HIGHWAY ROBBERY, EXETER, 1800.

"On Monday morning last, about half past four o'clock, a most daring robbery was committed in the lane leading from the London Road to Pin Pound Turnpike Gate, about three miles from this city, on a young man named John Symons, a butcher of Topsham.

"He was going to fetch some sheep for his master, when he was attacked by two tall men, one of them armed with a pistol, the other with a sabre:  on his endeavouring to get off, one of them made a cut at him, which penetrated through his thick great coat, breeches, and made a slight wound in his thigh;  the other villain then knocked him off his horse, when they picked his pocket of upwards of twenty-six pounds in cash and bank notes. -

"Handbills have been published, offering a reward of ten guineas for the apprehending either of the above villains; - one of them is described to have a dark complexion, dark curled hair and both wore waggoner's frocks and round hats."

This is an all too typical account of a Devonshire highway robbery. (The Exeter Flying Post, 20th March, 1800)    The victims seem mostly to have been farmers or their servants riding to market or on business  and the highwaymen mostly to have been armed footpads, rather than Dick Turpins high to horse. There was, of course, no other way to do business than by carrying cash or unsecured bank notes.

John Symons from Topsham did not get much farther than Pinhoe before, in daylight,  he was slashed in the thigh and knocked off his horse.

The footpads were wearing smock-frocks.   This was not much of a clue.  Waggoners they might have been but most Devon farm labourers wore similar 'frocks'.

KEGS OF WATER, EXETER, 1800

 The Exeter Flying Post, of 11th December 1800,  published as a caution to the public the following account:

"The public should be aware of a set of swindlers who have infested this city and neighbourhood;  they pretend to be dealers in smuggled spirituous liquors, and generally carry one or two kegs with them, which they sell at a very low rate, for ready money.

"The keg is broached in the purchaser's presence, and being found very good, is taken and immediately paid for..  After they are gone the purchaser finds he has bought a keg of water;  and that by means of a false head to the barrel, or such other contrivance, a small quantity of spirits has been so placed as effectively deceive the purchaser, who is thereby cheated of two or three guineas."

What could be more disappointing?, -  and with Christmas coming!  You thought your  sample of bootleg brandy very good' and at that price!,  but, alas!, you have been cheated.  Perhaps this will teach you not to buy hole-in-a-corner spirituous liquors!  

One gets the impression that none of the  tippling citizens of Exeter had qualms about cheating the taxman.   Might not this 'caution' have been  a cunning ploy, a rumour spread by the excisemen?   

SITTING IN A SITUATION! EXETER, 1800.

 In November 1800 the Exe flooded and most of the parish of St. Thomas,  the Exe Island, and the lands adjoining were inundated.    The Exeter Flying Post  (13th November) reported this truly disastrous event but devoted most of its column to the story of  the rescue of Mr. Holland and his companions from a waterly grave: 

"....two chaises, containing Mr. Holland, his wife, three daughters, his brother, and servants, attempted to enter the city from the Okehampton road.  

"They proceeded  on with some difficulty, until they reached that part of the road which opens onto the Exe;.... here the water was so high that it flowed over the backs of the horses, and reached nearly to the windows of the carriage.  One horse having dropped dead, it was necessary immediately to cut the traces, so as to extricate the others from the carriage, and prevent, if possible, the whole from being carried off by the violence of the current.

"As the water continued rising, it was judged impossible to preserve the lives of  the persons in the carriage, unless a boat could be procured from the quay,  by which alone they could be relieved from their dangerous situation.

"On this occasion, we cannot speak too highly of the conduct of Mr. Phillips at the Hotel, by whose particular exertions the lives of Mr. Holland and his family were preserved  -  he ran to the quay, which was universally overflown, and after the greatest difficulty, procured a boat from Capt Thompson, the master of a merchant ship from Leith, this he hoisted on a slide, and, by the offer of liberal rewards procured three horse to draw it, with the greatest expedition, to the spot where the carriage remained; to attain which, they were obliged to make a long circuitous route,  the other avenues being impassable from the height of the water.  The boat, however, arrived just in time, for the persons were still sitting in the carriage, immersed above their middles, and so rapid did the water rise that they had scarcely been extracted from their situation....when the stream flowed over the roof.

"We are happy to add, that the ladies, &c. experienced no injury other than a universal wetting, and the horror which they must have experienced in being obliged to sit for so long in a situation, expecting every moment would put an end to their existence."

It's the way they tell 'em!

One chaise , a bit like Sancho Panza's donkey, has been lost,  unnoticed by the narrator.  

 Mr. Holland, his wife, his three daughters, his brother and his servants seem to have shown remarkably little initiative.  One imagines them all just sitting there getting a universal wetting and waiting to be drowned.

Why and how should one hoist a boat on a slide and pull it with horses?

Which brings us to Mr. Phillips at the Hotel, running, procuring boats and horses, and that slide and arriving like Dick Barton, in the nick of time!   

Well, they don't make heroes like him these days!

Overflown and proceeding on are quaint but wrong. 

Pity about that horse! 

SHOCKS TO THE EYE, EXETER, 1800.

 "We have great pleasure in observing that the Right Worshipful the Mayor and Chamber, have enacted a Bye Law, to oblige the inhabitants of this city to sweep the pavement in front of their houses, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning, before nine o'clock in the winter and eight o'clock in summer, under the penalty of twenty shillings for every omission.

"Scavengers are also appointed to attend regularly with carts, for the purpose of carrying away the dirt thus swept together.

"We hope this will prevent the many nuisances, which constantly shock the eye and nose of every passenger who walks through the streets of this city."

Two hundred and twenty two, (222) years have flown away since the passing of this bye-law was reported in The Exeter Flying Post (25th September 1800). 

True,  Exeter these days smells more salubrious than in the time of Farmer George but there is still plenty of rubbish  to shock the eye.  We continue to have, but we don't call them scavengers, council workers with carts to carry rubbish away but no sooner have they passed by than the plastic &c. flows again, like lava from Vesuvius, onto our High Street, Queen Street and where not?   Some rule that would constrain shopkeepers and citizens to keep their 'fronts' free from rubbish might be a good idea.  I seem to think they have laws like that in Germany.   But there has long been something curious about Exeter bye-laws!  They are like snowball-hitches, - they are no sooner made than they begin to melt in the sun.  

A scavenger (scaveger) used to be a kind of tax-collector but  for centuries meant someone who keeps a place clean.   Today, for some reason, it sounds very negative.  It is a pity that so many grand old English words lose their dignity.   

THE RAPE OF NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 2022.

So, rumour has it, there is to be a repeat of 'Winter Wonderland' in Exeter's unique Northernhay Gardens.   I would not be surprised!  The city-council appears not to have a ha'porth of imagination. The scars of the last 'wonderland' have not yet healed.  

Last year the park was turned into a construction site.  It was closed, effectively, to the people who appreciate it as a public park for seventy-two days and later closed again in favour of the great lizards.  

Last year Exeter's Remembrance Sunday was, somewhat farcically, observed, by kind permission of the winter wonderlanders, at the edge of a half-constructed funfair.  (The county's remembrance  in the cathedral-close was not much more dignified.  It was tainted by the booths of the sons of Mammon,  - but that's a separate issue!)

The governors of Devon's county-town seems to have a hankering for the lowest-common-denominator.  Exeter, the city, not the suburbs where the councillors live, has many advantages.  A castle famed in story, pleasing city walls, a most ancient guildhall,  where now the homeless lay their weary heads, a grand Victorian museum (ditto),  catacombs with neglected potential, underground passages, a brilliant riverside - more potential there! though the Quay is one thing that has been well done,  a green belt where funfairs and circuses could hold sway and do no harm,  (although some attraction less short-term would make more sense .)  and the one glorious valley-park,  miraculously preserved to the people, which is Northernhay, and which for at least three months of the year is being consistently denied to the people whose free inheritance it is and to visitors to our city.  

The Gardens are becoming shabbier and shabbier because of lack of intelligent management and common-sense policing.  (They no longer have a dedicated manager nor a dedicated team of gardeners. - and dedication is what is sorely needed!)  

Their future calls for some deep-thought and the Council's new games of neglecting them as gardens, using them as a site for vulgar amusement, limiting access wherever possible, wiring off footpaths and installing, very costly no doubt, close-circuit television cameras are not going to help.