OAKWEBS, EXETER, 1837

 At the Exeter Guildhall on June 3rd, 1837,  before the Mayor and the Magistrates:

"Mr. Charles Hubbard complained of a young urchin who had been found in his garden, destroying the shrubs &c. at half-past five the preceding morning. 

"Richard Reynolds stated that he saw the boy throwing stones at the shrubs.  The defence of the youngster was that he went in to take an oakweb, or cockchafer and threw a stone at one in the tree.

"Mr. Hubbard said that he wanted only to have him admonished by the bench;  his mother was an industrious woman, with a very large family, and he was a very naughty boy, and had been there before for breaking glass.

"The Mayor - There is no doubt that you are one of those idle mischievous boys that go about the town doing mischief.

"The Boy - No, sir, I goes to work.

"The Mayor - We rather leave it in the hands of your father to give you a sound flogging;  but if ever you come here again you will be sent to prison and well whipped.  (To the father)  I hope you do not encourage him.

"The Father, - No, sir, the boy has got more beating than all my other children; and I consider I beats him too much;  he goes to work, and I keeps him at it early and late, and I can't help when he's out of my sight."

It seems to me unlikely that a little boy could do much destruction to a bush by heaving a stone at a cockchafer but then I suppose respectable people don't like an urchin to be  hanging round their garden at half-past-five in the morning. 

This is an all too familiar case of a boy escaping prison and a whipping and being sent home to be flogged by his father.  How times have changed in respect of sparing the rod!.  We don't learn the name of The Boy' but he certainly knew how to speak up for himself.

I chiefly, however, blog this, on account of the beautiful, dialect word, oakweb,  used here to mean a cockchafer or maybug.   (Thomas Hardy, inter allios, called it a dumbledore, a name known to all Harry Potter fans,  most of whom will never experience the big beetle that once fascinated children - we have more or less chemicalled it out! of existence!  But oakweb is a word not in my dictionaries and one which I have not seen hitherto.   

Source: The Western Times, 10th June 1837.