MUCK TURTLE SOUP, EXETER, 1841

"The Right Worshipful the Mayor, Sir W. W, Follett, and a select party dined with W.H.Furlong, Esq., on Friday last, at his residence on Northernhay.

"A sad mishap occurred in relation to this dinner.  Billy Nokes was carrying a jug of turtle soup, going carelessly along as boys will, and when he came up to the New Dispensary, of which Mr. Furlong is Vice President, he tripped against a stone, fell, and spilled the soup,   

"He was in a terrible state of consternation, roared as if he had broke his leg. One of the Town Councillors happening to be passing enquired the cause of his grief.  He said he'd broke 'Turney Furlong's pitcher of turtle soup - twelve shillings worth.'

"The boy was inconsolable at first, but reflecting that crying would not create more soup, he gathered up the force-meat balls in one of the shards, and going to an itinerant pieman who was very fortunately at hand for gravy, they soon compounded some muck turtle out of the dregs but what he did with it we have not learned."

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And did his Worshipful the Mayor and W.W. Follet, Exeter's MP and Her Majesty's Attorney General, and Turney (Attorney) Furlong eat Billy Nokes' muck turtle soup?   I'd like to think so.

12 shillings in1841 would have been two days wages for a skilled worker and therefore equates to at least £250  today.  I have the impression that the 'itinerant pieman' supplied Billy Nokes with the gravy gratis and for the fun of it.

The New Dispensary had not yet been completed but the foundation stone bearing Mr Furlong's name had been laid.  It is now the 'music centre' of Exeter College where young people learn to play guitars  and perhaps , but I do not see them, other instruments.  Mr Furlong's house would have been the old Northernhay House.  The only 'residence' on Northernhay' these days is mine. 

I note that the inscription-stone  of this sometime Dispensary, where once doctors cared heroically for the city's cholera and fever patients,  has been overpainted by Exeter College and is now barely legible.   I suspect that the respect of this educational establishment for Exeter's history is on a par with its music centre's respect for, let us say, J. S. Bach..

Source: The Western Times,  18th September , 1841.