A "WEY GOOSE", EXETER, 1841.

We learn from The Western Times of 26th September, 1841, that a Miss Channing was the mistress of a tobacco-pipe manufactory in Exeter.   She employed a number of girls at her manufactory one of whom was "a young woman called Hookins".

One Monday morning Hookins , The Times grants her no further name or title, did not turn up for work and her absence continued.    Miss Channing had a "written agreement" which bound Hookins to her bench.  She was brought before the magistrates at the Exeter Guildhall charged with  "neglecting her work and leaving it in an unfinished state". 

Poor Hookins tried to defend herself.  She denied having made the "written agreement".  She claimed she was bullied by the other girls and then:

"The next reason appeared  a much more plausible one - namely that they had had a 'Wey Goose' on the previous Saturday night and had kept up the jollifications to a late hour, or rather an early one the next morning - the consequence of which was that the lady's 'coppers' were rather hot and she had recourse to the usual means of cooling them by a drain of 'the dew of the valley' or 'Prince Albert's own' vulgarly called gin.

"Mr Blackall advised her to go back to work immediately, But the effects of her libations did not appear to have left her yet, for with a most outrageously squinting twinkle of the eye, she insisted she would not and would rather go to prison.

"'Very well' said Mr.Barton 'we'll endeavour to accommodate you that way - how long would you like to go for?'

"'As long as you please, sir - I'd rather stay in prison altogether than go back there again - if I wouldn't I'm blessed!'

"In kind compliance with her desires the Bench sentenced her to a fortnight's imprisonment.  She was walked off by the officers but scarcely had they got her to the bottom of the stairs before the lady's valour had evaporated and springing away from the grasp of the officers she darted upstairs to lay her recantation before the Bench; but to her great mortification, the door of justice was closed in her face.

"She was recaptured by the officers, and marched off in a more penitent mood to her solitary quarters in the city prison, where the glorious associations of a 'wey goose' were, alas! never understood or dreamt of."

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A travesty, it seems to me, of justice.  But neither the Court nor the newspaper had any sympathy for the pathetic Hookins,  hung-over, bullied, no doubt over-worked and, it might seem, with a bit of a squint.

The popular names for gin, 'dew of the valley' and 'Prince Albert's own'  are intriguing.  Did the Prince Regent have a penchant fot gin?

"Wey Goose" is these days usually written "way-goose" but there are several variations.  It is said to derive from a Dutch word  meaning a road-house and thence a jubilation.   It might well have come to Devon with the Dutch traders who landed at Topsham and other ports.  It was one of those many popular terms which came from Britain but which are now more common in her sometime colonies, America, Australia &c.