would give him something to ensure his safety and prevent any person from capturing him.
"Finding all these devices fail, he advised him to cut his leg behind the calf, bandage a rusty ha'penny to it previous to going to bed at night; and next morning, he was assured, it would appear to be an old wound. he was then to go to the doctor, say that he was subject to a bad leg, and he would, as a matter of course, be forthwith discharged."
I suspect Robert Blackmore's suggestions were not at all serious but even so the pub conversation reveals remarkable levels of superstition and gullibility. Talk such as that of the man who could rule planets and the rusty ha'penny are not likely to be heard these days, at least not in my local.
The court took the offence seriously and, despite positive statements about Potter's character from the editors of both The Post and The Western Times. Robert was sentenced to a month's imprisonment with hard labour.
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