HOLY SOIL, TEIGNMOUTH, 1843.

A letter to the Editor of The Western Times  of 16th December 1843 from F. Rice,  the Independent minister at Teignmouth,  described how the Rev. Walter Brunt, the curate at West Teignmouth and an ardent disciple of the Tractarian school of theology, tried to forbid him, F Rice, from walking across the Anglican churchyard:  

"Until within the last few years there was a public foot path through West Teignmouth churchyard, which, for convenience sake, some of the Independent dissenters availed themselves of to go to their chapel on Sundays; and since the public path was stopped, they have, till now, continued to go through the yard without hindrance, when the gates were open.

"In common with others, I did the same, unmolested, till the 15th inst. but on the morning of that day the curate saw me pass through the yard, and enquired who I was, and was told the Independent Minister.

"In the afternoon a message was brought me from the sexton to this effect - that the parson had ordered him to prevent me from going through the yard any more!! the pretext for this being that the ground is consecrated!!

Probably, sir, it may be necessary to re-consecrate the holy soil, or if not, to perform  some ceremony in order to remove the pollution which it has received from the heretical feet of the teacher of a 'conventicle.' 

How devoutly is it to be wished that this intolerant priest would pause awhile when he next reads the following petition in the liturgy - From all uncharitableness,  Good Lord deliver us.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

F. RICE."  

The next Sunday when F. Rice crossed the churchyard again, the curate came out,  he must have been watching for him, and followed him into the street.  The priest argued that the minister was a trespasser.  F. Rice felt he needed to write an account of their meeting to The Times again.  These petty squabbles were hardly edifying!

The Puseyite, Rev. Walter Brunt MA,  lasted less than another year in Teignmouth.  He became the curate at Helston where, in November 1844, he became famous for fifteen minutes when the complaints of his Cornish parishioners and the consequences thereof hit the national press.

I think and hope that a 'holy soil' story like this could not be credited today.  It is surely progress much to be applauded that much of the silliness, as it seems now to the vast majority of citizens, of the Victorian Christian churches, orthodox or dissenting, has disappeared like the snows of yesteryear and it was a tough struggle for freedom of thought which should be remembered and taught in our schools with many a hero fighting against gammon and Bible tyranny.

Our leaders are cowards. There is still a lot of gammon about!  Islam in particular  gammons a lot of people.  It is a faith that is tyrannical and threatens all of us.  It prescribes all our our liberties and our leaders choose not to speak of it.  They do not speak out for the largely secular society that they represent and that wants none of the nonsense.  They are too fearful to act against the sillinesses, injustices and worse that Islam and perhaps other religions imply even though they recognise them.

PRIZE FIGHTING, EXETER, 1843.

 "We regret to see the brutal practice of prize fighting resorted to in this city, by the following statement of the contest between Mr. Long Cornish and Mr. Whiteway.

(From a correspondent.)

"The fancy of the neighbourhood have for the last week been on the qui vive, in consequence of a rumour that an affair was to come off between Long Cornish, a slaughterman, and the champion of the Butcher-row, and a man named Whiteway, who next to St. Crispin has been regarded as the patron saint and champion of the snobs.

"The origin of the fight appears to have been a squabble among the principals at the late wrestling match at the Mount Radford Inn, when Cornish being under the influence of Sir John Barleycorn,  Whiteway gave him a thrashing; but Mr. Long Cornish being a glutton in these things, the friends of both men endeavoured to get up an affair for ten pounds aside,  which it was stated was the amount for which they were to contend.  The thing was kept as snug as possible, in order to prevent the interference of the beaks, and on Sunday it was rumoured that those who were at Countess Wear Bridge, on Monday morning at ten o'clock, would be near the scene of action.

"The road from Exeter to Countess Wear Bridge was crowded, not only by pedestrians, but by almost every description of vehicle.  At the time appointed, both men arrived, Cornish and his friends in two flys; Whiteway and his friends came on foot.  About half past ten the ring was formed, in a marsh adjoining the bridge, and it was computed that there were not less than two thousand persons present.

"Whiteway was the first to enter the ring, he appeared in excellent spirits - but had too much flesh, his age too was against him, he being 47, and Cornish only 35 - but notwithstanding he was the favourite.  Cornish shortly after entered, attended by Tom Lane as second,  Jem Evans as bottle-holder.  Whiteway was seconded by Shapley.

"At a quarter to eleven, both men being ready, Whiteway addressed the spectators by saying 'that as it was to be a fair stand up fight, he hoped that no one would interfere, and that if either man went down without a blow,  the other should be at liberty to jump upon him.'  The company seemed pleased with this arrangement from the cheering with which it was received.

"The men then set to, and as soon as Whiteway came within reach, Cornish (who is left handed) hit him a most tremendous blow on the right cheek and he went down as if he had been shot.  He recovered and came again to the scratch to be served the same in the next round.  Twelve rounds were fought, in every one of which Whiteway was regularly knocked down by Cornish;  there was no wrestling or attempt at anything of the kind.  It was a regular give and take affair.

"After the second round it was evident that Whiteway had no chance; on two occasions when Cornish laid himself open, his opponent neglected to take advantage of it.  On time being called after the twelfth round, Whiteway's second gave in for him, and Cornish was declared the victor.

"The fight lasted about a quarter of an hour, and the work that was done in the time amply made up fot the short space that it occupied.  The knowing ones appeared to be taken in by the result."

Countess Wear would seem to have been a popular location for such events. 

This account is written in true Pierce Egan 'Boxiana' style  (he was still alive.  He died in 1849) with some  lovely cant words;  the fancy, snug, beaks, bottle-holder. 

A snob was universally understood to mean a shoemaker ( St. Crispin was a shoemaker.) and nothing else.

John Barleycorn, here created a Baron, was and remains, as every schoolboy and girl knows,  the personification of whisky and beer.

Source: The Western Times,  16th September 1843.

A BOY IN A BAG, EXETER, 1843.

 "A man has been observed on the streets, soliciting charity, with a bag on his back, from the mouth of which protruded a human head.  

"On Friday evening he was taken to the station house by one of the police, who found the bag to contain a young man about 18, crippled in both his legs and arms, whom he carried about to excite compassion.

"On being taken before the magistrates he was ordered to make himself scarce."

Which is all we are told by The Western Times  (9th September 1843)  of this horror story from mid-Victorian Exeter. 

This young man recalled to me the heart-rending, Ozymandias-reciting character, Harrison, played by Harry Melling in the Coen Brothers' Buster Scruggs.

It is amazing how little compassion the Exeter magistrates found for this wandering mendicant and the crippled teenager in his bag whom I suspect they saw as being less than human.   The man seeking charity was presumably told to pick up his bag and walk out of town.   The magistrates would no doubt have argued that they were only carrying out a prime duty, (neglected now?) to keep undesirable strangers from the streets of Exeter.

    

A CHASE IN A SULKY, EXETER ST. THOMAS, 1843.

"There was considerable consternation in St. Thomas parish, on Saturday, in consequence of one Mr. Salter, an omnibus proprietor, having been suddenly seized with a desire to emigrate.  The desire came upon him with all the force of monomania.

"He packed up his traps suddenly; he departed hastily, forgetting that there are some civil obligations which he ought to have discharged, one of which was the rent to his landlord, Mr. Nicholas Tuckett.

"Many other persons professed to have reminiscences of his abode in the district, in his patronage of their ledgers; but no one thought of arresting the progress of the infatuated man, and bringing him to the cloth, as it is called, before he might have enrolled himself as a citizen of the repudiating republic on the other side of the broad Atlantic.

"But it must be a sharp mad-man, or a brisk rogue, that can out-run Mr. Nicholas Tuckett;  he determined to see the mad-man before he got on board, to see if medical aid would reduce the symptoms of monomania, & leave him to reflect a little before he  took the rash step of bolting from his country with the goods of his neighbours.

"Mr Tuckett made for Ilfracombe as fast as a fleet horse and a light sulky would take him. On arrival he found there was a ship ready to depart for America.  He planted himself between that ship and the town.  The infatuation of the intending emigrant was , however, extreme; and as persons labouring under monomania exhibit a great deal of cunning, he had sent a scout forward to see if any of his anxious friends might be waiting to dissuade him from the precipitate step he was about to take.

"The scout reported that Mr. Nicholas Tuckett stood in the way.   Three several dodges were made by the monomaniac to get past, but to no purpose, and in one he was intercepted with a whole cartload of goods, and Mr. Nicholas Tuckett, by the summary jurisdiction which he assumed to have, did get out of him the whole amount of his rent due, returning to him on some principal which we do not comprehend, £5 as a testimony, it is to be presumed, of his gratitude to him for having been caught."  

This, typically verbose, Western Times' (1st September,1843) report of a citizen, the owner  of an omnibus!,  packing up his traps (trappings) jumping on a ship bound from Ilfracombe to The States and leaving his debts behind him, records a form of action which must have been very tempting to many in Victorian Exeter.  The decision to make a new life in what was still a very young world must have been exhilirating.   Of course a man could get to Australasia by simply killing a sheep but that was less fun.  I find myself taking sides again and wishing the brisk rogue, Mr. Salter, all good fortune in his new life.

Sulkies are called sulky because they are driven by sulky persons who do not wish to oblige their fellow men by finding them a seat.  There were, apparently, French carriages, v. Lawrence Sterne, called désobligeants on the same line of thought.  Sulkies were/are super fast!  

   

THE TERMINUS, EXETER, 1843

 In August,1843 the contract had been signed and sealed for the building of the terminus of the Bristol and West Railway and work had begun at the Red Cow to build what would eventually become St. David's station.  The Western Times of 28th August foretold the future:

"With regard to the undertaking itself, the citizens of Exeter will not, we feel assured, offer any useless or uncalled for opposition to it.  Railroads must sooner or later traverse the entire length of the island - "the tight little island" -  and the favoured spots at which the Termini must eventually be fixed are the limits of the land.  We have formed an exaggerated estimate of the benefit of having the terminus permanently here, as no doubt the Plymouth people do at the prosepect of seeing it there. 

"But neither at Exeter nor Plymouth is the railroad likely to terminate.  It must go to the far west; and some of us may yet live to see the day when the denizens of Land's End may book themselves at Mr. Botheras's - that was the name of the honest gentlleman who kept the hostelry whose sign is the Last and the First, when we visited the Land's End this time two years - and arrive in London the same day."

Thomas Dibdin, who had died young two years before, wrote "The Tight Little Island" of which the opening stanza:

"Daddy Neptune one day to Freedom did say/'If ever I live upon land,/The spot I should hit on would be little Britain.'/ Says Freedom, 'Why that's my own Island.'/  Oh! what a snug little Island,/  A right little, tight little Island!/ All the globe round, none can be found/ So happy as this little Island.

"This time two years,  for  This time two years ago, is neat.

NORTHERNHAY, A WINTER WONDERLAND, EXETER, 2024

Today the Northernhay Gardens are a winter wonderland with a light snowfall making all things in the Gardens magic.  But, thanks to Exeter City Council, none may enjoy the glory.  The Gardens are bought and sold.  The Gardens are a construction site.  Not even wearing a hard hat may the citizen or visitor or Exeter collegian enjoy the Gardens in the snow.

Never mind, coming soon is a tatty funfair turning all to slush and mud! 

A JOLLIFICATION, EXETER ST. THOMAS, 1843.

 The Western Times of 19th August ,1834, reported:

"The children of St. Thomas' Sunday and Parochial Schools had a jollification on Wednesday, the funds for which were provided by the orthodox in the parish, and dispensed under the superintendance of the Rev, Vicar Medley, who was at one time considered to be a great Puseyite, and may be so still if he have not gone further and set up a popery of his own.

"The children walked to church in procession, preceded by sundry flags, some of which had been worked by lunatics, or at least were had from the Lunatic Asylum.  Some of the flags bore devices; others were plain Union Jacks.  The first flag had a red cross, on a white ground, for its device, the cross being to typify the persecutions in which Mother Church is now placed.  Another flag bore the motto, "Feed my lambs."  Another bore the facsimile of Bishop Phillpott's mitre when his head is not in it.  The  prayers were read to the children at the church; then a portion of the scriptures; and they sang a hymn and separated.

"Having dined as they best might, the children re-assembled, each being provided with a goodly half-cup.  Being furnished with their pitchers, like Gideon's army, they formed into procession and now were lead round the main streets of the parish.  On arriving at the Anchor, they saluted the worthy host with three cheers as a censure on Father Matthew, & straitway went to Franklins, the residence of Thos. Snow, Esq., banker, where they were regaled with tea and cake, there being no stint; and the church bells ringing merrily while they were thus occupied.

"They then had a game of prisoner's base, the rev. gentleman taking one side, and the 'Squire of Franklins the other.  The 'Squire proved a better runner than the Parson, owing perhaps to the military training which he gets once a year, as Captain in the East Devon Invincibles; and as for the rev. gentleman, it did so happen that he was taken prisoner in the course of the game by one of the devils engaged in the Western Times office. We mention this fact strictly in confidence, because the youngster only confessed it in fear and apprehension that he should be turned out of his parson's school if it were known that he had published it.

"The sports concluded with the singing of the following ballad, which was written expressly to instil into the minds of children the disinterested love and affection which the church has always displayed towards them:-

"A BALLAD FOR THE PEOPLE.

"The good old Church of England,/Of our dear Father-land,/With her twenty thousand Churches,/How nobly does she stand!/She is not like a flower,/That lives but for a day,/Twelve hundred years, through smiles and tears,/She hath lasted on alway.

"The brave old Church of England,/She hath conquered many a foe,/She had Martyrs to her children,/A thousand years ago./She hath Princes more than I can tell,/Who by her side have stood/Like King Charles the blessed Martyr, and old King George the good.

"God bless the Church of England,/ The poor man's Church is she/We were nourished at her bosom,/We were fondled at he knee./ God bless the Church of England,/The good, the true, the brave,/She baptized us in our cradle,/She shall bear us to our grave.

"We ought to have said that cheers were duly given for the parson and squire. Many of the half pints we regret to say were broken."

Franklyn House is now an NHS hospital.  Thomas Snow, banker and wine merchant, lived on there until his death in 1875 but seems to have left little trace in St. Thomas.  He would have been a young man (27) in 1843.  

The verses have some great lines.  My favourite is: She hath lasted on alway.

I have many times played Prisoner's Base, some 75 years ago, in the gardens of Brucklay House, Liverpool.  I wonder if it is still played.

 It must be the East Devon Militia that is meant by the East Devon Invincibles?

I don't think the Church of England can even now claim to have had martyrs 1000 years ago but then, we are told, the Rev. Matthew Medley (I''m sure he penned the verses) may have set up a popery of his own.

Query: Which King George?

N.B: lead for led?  

Good to see the apostrophe in 'Squire! 

In the next edition of The Times appeared a parody of the St. Thomas Schools' Ballad composed by ONE OF THE PEOPLE. 

"The good old Church of England,/ Of our dear Father-land,/ With her rwenty thousand parsons,/ Impoverishing the land." 

And a further eight lamentable stanzas.  

A HOME-LOVING JUDGE, BODMIN, 1843.

The Western Times,  (12th August, 1843), 14 years before John Taylor Coleridge met Tom Pooley, gives a glimpse of the character of that judge which I find enlightening.

The newspaper was of the opinion that this was a judge who had a disposition to bolt, when on this Western Circuit.  It claimed that the judge was in the habit of sneaking off home as fast as four post horses could take him, neglecting his duties by delegating to juniors and, as a consequence, endangering justice.  In August 1843, he had been sitting at the Cornish Assize Court:    

"The learned Judge, it is said, passionately loves his country seat.  It is certainly an amiable feeling the desire to snatch a few hours out of the Assize in order to enjoy the beautiful scenery and peaceful retreat of the charming neighbourhood of Ottery St. Mary.

"We can readily understand the temptations by which the learned judge is assailed; but the difnity of his office requires that when he chooses to snatch a few hours from Court, for the indulgence of his rustic taste and his home memmories,  he should in deference to public opinion, and the character of British justice, avail himself of the best helps, inseaed of the most inexperienced and not the most efficient."

Discrepancies of judgement were accordingly taking place:  "A man was tried and convicted.... of stealing two pints of cider, the property of a person described as a gentleman and was sentenced....to seven years' transportation"  Another prisoner convicted of stealing a cow was sentenced....to one year's imprisonment."

(I publish this at a time when Keir Starmer's judges are handing down what seem to be unreasonably  punitive sentences for trivial offences while serious offenders are being released from gaols.)     

Subsequently:  (The Western Times, 19th August 1843)

"But the Judges have won this lofty character by the integrity and laborious zeal with which they have hitherto discharged their office.  The high character of the Judges is national property.  Mr. Justice Coleridge by neglecting his duties and delegating them to 'inferior hands' for his own personal convenience, perils the reputation of the Bench and in so doing lays himself open to public censure and animadversion.

"It is not denied that the learned Judge showed symptons of impatience towards the close of his labours, and that he actually left the town whilst the Jury was locked up in the last case, and that he left thus precipitately on the Tuesday."

ON TENTER HOOKS, EXETER, 1843.

 Mr. George Maunder was a woollen manufacturer on Exe Island .  On the 17th July, 1843 'a piece of blanket, containing twelve pairs' of his manufacture was hung out on racks in Serge Grounds, St. Thomas.  They were stretched on tenterhooks.  The next morning two of the blankets were found to have been cut. The tightly stretched fabric must have been tempting to slash!  Henry Colman a 'decent looking lad', sixteen years old and an assistant clerk to Mr.Thomas Moss, an Exeter linen draper, was charged with maliciously cutting and destroying the blanketing.  The case came before the Devon and Exeter Assizes of August, 1843.

This was a serious charge, because a particular statute, passed long before, I imagine to protect the nation's vital woollen trade, meant that, if convicted, Henry would be liable to be transported for life, or at least for not less than seven years or to serve a lengthy term of imprisonment.

The only witness against him was another boy,  Francis Braily, aged fifteen.  Who gave evidence thus:

"I am porter to Mr. Rudall, a carrier.  I was in company with the prisoner on the evening of the 17th of July, at a public house, in St, Thomas;  two other boys were in company. We left at twelve o' clock We went into the Rack Field, and sung for about half an hour.   Before we went away Henry Colman went up to the rack, took out his pen-knife, and cut one of the blankets right across. I called him a fool then, and he went to the next blanket, cut it across and cut a piece right out.  I went out of the field, wished him good night, and went home.

Cross-examined -  I told of it because it was not the right thing for the gentleman to have his property cut up.  I'll swear that that's the reason.  No one came to me....  I was took up to the Guildhall  - not by force.... I have been in prison - in the county - on suspicion of a waistcoat - of stealing it.  That was six months ago.  I was tried at the Sessions, and staid in prison a month after the trial.  I was in the service of Mr. Manley, the butcher, after that, I was not turned off for suspicion of stealing.  I was in Mr. Lendon, the cheesemonger's employ.  I was not turned off on a charge of robbing a little girl of three pence-ha'penny  - (laughter).... There was a charge of that kind.  I was turned off from Mr. Lendon on that charge....I am in no person's employ now.  I was in John Rudall's employ; I left about a month ago.  

At this point little Francis Braily was in tears but Judge and Jury found him hilarious and had clearly come to the conclusion that his evidence was worthless.   Henry, moreover, had people ready to give him a good character and so the judge, Tom Pooley's judge, John Taylor Coleridge, discharged  him with immediate effect.

Henry had been in prison for three weeks but no heed was given to that, nor to the fact that he had been three weeks on tenterhooks.

That these little lads were out drinking in a pub until midnight and then singing in a field for a half-hour before they went home gives a glimpse of teenage life in 1843.  Well, it was perhaps not all that unlike some Exeter College teenagers in 2024!

Source:  The Western Times,   6th August, 1843.

A TUCK UNDER THE EAR, EXETER, 1843.

Before the Police Court at Exeter Guildhall in July 1843 an employee, unnamed by the newspaper, complains that he has been assaulted by his employer:

"Mr. Samuel Roach, landlord of the Bull Inn was charged with knocking down a man in his employ, on Monday last.  The complainant stated that they had a quarrel, in the course of which Mr. Roach knocked him down with great violence.  

"Mr. Roach, on being asked what he had to say to this, replied, 'Well, I think he has told you pretty well the truth.  I went up into the brew house and found him quite drunk; then, when I spoke to him, he began to be saucy, as well as he could speak and I just gave him a little tap with my flat hand, like this, and, Lord bless you, he went right down..'

"MAYOR - It is no matter, you have no business to take the law into your own hands.

"Mr. ROACH - No, I know I have not, but it is a terrible trial to have a drunken fellow like that; you can't depend on such a man.  I have served him like that many times before, just to give him a tuck under the ear;  I should not wish to hurt the fellow.

"Mr. KINGDON - I expect your pats are very hard pats.  You are a very strong, powerful fellow.

"Mr. ROACH - Why, I tell ye,  when he came to me we agreed if I caught him drunk I should flog him - (laughter).   Fined 2s 6d.

"Mr. Roach has been a prize fighter in his day, is about six feet high, and at least proportionately stout and strong."

The 'complainant' seems to have been a 'fellow' of so little significance that he is not even named but the wonderfully independent and confident Mr. Sam. Roach of the Bull Inn, (Goldsmiths Street) six foot high and a sometime prize-fighter and also, incidentally, a sportsman and owner of racehorses is a man to be respected.  Predictably the Court is not too hard on him.  Perhaps not even the Mayor wants to make an enemy of him, after all no one wants to risk a tuck under the ear that knocks you down. 

Source: The Western Times, 29th July 1843.

A MONEY CLUB, EXETER, 1843.

"Elizabeth Bunclark was summoned for using abusive language to Harriet Fulford. Defendant kept what is called a money club;  a number of women (in this case 42) subscribe 1s a-week each, and every Saturday they draw lots for a prize of two guineas. The ticket being transferable, it is not uncommon, towards the end of a drawing to give as much as 10s or 12s for a chance in this lottery.

"Mrs. Fulford had not paid her week's subscription; defendant called on her to dun her for it, and assailed her with a volley of abuse.  

"As it appeared that although defendant, as well as the witnesses, was in the street (Spiller's-lane)  Mrs, Fulford was within the door of her house, the Bench were of opinion that the squabble was not an offence against the Improvement Act, and dismissed the case.

"We understand that measures will be taken for prosecuting Bunclark for keeping an illegal gambling house."

They sound like a jolly bunch, the merry wives of Spiller's Lane (St. Sidwells).  I can imagine them gathering together for the draw, with the odds shortening and the deals being done, and it seems a pity that Mrs. Bunclark's run-in with Mrs. Fulford should have come to court. 

Source: The Western Times,  22nd July 1843.

   

REMEMBRANCE, NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 2024.

 On Remembrance Sunday, 2024, in Exeter there was no ceremony to remember the dead of Devon at the County war-memorial in the Cathedral Yard.   This was just as well for the Sons of Mammon had built their houses (The Christmas Market!) so close to the Devon war-memorial that they had not left room for the Lord-lieutenant to lay his wreath.

Respect for those Devonians who gave their lives for the causes of this nation was therefore registered, subsumed, in the moving ceremony that took place in the Northernhay Gardens, Exeter's sacred corner, its Valhalla and the jewel in the city's crown, where stands the very fine Exeter war-memorial executed by the Devon sculptor, John Angel, and where also is a rather sad war-memorial raised to those who have lost their lives in more recent conflicts.  A larger crowd than usual, therefore, turned up to see the Mayor of Exeter and other dignitaries, civil and military, lay wreaths to the memory of the fallen.

The following day, yesterday as I write, was Armisitice Day and the gates of Northernhay Gardens are locked against city folk and county folk and all.  None will have access to the Gardens until 22nd November.  The wreaths lie at the war-memorials in what has officially become a 'construction site' with only the 'constructors' to see them.  They will inspire no remembrance. Exeter's will be the war-memorial least visited in the kingdom. The Lord Mayor, who so sincerely bade us remember the sacrifice of so many, and his Council have rented out the Gardens to be once again a 'Winter Wonderland' which is to say a rather tatty and harmful, to the Gardens, funfair.

The Gardens, for Health and Safety reasons are now denied to the public.  When they are opened again the city's war-memorial wil be surrounded by all the fun of the fair and by plastic 'rudolfs', 'santas' and such.  Not much thought will be given to the glorious dead. 

There will be a further week of Health and Safety closure while the 'Wonderland' is packed away.  Shortly before Christmas the people of Devon and Exeter will have their war-memorials back, the wreathes, so 'respectfully' laid will have wasted, degraded by the rains and winds of winter and much of Northernhay Gardens, no doubt, will exhibit swathes of the mud that one associates with Flanders Field.

BADGER BAITING, EXETER, 1843.

 

The Scots Greys had marched away and in the Higher Barracks were the 4th Light Dragoons who, I think, were what was called a slang regiment, that is to say a rakish one. There was a law against badger baiting but clearly it was not being observed.  

Badger baiting was a most cruel 'sport'.  The Western Times thought so too,  hence this excercise in heavy sarcasm (1st July, 1843).

"The badger baiting at the barracks is carried on with much spirit.  The sport is excellent, and the elite of Westgate generally honour the officers with their attendance on these occasions.

"At a late exhibition Mr. Westlake's dog proved very game, and the respectable owner was offered four sovereigns for it by a gallant officer, who was so charmed with his pluck that he wished the animal might be left with the badger for an hour, to see which would be alive at the end, the dog or the badger.

"We notice these matters with great pleasure, because we think that sports which tend to advance the human character, and do so much honour to the game breeding of our Cathedral city, should be more generally cultivated.

"In ancient times monarchs used to attend bear baiting - our virgin Queen Elizabeth did so - we hope to see both Mayor and Mace going to this truly noble sport." 

Mr. Westlake was a flour merchant from New Bridge Street, right in the middle of the Westgate district, the least fashionable corner of Victorian Exeter.

'Mayor and Mace' is a sweet phrase to mean the civil authority as a whole.  I have not seen it before.

PRIEST-RIDDEN, EXETER (& THE NATION!), 1843.

The Bishop of Exeter and his minions had been persecuting, in the opinion of The Western Times, the Reverend Henry Erskine Head, Rector at Feniton, for opinions he had published in the newspaper concerning what he saw as  inconsistencies in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.  This was seen as rebellion to the bishop's authority.   

Mr. Ralph Sanders, citizen of Exeter, was delegated to bring a complaint against the Reverend Henry Head to the clerical court, the Arches Court, which, predictably, condemned him .  He was to lose his benefice for three years and he was obliged him to pay the crippling costs of his case. 

On the 24th June 1843, The Times published this letter to the editor from A FRIEND OF LIBERTY:

 "I observe in the London papers that judgement has been given in this cause, and that Mr. Head is condemned to pay the costs of the suit, and suspended for three years.

"That such a sentence should be pronounced every liberal-minded man must regret, as well as for the cause of liberty, as that of true religion.

"Surely it is disgraceful that in this enlightened age a man should be persecuted, yes, absolutely ruined, for expressing his sentiments on the Common Prayer Book.  If the Common Prayer Book will not bear examination, it is unworthy to be read in the church.

Galileo was persecuted for uttering his opinions:  we readily condemn the authors and abettors of that persecution; and will not the public at once come forward and with one voice condemn the proceedings in this disgraceful suit, by raising such a subscription as will enable Mr. Head to pay the costs of the suit, and thus testify that they will not be priest-ridden.

"Surely the English of the 19th century will not stand still and suffer this matter to pass unnoticed?  If they do, must they be surprised at any step, however infamous, which may be taken to shackle and restrain their liberties." 

I am writing under the governance of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, at a time, an enlightened age?, when punishing Englishmen for their opinions is back in fashion.  The last paragraph, substituting 21st for 19th, could apply to our current discontents.

My pet blasphemer, Tom Pooley (1857)  liked to compare himself to poor Galileo. 

A CHIMNEY-SWEEPER, EXETER, 1843.

 "At the Castle,on Friday last, Mrs. Elliott, of Exminster, appeared on a summons, to answer the charge of having permitted a chimney sweeper, named Jarman, who was under he age of 21, to ascend the chimney of her house, and sweep it, contrary to the provisions of the chimney sweepers' act.

"Mrs. Elliott stated that she agreed with Abraham Jarman, brother of the one who ascended the chimney, to have it cleaned, but she didn't know of the younger one being sent up it.  The case against her was dismissed but Jarman was fined £5, or in default, to be imprisoned a month for having permitted his brother to go up the chimney."

The Chimney Sweepers Act had only come into force in 1840.  It was nationally being little regarded but Exeter was quick to see justice done.  Poor Mrs. Elliot only wanted her chimney cleaned but ended up in court.  

We don't learn whether Abraham Jarman paid his, significant, fine or went to gaol.  In any case he lived on in Exeter to witness a new era of chimney-sweeping and in 1849 he was a valued employee of the Vulcan Patent Sweeping Company,  93, North Street.  The Patent Vulcan Sweeping Machine ushered in a climbing-boy-free age.  I wonder if Exeter and Mr. H.W. Frampton, the inventor, can claim to have used the first such machine.  If so, they contributed as much as Lord Shaftesbury to saving young lives.

I don't know what happened to the little brother.  I hope not stuck up a chimney. 

Source: The Western Times,  3rd June 1843 and 12th October, 1850. 

SHOW YOUR OAK, EXETER, 1843.

"Last Monday being the anniversary of the restoration of that royal scamp Charles II, - the day was generally observed by the little boys and schoolmasters as a holiday.

"The urchins kept up the traditional cry of the restoration by challenging youngsters who did not display the sign of the Stuart ascendancy, and cries of 'show your oak,' resounded through the streets.

"A few of the greener sort of tradesmen sported oak boughs at their door - but the display was not equal to what we recollect of a few years since."

The escape of Prince Charles and his hiding in the oak is a good story that young people in England today have not heard.  Many young people have never heard of the Restoration nor, for that matter, of  Alfred burning cakes nor of Harold losing his eye, Bruce critically examining spiders, Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye,  Lord Uxbridge losing his leg at Waterloo.  Many, indeed, have never heard of the Danish Invasion, Hastings, Bannockburn, Copenhagen or Waterloo et cetera, ad infinitum!   

What is History?  Well,  in my opinion it doesn't do to take it too seriously, it is mostly lies, of course, but the kind of half-true lies that, for the most part, are heuristic, provide holidays and bonfires, offer some drama and fun, do (mostly) no harm, improve morale and bind communities and nations together.   Schoolboys and schoolmasters  (let us at once include their female equivalents,) no longer get a holiday on May 29th nor do they stick oak-leaves in their hats.  The narratives they ingest in schools these days are dismal to a degree and just as much half-truth and propaganda as populat history and they provide no fun and no holidays.  It seems a shame to me.  Bring back Oak-Apple Day!  

Source:  The Western Times, 3rd June, 1843

LOW IN THE DUST, ROMANSLEIGH, 1843.

Having found this I felt I should not let it get lost again.    Romansleigh ('Rumsleigh') is a long way from Exeter but The Western Times published this on 27th May 1843.   Perhaps it has been recorded elsewhere but, just in case it is not, I replicate it here.  The scale of the infant mortality in this village of North Devon is heart-rending and the ingenuousness of the local scribe only makes it seem more so:  

"CHURCH-YARD POETRY.  -  A Maryansleigh correspondent sends us the following touching communication respecting the mortality in that parish.  He has paraphrased the awful fact with most awful poetry: -

"'MOARTALITY. - In Romansleigh within the Last three months we Have witness thirteen Furnals of Home 10 have been Childering out of this very small parish and one now lyeth a bear [a bier] wich make 14 six out of one House. 

"We 11 childring gone to sleep/ We leave our parentes dear to weep/ Our parents dear weep not for we/ for we are gone our god to see.

"We 11 childring are gone you see/ preay take a pattern now by we/ for you must follow you plinly see/ Low in the Dust we Lied Be.

"Six from one House you plenly see/ What dretful thing must this be/ through the are gone from this/ We all must go and cant resist." 

 

The Western Times helps its readers to read bier for bear but leaves them to work out that Home=whom (which) and through the=though they.

This North Devon Childering/ childring looks like a usage that might be of interest to lexicologists.

THE 'REAL' TOM POOLEY.

Tom Pooley's Fateful Year is admittedly a contrived work. It is a jeu d’esprit in as much as I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together.  It is, however, mostly Pooley’s own work.  He has contributed more to it than I have, indeed the work must be something like  60% Pooley and 40% Pooley pastiche supplied by me, Wayland Wordsmith, and I hasten to add that the vituperative content is 100% Tom Pooley.

The writings of Tom Pooley exist and the original manuscripts are in the public domain but they are such a kaleidoscope of fantastic ideas with so many repetitions and confusions and with such bizarre capitalization and with such an unconventional orthography that they needed the savage edit which I have applied.  

The ‘real’ Tom Pooley, 1807 to 1876, was one of those many men or women, some more clever than others, and some even who seem to change the world for the better, who are naturally suspicious of what they are told by persons in authority.   Tom Pooley was a natural contrarian.  Although he was not a clever man and not, one might think, a man capable of changing anything, he questioned everything and thought as hard as he was able to find alternative theories to counter opinions that he felt were being foisted upon him.  Invited to look up to heaven, Tom Pooley looked down to his boots, to the Earth beneath his feet.  Invited to love Christ as the son of God, Tom Pooley declared him to be an imposter and a blackguard.  He was by nature argumentative.  He was, as his daughter said of him, a man who liked to enjoy his own opinion.   It was his duty, he believed, not only to protest his own beliefs but to write on gates and walls and in Bibles and so to alert the world to his truths.

His zeal, however, went no further.  He did physical harm to no man and despite his fulminations he was content to live at peace with all around him. He believed that, as an Englishman, he was free to speak his mind. His neighbours, his wife and children read their Bibles and went to church unrestrained by him and worshipped as and when they pleased.  In his children’s Bibles he did not write.  Like any prophet, Tom would have liked the world to know the truths that had been ‘revealed’ to him but he found no followers, he commanded no audience.  He was more-or-less alone with his thoughts.  He dictated no rules.  His was truly a voice crying in a wilderness.  He lacked the power to make anyone take notice of him.   When he expressed himself  his ideas were ill-formed and no-one took him seriously.  This was what frustrated him.  Most people thought him to be harmless but just a little crazy.  Eccentric his ideas were, but not more difficult to accept perhaps than the mystery of the Holy Trinity or the New Testament miracles:  walking on water, turning water into wine, raising the dead, stories which in 1857 were taken literally and about which, whatever they thought about the matter, very few poor Cornishmen dared or cared to express any doubt.

Tom believed that important truths had been revealed to him.  Not only that, he felt that it was his duty to be the evangelist of his own crude Gospel and that he was called upon to reveal to his friends and neighbours the virtue of his faith and the essential iniquity of Christ and Christianity.  “What is man or woman after they converted to the Christian religion?  Sly. unjust, selfish, deceiving, lying.” It is not in the least too strong to say that he made it quite clear in his writing and in his conversation that he hated and feared Christ, Christians and Christianity and the expressions of his fear and hatred were hardly warmly welcomed by most of the good people of Victorian Liskeard.  But although he had for many years sought to advertise his views and although he had made enemies, he had, until his fateful year,  lived a relatively quiet life and his name was known to only a few.

I find Tom Pooley, the Cornish Well-sinker so much like a precocious infant, a terrible child, that still today, nearly a century and a half after his death, he amazes and gently amuses; at least, he amazes and gently amuses me.  Child-like and confused, he struggled to be a serious man and, more than that, he presented himself as a prophet, a chosen one and as the saviour of mankind.  I believe there is a case for him to be remembered, which is what, above all, he wanted.  His ‘Case’ divided ‘polite society’ and a handful of eminent Victorians allowed themselves to be drawn into the controversy.  What they said and did seems to me to be relevant today as we find ourselves once again between the poles of Free Speech and Censorship.  The Altogether Amazing Tom Pooley blog seeks to record the consequences of Pooley’s Case on the individuals who were involved in it and indeed to consider all matters Pooley. 

  

 

A WATERCRESS MAN, EXETER, 1843.

 "Prior, a watercress man, was fined ten shillings, and in default of payment committed to the treadmill for a fortnight on the complaint of the Rev. Charles Rodwell Roper, for using indecent and obscene language.  

"A woman, who had refused to buy his cresses incited the wrath of defendent;  and he avenged himself by a torrent of excessively bad English.

"The reverend gentleman remonstrated with him; but reproof led to no reformation, and hence the result." 

I have not met a watercress man before in the golden realm of The Western Times but they would have been busy here with their baskets of cress in or around the Higher Market.  I imagine the cresses in Exeter would have been foraged, raked from local streams and ponds rather than farmed, although the Victorians did have watercress farms.

Two weeks imprisonment with hard labour seems a stiff sentence for effing and blinding, but then there was an Anglican parson involved and no doubt Prior was 'disrespectful'.  I smell something of what Tom Pooley would call Bible Tyranny in the case.

I have blogged the Tractarian, Reverend Rodwell Roper before.  He was the Rector of Saint Olave's who made Mr Ferris take off his hat in the vestry.  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3897615916165646799/3234197303490926862 (THE CLERICAL COMMAND).

20th May, 1843

DANNY'S BOY, EXETER, 1843.

 "A bill-sticker named Thos. Dadds, summoned Mr. H. O'Connell, soi disant son of the great agitator, for the non-payment of 10s. due to him for the exercise of his profession.

"Mr O'Connell, in Sept., 1841. had bills posted about the city, stating that he would deliver a lecture on the Drama, the Immortality of the Soul, and the State of the Country, all on the same evening!  and the price of admission was two shillings only! 

"Those, however, who put their trust in these posters were doomed to be disappointed.  Mr O'Connell did not appear on the evening fixed; and so the minds of the liberal and discerning public were left unenlightened on these important subjects, and Thomas Dadds, the bill-sticker, was not remunerated for fixing in conspicuous situations the aforesaid delusive placards.   Mr. O'Connell not appearing before the Bench, the case was deferred to Monday."

"MONDAY, -  Mr. H O'Connell now appeared to answer the complaint of the bill-sticker, and said that as he was under age when this debt was incurred, he was not answerable for it.  The bill-sticker must therefore apply to his father, the great liberator.

"He, however, was willing to pay 5s.  He was now about to deliver a lecture on Astronomy (at which he would be happy to see their worships).  He intended to pay the expenses this time, and he thanked God he had the means to do so.

"After some chaffering, this was agreed by Dadds, who stipulated, however that he should have (as we understand) a few dozen of his admission tickets over and above the 5s."

This is fun, because this young man is assuredly Henry Simpson O'Connell the soi disant, as The Times elegantly puts it, son of Daniel O'Connell,  the  great and famous Liberator of Ireland, by Ellen Courtenay, a clever lass from Cork, who claimed to have been raped and thereby inseminated of Henry by the fragrant, 40 year old, family-man and liberator, Daniel, in Dublin when she was only 15.  She, like Henry, subsequently, survived as an itinerant lecturer as well as being an actress, a writer and a poet.  Daniel denied fatherhood of Henry but the boy's physical appearance was said to have given the lie to The Great Liberator.

If, as seems probable, Henry was living in Exeter between 1841 and 1843 we would perhaps not have suspected it, were it not for Mr. Dadds the unpaid bill-sticker. 

A writer, Trina Wills, in 2022, supplied a truly fascinating paper, on-line, about Ellen Courtenay, (https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/94z00/the-voices-of-ellen-courtenay-the-life-and-work-of-ellen-courtenay-as-helen-steinberg-poet-actress-appeal-memoirist-and-lecturer) who Ms. Wills discovered, did not, as the world imagined, die in 1836 but who secretly transmogrified to one 'Helene Steinberg' (with the accents!) and lived until 1864. 

Source: The Western Times, 20th May, 1843.  

STRENGTH LIKE AN ELEPHANT, EXETER, 1843.

"John Tarrant, a man who has been employed by the Corporation of the Poor on the North-road and elsewhere, was charged with stealing a shovel, their property, which had been lent him to work with.

"It appeared he parted with it to one Vicary, and received 1s.6d. and 'a quart;' but he asserted that he only lent it him.

"Mr. KINGDON - I know you very well; you are a most extraordinary drunkard, and the idlest man employed on that road - and yet you are the strongest man I know.  Why your strength is like an elephant.  If you liked, you could work harder than any man I know.

"Tarrant's wife here said he was troubled with fits, and could not sit long cracking stones;  he did all he could to support his family.  

"Mr. Justice KINGDON said he ought to support three families; he was strong enough, if he would work, to do the work of any two men.  If they (the Bench) were desirous of giving a premium to villainy, they now had a good opportunity.

"Mr. BLACKALL said he considered that the man, even if he lent the shovel, was disposing improperly of the property of the Corporation.   There was a penalty for this of not more than £5, or less than 20s.

"He was then fined 20s., with the alternative of taking a fortnight at the House of Correction.  But strong as he was he could not raise even a single pound, and therefore he had to forfeit his liberty for that period."

It is noteworthy, perhaps, that although John Tarrant is before the Magistrates for selling a shovel that belongs to the Corporation of the Poor, the Mayor of Exeter who knows very well that John Tarrant is as strong as an elephant, is more concerned that the man breaks too few stones for the North Road and that, as a pauper given work, he never pulls his weight and that he drinks too much.   I suppose it all comes to the same thing for poor John - a fortnight in the House of Correction.

And The Times' columnist has to have his corny pun.

Ah well!

Source: The Western Times, 13th May, 1843.

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A BLASPHEMER, LISKEARD, 1857.

 TOM POOLEY’S FATEFUL YEAR.

(A jeu d'esprit, based firmly on the writings of Thomas Pooley 1807-1876)

I am that that same Thomas Pooley who has been through all the Christian Traps and Snares.   I am that Thomas Pooley whose name was in all the newspapers of all England in the year 1857 which was my Fateful Year. In my Fateful Year I went through all the Christian Traps and Snares and the One Almighty and Mr. Holyoake has brought me through and trampled Christian Tyranny underfoot.

I was born to call all men to Pause and seek the Truth.  I was born to that Grand Cause that the One Almighty has decreed for the Peace, Love and Harmony of Man.  But Christian Tyrants dread to give Man those Laws that would bring Peace, Love and Harmony to Man. and I have seen how the One and True Almighty has shown His Power in this Cause and Christian Tyrants are beginning to tremble.  Christian Tyrants are beginning to feel that they have been gammoned and that there is a wise and powerful  One Almighty and they will find the truth of this in their Dying Moments.

I have  done that work which I was called to do, that is to Knock out the Rotten Prop that had kept all Men in Total Darkness. I have called Man from Vice to Virtue.  I have called Man from that disgraceful and filthy life that is Drunkenness, Vice, Misery, Whoredom and Sin and I hope the Friends of Truth and Goodwill with Honest Laws will be so kind as to place these writings in Print and let them be handed down in History for they will come handy when Truth will be looked for and one day , after I am in the Grave, the World will say:  Tom Pooley was right.

Mr. Holyoake wrote in his pamphlet, that he wrote about me and that was read by most of everyone in England who could read,  that I was Pooley, The Cornish Well Sinker, which I was.   Here in Liskeard Mr. Holyoake’s pamphlet was read by some of the Christians but that  did not change their filthy, drunken ways.  They still walk in Darkness.  They have yet to see the Truth of the Cornish Well Sinker’s words but they have not forgot Tom Pooley’s name and would persecute him again if they could.   They still uphold Falsehood and still try to crush the Truth that was shown me by The One Wise Almighty.

Christians walk in Darkness.   That time when the Rocks rent and Darkness hid the Sun went to prove to all the world that Christ was a downright  imposter, the enemy of all men and the enemy of Peace and Happiness.  This is the one Truth The One Wise Almighty revealed to the Cornish Well Sinker.

When Mr.Holyoake, the Friend of Humanity, wrote that I was The Cornish Well Sinker. This was true but the Poor Man must do anything to live and to feed his family and I have done anything that the Rich Man would hire me to, not just sink wells though I have sunk many.  I have sunk wells for the Rich Man in his garden and wells for the Farmer in his fields and wells for the Great Man in his breweries and workshops.  I have worked hard on one meal a day and forced to do so for to live an honest life but I have always been The Poor Man.  You are a pauper, Pooley, says the Guardian to me but I have laboured harder than he has ever laboured and have been so powerful that men who hired my labour said: Tom Pooley is as strong as any other two men.  But for all my honest labour I was always poor and no man knows what he will have to go through and I have been through the Union though I always laboured hard, and through the filthy Christian Dungeons though I committed no crime and through  the Madhouse though I was not mazed. 

I said to Mary,  Mary, my wife, not Mary, my-daughter, : What has Tom Pooley done, Mary, that the Christian Magistrates so  persecute him?   Has he murdered any one or has he stolen  any one’s Worldly Goods or has he insulted any Female?  No!   But they have put him in the Union and in the Gaol and in the Madhouse, Mary.  Is that Justice?  No!  And Mary-my- wife always says: No, You are right, Tom.

Sinking wells is filthy labour.  There are poisons in this Globe if a man dig too deep.  I have seen a man die in pain sinking a well.  A Well Sinker can injure this Globe if he digs too deep  for what is this Globe but a Body of living and thinking Fire?    A man must be careful how he sinks a well.   Great horrid stones can fall down from above.  They can  fall down on a man’s head.  To my sorrow, O woe!, a Stone as big as a Turnip fell on my head but my head is powerful and strong and the stone did not kill Tom Pooley

Now I shall write about the sad Death of  young Thomas Pooley.  It is not me, Thomas Pooley, but my namesake, my Son, who died  young,  Thomas Pooley who is now in the Grave.  O Woe, O Death!  The twenty-sixth day of January in the Year that the Christians call 1852 was that Fateful Day,, five years before the coming of my Fateful Year.  It was the filthiest, blackest of all horrid days. When Thomas Pooley, my Son, died.  I wanted to die with him.  O Woe!, the Grief, Pain, Despair and Anger that I  felt was as I never had  known and all I wanted was to take Poison and die in Mary’s arms but I did not.  Thomas Pooley, my son, was a grand little boy but he was only a child when Death came and took him to the Grave.   For only eleven years did Thomas Pooley, my Son, taste the joys and sorrows of this Globe.

So, having Thomas Pooley, my son, lying dead,  I said to Mary,  my-wife,:  Mary,  We will take our Savings that we have toiled and starved and slaved for and we shall buy a Grave for Thomas Pooley and for all of our family when Death comes for us and it will be the only place in the world that we can call our own and and we shall buy a grand space in the New Liskeard Cemetery and Thamas Pooley shall have a Stone on it and on it we shall write: To the memory of Thomas Pooley, son of Thomas and Mary Pooley, and we shall not forget Thomas, our son, for the Grave is the Womb of Life and we shall tend Thomas Pooley’s grave until Death and the Grave claim us. For as a child plucks a flower so Death plucks Man and Death and the Grave will be our Share for Death and the Grave the Victory claim.  And Mary, my wife,  said:  Yes Tom,you are right.

I was in a grand Passion and to the Liskeard New Cemetery I ran and I bought a grand plot of land right beside the gates to be Thomas Pooley’s Grave and this Christian Manager of the New Liskeard Cemetery said to me:  Pooley who is going to bury your boy?   I said:   I will dig it myself.  But this Christian Manager said:   No. no Pooley,  that will not do,  the Gravedigger must dig the Grave, but what I mean is which Clergyman will you have to speak the words over him?  And I said:  I will do it myself and the One Wise Almighty that brought all things into Being will find words for me. And this Manager said: -  No, no Pooley, that will not do.  You are mad, Pooley. You must get a Christian Minister to say the Christian words.

So to find the Christian Clergyman I ran to that grand house where he lives in Splendour.   I found him and I said:   Having a Child lying dead I am come to ask you to say words over his Grave.  But this horrid Church Minister said:  No, no, Pooley I shall not speak words over the Grave.  You are an Atheist, Pooley, and you do not come to my Church.   So I said:  I am not an Atheist.  Atheists are filthy, horrid Infidels.  I am that man who is sent by the One, Wise Almighty who brought all things into being. - You are mad, Pooley, go to see the Methodists and see if they will commit your Son to the Grave.

So to see the Methody Minister  I ran to his grand House though not so grand as the Church Clergyman’s and I said:  Having a Child lying dead I am come to ask you to say the words over his Grave. But this disgusting Methody Minister said:  No,no, Pooley.  You are not one of us.  You must go to the Quakers.

So  to the Quakers I ran and they said:  We suppose, in the circumstances, we must bury Thomas Pooley.  And so, in the circumstances, they did.

And after he was buried I went to Thomas Pooley’s Grave and planted flowers on it and put crystal Stones upon it that I had from the Miners on the Moor and I lay down on Thomas Pooley’s Grave, the one place that I can call my own on this Globe, and I wept and the One Wise Almighty comforted me and told me that it was not the One Wise Almighty that brought Pain and Sorrow and Injustice into this Globe and the One Almighty has no right to pardon that Christ who is the author of Man’s Sin and who gammoned all the misguided Christians like those Christian Clergy whos would not say words over Thomas Pooley’s Grave when he was lying dead.  And I lay there till after the Sun had gone down and then I stopped weeping and went home to Mary, my wife, and my other children.

 

And after that I could not sleep for thinking of all the Sin and Injustice and Whoredom and Drunkenness and Injustice on this Globe.  I was at a loss to see the Wretchedness the Christians have sown amongst the Human Family so that Women live in Whoredom and Men live in Vice, Gammon and Blasphemy and on this whole Globe is Misery and Horror and Death.

So I took up my old game of writing with my Chalk on Walls and Fences and Stiles and  Gates and wherever Men and Women who could read my words would read my words.   I wrote so many words I can not remember all that I wrote but sometimes I wrote: THE GRAVE IS A LIVING WOMB OF LIFE.  - T. POOLEY.  And sometimes I wrote: CHRISTIAN TYRANTS MUST CEASE THEIR HORRID WARS. - T. POOLEY. And sometimes I wrote:  THIS GLOBE IS A BODY OF THINKING AND LIVING FIRE. - T. POOLEY.   And sometimes I wrote:  CHRIST IS THE AUTHOR OF ALL MEN’S MISERY, WARS, VICE AND SIN.  - T. POOLEY. And sometimes I wrote: THE TIDES EBB AND FLOW BY THE LIVING POWERS OF THIS GLOBE - T.  POOLEY.

But I wrote many more of my words on Walls and Fences and Stiles and Gates and no one ever said anything to me about them except some one would say: Pooley you are mad.  I wrote my words wherever I was walking to work or when I was up early and scavenging or when I was out late taking the night soil and I wrote in chalk, and the rain, we have a lot of rains in Liskeard, soon washed my words away but some Men, who could read, read my words and in my Fateful Year, the year the Christians call 1857, the Church Clergymen Tyrants near Liskeard came together to talk about Tom Pooley and how they could set a Trap or Snare for him.  They came together to talk about me and to persecute me, Tom Pooley, who was born to call all men to Pause and to seek the Truth,  who wrote the One Wise Almighty’s Truth on Walls and Fences and Stiles and Gates to keep Man from Darkness. 

Yes, the Church Clergyman, or I should say the Unjust Cornish Christian Tyrants, met to talk about my honest writings that I wrote against Falsehood and Tyranny and Injustice and they were the Reverend Mr. Hobhouse of Saint Ive and the Reverend Mr. Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush of Duloe, who complained and informed on me and the Reverend Mr.Tathum who committed me and the Reverend Mr Glencross who signed my Summons ad I do not know who else but they all wanted together to persecute Tom Pooley to the Death if they could and so they all  went to a Christian lawyer at Bodmin, Mr.Grylls, and the lawyer at Bodmin said to them: what you need to persecute Tom Pooley is an Advertisement in The Cornish Times to be a Snare and a Trap.  And they put an Advertisement in The Cornish Times which I read but not until May when it was my turn to have the Newspaper.  My name, Tom Pooley, was not there but BLASPHEMY in big black letters was and I saw it with my own eyes and I knew it was a Christian Trap.   The Advertisement was there.  It was printed very small but it was there.  I knew the time had come, O Woe, O Death!  The Bible Tyrants were going to persecute me but I did not know how much. 

I said to Mary, my wife:  Mary, they are plotting to persecute your Husband because he has written against Injustice and Bible Tyranny.  You know your Husband has never harmed any one, Mary, but they will go on with this horrid persecution.  Is that Justice, Mary? No it is not! And Mary my wife said:  You are right Tom.

The Advertisement in the Cornish Times started with BLASPHEMY in big black letters and said that any one who knew the man who was writing on Gates and other places should tell Mr. Grylls or The Reverend Mr. Hobhouse immediately.  At that time I was not sure what was Blasphemy so I asked Mary, my daughter, who is very clever what it was and she said it was speaking against God so for a time I was not so worried  because I will let no Christian tell me that Christ is God and I would tell the Christian Clergymen  that they have been gammoned and Christ is not God but it is the One Wise Almighty who makes the Laws of this Globe and that this Globe is a thinking, feeling Being which is proved by the Tides which are never still how they Ebb and Flow and so only Christians can commit Blasphemy because they call Christ God and he is not and the Clergymen would Pause and hear my words and think Tom Pooley is honest and let me go home.

But Mary, my daughter, said she did not think the Clergymen would hear my words and let me go home so I was worried again and in a grand Passion and I thought that poor Tom Pooley might be going into a Nest of Spiders and would be persecuted but I did not think how much.

That same night, after I saw the Advertisement I could not forget it and I was still in a grand Passion so I went to the one spot on this Globe that I can call my own which is Thomas Pooley’s Grave and I lay down on it and I wept for him and I wept for me that was being persecuted by the Bible Tyrants and I lay there until the One Wise Almighty said to me:  Do not despair Tom Pooley.  You will have your trials but you will get through.  And that was True.  I lay there late into the night until Mary, my wife, sent Mary, my daughter, to The New Liskeard Cemetery to fetch me home.  So I went home.

What the Bible Tyrants called my Blasphemy that I had written on Walls and Fences and Stiles and wherever Men and Women who could read could read them, was not a secret.  It was not a secret that it was me, Tom Pooley that had written them,  I always put my name, T. Pooley.  It was no secret in our Tenement. It was no secret down Dean Street.  It was no secret in Liskeard.  So why the Christian Clergy did not put my name in The Cornish Times I do not know.  They must have known it was me.  They should have put my name, T. Pooley, in the Newspaper.  I do not know why they did not.   

And why did the Bible Tyrants not  come to our Tenement to talk to me?  I would have told them how Tom Pooley was born to call all Men to Pause and seek the Truth and I could have told them that it was one of the One Almighty’s Laws that everything falls on this Globe even a feather so that Heavens on high was all gammon and Christians were all being gammoned and Gravity was a Law and I would have told them that this Globe is a living, thinking and breathing ball of Fire and the Tides come and go and then they could have said what they wanted to say to me and then they might have said:  You are honest, Pooley, and we shall leave you in peace with your family. But No! These pious Tyrants wanted to persecute me.

But nothing happened and it was Maytime which is a  grand Time in all  Cornwall and it is grandest in Liskeard though it still rains and in the lanes all around and I was thinking how grand was this living and breathing Globe and how all the Plants were living and breathing on it and how men and women were also Plants on this Globe. And weeks passed and no one said anything to the Reverend Mr. Hobhouse of Saint Ive or to the clever Bodmin Lawyer, Mr. Grylls, about any thing though they already knew it was me, Tom Pooley, who was writing the One Wise Almighty’s Truth on Walls and Fences and Gates and Stiles and so I went on writing with my Chalk whenever and wherever I wanted and sometimes I wrote: CHRISTIAN HISTORY IS HORROR OF HORRORS - T.POOLEY,  and sometimes I wrote: THE ONE ALMIGHTY’S LAWS MUST COME TO LIGHT - T. POOLEY and I wrote a lot more and one Fateful Day in my Fateful Year, it was the twenty-second day of May, a day Tom Pooley will remember until Death and the Grave claim me, I was walking home from Looe and I was pasting up bills about Houses for sale which was work which I had found in Looe for there was no Labour to be done in Liskeard  and no wells to be sunk and a man must work at what he can and sometimes for only one meal a day.

But grand was the Day and I stopped at a Public House at Sandgate where I met with a Man called Richard Crapp.  I did not know him then but I know him now because the Christian Magistrates took him to Tom Pooley’s Trial and he spoke against Tom Pooley and he will have to carry his horrid unjust words to the Grave where there is no Rest.

Then I came to Duloe.  Duloe is a filthy place.  I could smell the Duloe pigs from a long way.

I came to a field Gate painted black.  It was one of the Reverend, Judas Iscariot, Bush’s field Gates but I did not know that then.  So I put down my paste can and my bills and I took out my lump of Chalk and on the Reverend Paul Bush’s Gate I wrote:

DULOE STINKS OF THE MONSTER CHRIST’S BIBLE - BLASPHEMY - T. POOLEY.

And then I walked home to Mary, my-wife, and my Children.

And these were my words that the Christian Magistrates turned into horrid Traps and Snares to entrap me but I did not know this at the time.

Man is born into this Globe but he does not know what he will have to go through.  Since I was born, O Woe!, O Death!  I have had every Christian hand against me.  I have been mocked and scorned in the streets of Liskeard where the children followed me and laughed and shouted and scorned and mocked my beard because I had the longest beard in the town.  It is not so long now.   It was long because I never cut it.  Even grown men would laugh at my long beard but they did not mock me too much because I was taller and more powerful than them.  I was mocked and scoffed at but never did I suffer real persecution until after I wrote on the Reverend Mr. Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush’s field Gate in Duloe.

When I wrote on The Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush’s field Gate I thought there was no one to see me, but I was wrong for there was this female,  there was a woman saw me.  This woman,  I did not know her then but I know her now, was Mary Bawden and she was Servant to the Reverend Mr. Paul Bush and she was working at the top of the field.  She was wheeling  Stones and she saw me write on the Gate but I did not see her until too late and I had no care of her but this Mary Bawden was the cause of the filthy Snare or Trap that entrapped me and caused me to be persecuted like poor, honest Galileo by an unjust Christian Judge and an unjust Christian Barrister that was that Judge’s Son. 

So, I had not seen that I had been caught in a Nest of Spiders and It was Maytime which is the best time for Man to Pause and wonder at this Globe that is so grand and is a breathing Mass of Fire and, in the Darkness, Man can look up at all the shining Globes on high and Pause and wonder.  But Man should not call the Sky the Heavens and the Christians are being gammoned for there are no Heavens there.   Christians have no wings to mount to fly to gammon Globes or Worlds on High.  Christian Tyrants on these my words may Pause and grin with a horrid sigh but all things fall on this Globe, even a feather.  This is a Law of the One Almighty and this is Gravity.  Man cannot ascend to the sky but here on this Globe that is so grand and is a breathing Mass of Fire Man must for ever abide.   Let Christian Tyrants Pause and think.  All their talk of Worlds on High is gammon.

So, in my Fateful Year,  this month of May was a grand sunny month.  There is always rain in Liskeard but in this month of May no rain fell on my head and it was grand to walk along the lanes and over the fields and it was grand to be in the town and it was grand to be alive and I did not know that I had been caught in a Nest of Spiders and so I had no cares but Man is born into this Globe but he never knows what he will have to go through.

        

In my Fateful Year, we, me and Mary, my wife, and my Children lived in Rooms in a tenement building off Dean Street.  We do not live there now.  We had been there many years. We were poor and often dined on only black bread and pilchard. Mr. Boase was our landlord and Mary my wife and I and our Children lived there except that John my oldest was not much at home and sometimes Mary my daughter was away too but there was always a crush in our rooms because Mary my wife took in washing and Mary my daughter sometimes helped.

 In The Poor Man’s home it is hard to move around and it was so in our Rooms for in our Rooms were always tubs and mangles and clothes and sheets and beds and all our goods and chattels but we were all honest and industrious and we kept our rooms clean not like some of our filthy and disgraceful neighbours.

When Mr. Holyoake wrote a pamphlet about me it was called Tom Pooley, the Cornish Well Sinker and he wrote about how honest was Tom Pooley.  Some of what he wrote was not True but most of it was.  All the clever Men and all the Humanists in England read his pamphlet and could read how honest and industrious I was and how I had been sometimes unjustly persecuted in Liskeard and how Tom Pooley got up early every morning to sweep up dirt and dust to sell and every Year I sold it and bought something for Mary my wife with the money and one year I bought a clock and another year I bought a mangle and how I said to Mary, my wife:  While the neighbours were asleep, Your Husband made that clock that clock for you.  And how I said to Mary, my wife:  Your Husband swept that mangle up in the streets for you.  And I still have Mr. Holyoake’s pamphlet to read again how honest and industrious I was when Mr Holyoake came down to Liskeard.  and how I was unjustly persecuted by the Bible Tyrants..

Mr. Holyoake came down in the September of my Fateful Year and in Liskeard he saw Mary ,my wife, but he did not see me for I was in the Cornwall County Asylum and he wrote in his pamphlet that she was an interesting Woman.  I have always thought that.  And he said that Mary, my wife, must have been very good-looking in her Youth which is True.  She was it.  He said that William Pooley, my youngest child, was a fine healthy lad which he was and he wrote William was clever and he told him to go the Night School which was the making of him but mostly he wrote about me though we did not meet face to face.  He wrote that I was tall and powerful which I was and lots of other things that showed the world that Tom Pooley was honest and industrious.  He did not say that I was interesting but I know I was as he came all the way down from London to write about me.

But I shall write no more about Mr. Holyoake now as he has not yet come to Liskeard but is still at 147 Fleet Street which is a true Press or Printing kept by George Holyoake &c. To keep the Human Family from Christian Darkness and Vice though some say they are all Atheists but I shall write more about Mr. Holyoake when he comes down to Liskeard.

It was May and sunny and Tom Pooley’s cares had dried up in the Sun and I walked in Liberty as a free Englishman with no one to stop me doing whatever I wanted and I wrote my words on Gates and Walls and Stiles and Fences and I liked Gates the most because of the straight lines.  And June was the same but it rained more than May but at the end of June was the Day that my Days as a free Man ended,  O Grief, O Woe!  How I suffered because I knew I was like the poor Fly caught in the Nest of horrid Spiders.  My English Liberty had come to an end though I was not yet in the filthy Christian Dungeon nor the Mad House.  But I could no longer breathe or sleep for fear of Bible Tyrants.

For this was another Fateful Day and it was the last Day of June when these two filthy Lackeys of the Clergy came to our door.  I did not know them.  O the Injustice of the Christians!  They had brought Tom Pooley a Summons.  I was with my Family.  I was there with Mary, my wife, and Mary, my daughter, and William, my Son, who was bound to a Carpenter.  And my eldest Son, John, was not there when these two men came. He mostly was not.  They burst in and said: Are you Thomas Pooley?  They tried to sound horrid but they could not. I stood up and I was taller and more powerful than they, for all their Bluster.  I am Thomas Pooley, I said,  Then we have a Summons for you to go before the Christian Magistrates,  they said.

Now, I have had Summonses before but this time an Icy Fear gripped my Heart like Death because I knew the Christian Magistrates wanted my Life’s Blood and they were plotting against me as they had done against poor Galileo but I did not show my Fear.  We shall read this Summons to you. they said. , I said:  NoI can read it myself better.   And I stood over them and moved them to the Door and they ran off like frightened rabbits but, when he was safe from me, one of the Lackeys shouted at me:  Pooley you are mad, but they were only beardless boys and tools of the Christian Clergy Magistrates.

So, I read some of the Summons to my Family and Mary, my daughter, read some too.  It was written in it that it was the Reverend Paul Bush, the Rector of the pig-stink Parish of Duloe that had laid complaint against Tom Pooley and made information against me and it was for what I had written on the Reverend Bush’s field gate when I wrote Duloe stinks of the Monster Christ’s Bible.  But what they wrote in the Summons was not True, that I had unlawfully and wilfully composed, written and published a certain scandalous, impious, blasphemous and profane Libel and spoken against God and scoffed at the Holy Scriptures which was all Lies for all  what I had done was what I was born to do, to write against Christian Injustice and Bible Tyranny nor had I published any thing or composed anything nor was it unlawful according to the Laws of the One Wise Almighty, nor was it according to the Law of England for all I had done was to write some words on a field Gate and had not spoken or scoffed, at least not so the Reverend Paul Bush knew.

And I said to Mary, my wife:  Has your Husband harmed any one?  No I have not.  I have sought only to save this Globe from Sin and Darkness as the One Wise Almighty called me to do.  It is Persecution like to poor Galileo.  And Mary, my wife,  said: Yes Tom, you are right.  And  I was excited and in a Passion and Mary my wife said to me: Do not go to lie on Thomas Pooley’s Grave tonight, Tom.  But I did and lay there till Morning and wept for Thomas Pooley who went to the Grave after only eleven years on this Globe and wept for myself, Tom Pooley, who was being persecuted by Christian Tyrants and Clergy Magistrates.

And the Summons was that Thomas Pooley had to go to Trecan Gate in the parish of Lameath in this County of Cornwall on the first day of July to be judged by the Christian Magistrates and I well knew what kind of justice I would meet there.  I knew what lay in store. The Summons was signed by the Reverend Mr. James Glencross.  I did not know him but he was another disgraceful Christian Clergy Magistrate. 

O Grief, O Woe!  It was five long Days of Misery I had to suffer before I must go to Trecan Gate in the Parish of Lameath.  I  was excited and I could not sleep the Night before my Trial so I rose from my bed after Midnight and went again to that only place on this Globe that I can call my own,  Thomas Pooley’s Grave.  There was a heavy slate which I had laid upon the Grave,  I had put it there with the flowers I had planted and the crystal Stones which I had put there and I had a nail to write upon this slate so I wrote:   Death and the Grave the Victory claims!  Bible Tyrants can’t destroy its Laws nor yet its Powers. The Grave gives Life,  the Grave sends Death.  Let Bible Tyrants behold the Tides how grand they Ebb and Flow.  By the Power of this Globe.  Tyrants be careful for your Life is not your own,  for in a Moment it is gone and called to the Grave and receives judgement.  Thomas Pooley,  July 1st.

Trecan Gate was a good walk away and I set out before the Sun was up and before I left I took a farewell of my Namesake’s Grave and I kissed the earth that was on the Grave for I knew what I was going into. I had with me three pence and a half pence and my Fancy Walking Stick that I would not have parted with for any money and I took my old toy, my rope which I hung around my neck to shame the Christian Magistrates but they know no Shame.  No Shame will ever tinge a Clergyman Magistrate’s brow.  I was a powerful Walker but it took me three hours from Liskeard to Trecan Gate and Trecan Gate is hard to find and I had not slept and I was weary when I came to the Public House at Trecan Gate which was where Christian Magistrates gather like black Crows on a dead Carcass for their Petty Sessions..

There were two beardless Policemen at the Public House at Trecan Gate that they called the Petty Session and one of the Policemen was Stripling.  I knew him.  Stripling was his name and that was what he was.  The other Policeman was too a mere boy.   A Female was there who had been insulted by a man and I told the policemen that Tom Pooley would never see the Female insulted, for Woman that brings Man into the world needs protecting and ought to be protected with a dagger at her side from the filthy Lust of the Bible Christians and I can never see the beautiful Female that is Woman insulted and I said if that blackguard, Jesus Christ, had done his Duty Men would know better than to insult a Woman as Woman is the weaker vessel and the One Almighty’s Laws do not let a man insult Females.  But what I said fell on deaf ears.  And I said that if that blackguard Jesus Christ had not stole the Donkey, Policemen would not be wanted and I said he was the forerunner of all theft and Stripling the Policeman said:  Pooley, you are  mad and then this disgraceful Policeman wrote down the words that I said to him and, O Grief, O Woe!, they were used against me by the Bible Tyrants  at my Trial at the Bodmin Assizes and Judge Coleridge gave me nine Months with hard labour in the Christian Dungeon just for those words but I did not do his Nine Months.

There were only two Christian  Magistrates to do the Petty Session and one was a Clergyman and one was not.  The unjust Clergy Magistrate was Parson Tathum and the unjust Other was Mr. Howell from Lostwithiel.  When I saw their horrid faces I was filled with Fear and Trembling.   My Heart was bursting.  I knew I was in a Christian Trap.  I was the poor Fly going into a Nest of Spiders.  I saw their horrid faces set like Stone and I knew I was going to be  persecuted like poor Galileo but when they asked me if I had written Blasphemy on the Reverend Paul Bush’s field-gate I did not deny anything.

I was fearful that they would fine me for I knew these Christian Magistrates will fine a man so heavy that he will not pay  and I would not pay and they would send me back to the cells at  Liskeard for a week or two or three but they had worse waiting for me.  I came to the Bench and I wanted to speak some grand words to shame the Christian Magistrates to show that  the Summons was not True or honest.  I wanted to tell them that they were  gammoned and there was a One Wise Almighty and that I had only done what I was born to do which is to call all men to seek the Truth but they would only let me speak one word and then that disgraceful Mr. Howell said:  Pooley you are guilty of the most vile Blasphemy and we are going to send you to Bodmin Gaol to wait for the Assizes in August and then we shall see what the Judge has in store for you.  And was that the Justice that I had walked all the way to Trecan Gate for?   O Grief! O Inhumanity!  No, no, no! O Woe!  It was not, and how a Christian Magistrate can die happy I do not know.  

So these two horrid Christian Spiders committed me to the Cornwall County Prison, Bodmin where I would have to wait many long weeks for an unjust Trial with a horrid Christian Judge and a Christian Grand Jury and a Christian Barrister that was the Judge’s own Son to persecute me and I would be in chains and behind iron bars and I thought I might die in the horrid Gaol for a man’s life is snatch to a moment and Mary, my-wife, and my Children would not know what had happened to me and I did not know what Tom Pooley would suffer for Man that is born of Woman into this world does not know what he will have to go through.

O Death!  Thou art that grand Shepherd that was created by The One Wise Almighty to bring Man to the Grave or on to this Globe for the Grave gives and the Grave takes.  Then what is the Grave and what is this Globe?  O Grave! O Grave!  Thou art a thinking Womb of Life to give all Life and to receive all Life.  Behold the Tides how they Ebb and Flow by the thinking and living Power of this Globe!

When the Magistrates had delivered their unjust sentence on me, Stripling, the blackguard policeman said:  Pooley, we must search you.  And he took from me my two knives, my tobacco box, my three pence and my halfpence and my Fancy Walking Stick  and he booked everything and he said I would have everything back when I came out of the Christian Gaol but he did not speak the Truth. I never saw my fancy walking stick nor any thing back again  I said to Stripling:  I have seen Donkeys sold at Auction for one shilling and sixpence but I would not part with that Fancy Walking Stick for one shilling and sixpence. But Stripling only said:  Pooley,  you are mad.  That was all the blackguard could say and the other policeman said the same but they were only beardless boys trained to do the Clergy’s dirty work.  Perjury and Drunkenness is their Delight.

O  Christian Tyranny is horrid!!  O Christians!  Is this the religion of your Christ?  Awake, awake from your horrid Deeds of Darkness and seek the Truth, O Christians  And horrid are the black walls of Bodmin Gaol and horrid are the iron bars and the drunken Turnkeys with their keys and rattling chains.  

Tom Pooley had endured the unjust Petty Assize and I knew not what I yet had to go through and in the Gaol  the Turnkeys let me have Paper and Pen and Ink and I wrote home to Mary, my wife, and I wrote to her many times for I was waiting for my Trial for four weeks which was unjust and I still have the letters that I wrote.

So I wrote to my Wife:  I have done nothing to cause my face to blush, Mary, nor to disturb my mind nor yet my dying moments.  And I wrote another time to tell Mary, my wife,  that I thought I was dying and I did not know what was the matter with me.   Mary, I wrote, if I die, I hope you will bring me home and bury me in Thomas Pooley’s Grave,  the only place on this Globe that I can call my own.  What those Bible Christians mean to do with me I do not know but I trust in the One Great and Wise Almighty.  I suppose they would like to hang me if they could but  I will not deny the Truth of the One Great and Grand and Almighty Power, Mary.  I hope you and the Children are well. 

And in another letter I wrote to Mary, my wife:  Liberty, I will die for, Mary.  I hope you and the Children are well.  As for me, my heart is bad and is still going worse.  I don’t think I shall live much longer but the time I have to live I must bring to light that Grand and Wise Almighty Power.  This is what I wrote but I wrote a lot more to Mary-my-wife, who was working hard with the washing and had a wound on her leg that was getting worse, and the drunken Turnkeys let me have as much Cornwall County Prison, Bodmin notepaper as I could write on and writing stopped me being too excited.

And while I was unjustly imprisoned in that horrid place I paused and thought about what I would say to the Christian Judge when I went to the Assizes and I thought:  I will tell him about the One Wise Great and Grand Almighty and how I was born to lead Man to Peace, Love and Harmony and the Judge would save his Character from Shame and Disgrace and say to me:  Pooley, do you truly believe it is the One Almighty Being that has brought all things into Being?, and I would have told him to place his Finger on his Pulse and Pause on that Grand Law whereby the Almighty Laws must come to Light and the Laws and the Victory of the Grave must be brought to Light and I would ask him by what Grand Law does this Pulse cease to beat and I would tell him that the Grave is a thinking Womb of Life and I would tell him to behold the Tides how grand they Ebb and Flow by the Living and Thinking Powers of this Globe and that Death and the Grave the Victory claim.   And the Judge would say:  You are honest, Pooley, I see now that you are honest,  Go home to your wife and your family!  But when I came to my Trial I did not say any of these things. 

So at last came the Fateful Day of my Fateful Year when I took my Trial which was the first Day of July .  Two Constables came to my Cell to carry me away to the Black Hole they call the Bodmin Shire Hall and they locked me in a horrid Dungeon down below where I was going to be tried.  It was a Cell no bigger than a cupboard and it was as dark as night and others were there all wailing and gnashing of teeth and a Female Woman, she was no more than a girl was weeping near me because her baby had died and the horrid Shire Hall Turnkeys came along and cried: Take her up, and they took up this Female who was only a girl up to be judged and she did not come back.  And I think how sweet Death would be and I wish I could take Poison and die on Mary, my wife’s, Bosom.

And one of the drunken Turnkeys comes by and pokes his filthy face through the iron bars of my Cell and says:  You have pulled the short straw, Pooley.   You are up for Blasphemy and you have got Judge Coleridge and Judge Coleridge is the most Christian Judge in England. And I said: Let the most Christian Judge do his worst for the One Great and Grand Almighty will rescue me.  And this horrid Turnkey says:  you are mad, Pooley.  But Tom Pooley was right.

So two Policemen came for me and they took me up and they pulled and pushed me up the narrow stairs up into the Court Room and into the place where their Victims stand and I stood there but I could not see.  And then I saw the Christian Judge in his Judge’s wig and a more horrid sight my eyes never beheld.  He looked down at me with a look that made me know that this time Tom Pooley had fallen into the Spiders’ Nest for certain.  So then I see the Cornwall County Grand Jury and I see twelve Rich Men with horrid faces like Stones and they look on me like they are looking on a horrid slug or worm and the Court Room is full of Bodmin Christians who have come to see the Infidel Tom Pooley tried and punished and I think the Mule breed and the Christian breed are alike for the Human Family is noble and grand Beings formed but since they have been gammoned by the Christian Tyrants their whole breed is badly disfigured and thrown out of order with one filthy disease and the other and Man and Woman have become sly, unjust, selfish, deceiving and lying and they are not to be trusted.

And in the Court Room I saw the policeman, Stripling, who had been at Trecan Gate and there was a disgusting Newspaper Man there but I did not know it until later when he wrote that I looked dirty looking and I dare say that he would have looked dirty looking if he had been in the horrid Christian Gaol for four long Weeks and he wrote that I was excitable which I was and he wrote that my long beard was grisly but is that a crime to have a grisly beard?  No, it is not.

And then I saw the Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush of Duloe Parish who informed and complained and he was all skin and bone and ginger and he was with two other Clergy that I did not know in their black dress and white neckties enjoying their Triumph and these Clergymen say they are the Shepherds and have care of all Men’s Souls but they are gammoning the Christians every Day for that they are quick to persecute honest Men like poor Galileo and Tom Pooley and they live in Splendour while the Poor Man lives a filthy Life and often on one meal a Day and it is only fair that the Rich Man should taste the Poor Man’s Misery.

So then the Judge says a few words about how horrid it is to scoff at his Blessed Saviour and to be impious and an Infidel and then up jumps the disgraceful Barrister who was this Judge’s Son and he starts to tell the Jury that I am guilty of everything.  I did not know that this Barrister was the Judge’s Son but I know it now and how was it that the Christian Clergy employed a Christian Counsel against me that was the Son of that Christian Judge?   And what will a Father and Son not  do their Deeds of Torture and Infamy to inflict I do not know but Death that comes to all Men will come to them and their Dying Moments will unfold all things. But then I see Mary,my daughter, in the Court Room which I did not expect and it is a Crumb of Comfort for me to see her honest face in the crowd and she has walked from Liskeard to Bodmin to see me, which is fourteen miles but I think some kind Wagoner took her up and she tries to smile at me but I can see that she is sad.

And then the horrid Barrister who was the Judge’s Son says that England allows Decent Argument and there are a lot of Decent Men who are against Christ and they are free to say what they like but Tom Pooley is not a Decent Man and must be punished for Blasphemy because I am guilty of everything.  But what he said was all filthy lies for I had done no harm to anyone and all that I had done was that which I was born to do but the clever Judge’s Son can make the Grand Jury think that black is white and white is black and I see all the Rich Men’s heads nodding and I think now Tom Pooley is in the Spiders’ Nest and I am the poor Fly. 

So then the unjust Barrister tells the Court that he has witnesses that will show that Tom Pooley is not Decent and is guilty of all the Charges. And the first witness is the Woman, Mary Boaden who is the Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush’s female servant and I do not know her.  She saw me writing on the Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush’s field-gate and she told the Court that she cannot swear it was Tom Pooley that wrote on the field Gate but I know it was me. 

And O Woe! O Death! The next Christian witness was the Man that bought and sold me for two pounds and it was the Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush of Duloe Parish in his black dress and white necktie who had laid the complaint and given the information against me and he talked like he looked - very ginger!  And he is not much more than a boy for all his whiskers and he told the Judge how he washed my words from off his Gate because they were so horrid but he had seen them and they were Blasphemy and they were DULOE STINKS OF THE MONSTER CHRIST’S BIBLE -  T. POOLEY.   And he says the Truth for that is what I wrote but when he says those words the Judge and his clever Son and the Grand Jury all shudder and look horrid. 

And the next witness was William Michel and I did not know him.  All he said was that he saw me walking up the road and that I was there on the road to the Gate and he recognised me and I was the Man, which I was. And Mary Bowden had shown him my writings on the field Gate but he could not read it, only Jesus Christ and T. Pooley he could read.

And the Barrister talked and talked and got into a grand Passion and I can tell that the Judge was thinking this is a very clever Barrister but I do not know it was his Son,  and the heads of the County of Cornwall Grand Jury were nodding and I saw that they would hang me if they could and the next witness was Richard Crapp.  I knew him.  He was the man I met in the Public House at Sandgate and I had said to him how grand the potato crop was and he said it would be a grand crop if the Disease did not get them and I said if Christians would burn all their Bibles and dress the crops with the Ashes there would be no Disease and Richard Crapp tells the Judge and Grand Jury what I had said and he spoke Truth for that was what I said but O Richard Crapp! How will you feel on your Dying Day that you have betrayed Tom Pooley that drank beer with you in the Public House at Sandgate?  

So the Father was the Judge and his Son was the Barrister and what was that to have a Father and Son against me?  Was that Decent?  Was that Justice?  No, it was not!  And the clever Barrister asked me if I wanted to say anything and I said that the One Wise Almighty had sent Man very good potatoes but the Bible had let them rot and Jesus Christ had made the good potatoes into bad crops.  But I saw I was caught in the Christians’ Trap and Snare and I saw how the Christian Judge were telling Lies and the Christian Barrister too so I said I had never said anything about burning Bibles but I had.

And, long after my Trial, Mr Holyoake told me how the Christians had plotted to use my Slate as evidence against me.  This was the Slate on Thomas Pooley’s Grave on which I wrote:  Death and the Grave its Victory Claim  Bible Tyrants can’t destroy its Laws nor yet its Powers.  And I had written more,  So the Policemen had found my writing and had taken my Slate up to Bodmin as Evidence to trap me some more.  But the clever Son of Judge Coleridge thought the Jury might think:  Here is poor Tom Pooley whose little Son is in the Grave, let us acquit him and send him home to his poor Wife and his poor Family.  So he did not do anything about the Slate and the words I wrote there. 

So then Judge Coleridge asked me if I wanted to say something to the Grand Jury of the County of Cornwall and I did and I think of poor Galileo and I said that I hope the Grand Jury are not all Christians and some of them laughed a horrid laugh but Judge Coleridge told them not to.  And I said that this Globe is a Living and Thinking Ball of Fire and that Death will put an end to Christian Tyrants and I said that The One Wise Almighty had made Death to put an end to the Triumph of Tyrants and that I looked to the Grave for Justice and if they found it in their Breasts to torture me I would give up my Life’s blood but would not bow to Christian Tyranny.

But I saw that they took no Shame and it was horrid in that Court Room with all those disgraceful eyes, except for Mary-my-daughter’s, looking at me as though I was a slug or a worm but what had I done?  Had I done Harm to any one of them?  No!  Had I called Man and Woman to lead a drunken and blackguard Life?  No!  Had I called Man or Woman to live that disgraceful life to bring Children into the World and then starve or murder them?  No!  Had I called Man or Woman to rob the Rich Man or the Rich Man to rob the Poor Man?  No! Had I called Man to Strife, which is the blackest of Sins in the eyes of The One Almighty?  No! No! No!

If Tom Pooley had upholded those filthy Christian Bible Laws Judge Coleridge and his clever Son with the Christian Clergy and the Cornish County Grand  Jury would have acquitted me and let me go home to Mary, my-wife, and my Children.  But as I do not uphold those filthy Laws I was found guilty with one Year and nine Months in the Christian Dungeon to roam.  Was that Justice?  No! No!  

So then this Judge Coleridge in his Judge’s wig stood up to judge me and he was a little, old, angry man and if we were level I would have loomed over him and he said I must go and serve one Year and nine Months under a Drunken Chaplain who would correct my Error and this Judge said he had never known a case so shocking and it was disgraceful to say anything against Our Blessed Saviour.  But unjust Mr. Judge Coleridge will find in his Dying Moment that he has been guilty of Private Murder which is worse than Wilful Murder in the sight of the One Almighty for he sentenced me to Gaol and the Prison Chaplain there would make me into a Christian and teach me to renounce the One Wise Almighty but I knew I would be like poor Galileo, who was cast into the Christians’ Dark Dungeon for asserting the Roundity of this Globe, and I would stay true to the One, Wise Almighty.  For I would stand my Life and freely give it for to uphold the Laws of the One Almighty and the Laws and Victory of the Grave that acts as a grand thinking Womb of Life and gives Justice to All Men. 

Then all that Judge Coleridge had said he said again and he said: Go and serve one Year and Nine Months in the Dungeons of Bodmin gaol and then he said Take Him Down and the Constables came to clutch me and take me down. 

Now this little, Christian Judge that stood up to judge Tom Pooley was full of Injustice and Tyranny and he reprimanded this Man for his impious conduct.   Now, what has Tom Pooley done?  He has looked for honest Labour, honest Justice, honest Laws in Peace, Love and Harmony with all Mankind and done his Duty to destroy that Book that upholds Murder, Wars, Vice, Misery, Blasphemy, Drunkenness, Whoredom and upholds Tyranny and has drenched this Globe with Human Blood.

And the Constables came and clutched me but I wanted to shake the hand of Mary-my-daughter who had come all the way from Liskeard to Bodmin to see her Father and she was close to me so I asked the Judge to let me shake her hand and why should an honest request ever be refused?  But this cruel Judge said: No!  But I was taller and more powerful than the Constables.  They were only beardless boys and I broke from them and I shook Mary-my daughter’s hand and,  O Woe!, she was weeping and wailing and I said to her:  Do not weep and wail, Mary, for someone will rise up and rescue me from the Bible Tyrants.  And what I said was True.

When I let the Constables clutch me again they tried to take me down but the Duty I had to the One Almighty was to tell this Christian Judge to put on the Black Cap and pass the Sentence of Death on me for Christian Gammon and Christian Tyranny were unbearable and so I shouted back at this Judge and his clever Son and the Christian Grand Jury and all the People could hear me because my voice is Powerful.  And then because I shook Mary-my-daughter’s Hand I was sentenced to spend three days in the Dark Dungeon and on Bread and Water.  But why did that unjust Judge refuse my honest Request.?  In his dying Moments he will know but I do not know.  And I did not know what was this Dark Dungeon but I soon found out. 

There at the horrid  Cornwall County Prison, Bodmin were the drunken Turnkeys with their Belts and Keys and Chains and horrid Faces like Stones and they wanted to persecute Tom Pooley and they wanted to put me straight away in the Dark Dungeon but I cast them off like an oak tree casts off raindrops when the wind blows so they called for more Turnkeys and they put me in that Hell Hole that is the Dark Dungeon and I was there for three Days and Nights and with nothing to eat and drink but stale bread and prison water just for wanting to shake Mary-my-daughter’s hand and I ask:  is that Justice?  No! No!

So I was in that Dark Dungeon for three Days and three Nights but I did not know Day from Night and the disgraceful Turnkeys brought me a piece of black bread and prison water in a tin cup but not often and I did not know the days and I did not know when they would let me out but I knew the One Wise Almighty would rescue me even if it was with Death and the Grave for as a Child plucks a flower so Death plucks Man back.

But Death was not to be my Portion and they let me out of that Dark Dungeon and I was a blind and mazed and I was not feeling so powerful and I knew not how long my Torture had been but the drunken Turnkeys told me that I had been there three Days and three Nights and I was excited and in a Passion and when they brought me food I would not eat it and the drunken Turnkeys set on me and tried to force me but my Power came back to me and I did not but then I got hungry so I ate again.

And the Turnkeys put me down as a Jew but I was not and they said I must take of my clothes and be hosed and they wanted to put me into the shameful prison clothes and I said I would not wear them and I asked if it was Justice to be tortured for wanting to shake Mary, my daughter’s hand when I was being sent to the Dungeons and I asked if it was right that an honest request should be refused but they did not listen and their faces were like Stones.

And these Turnkeys wanted to cut off my beard and they tried to cut it off but my Power returned to me so that I cast them off and they thought it best not to cut off Tom Pooley’s beard.  But then four of the drunken Turnkeys set on me and after my Torture I was not powerful enough to cast them off  and they took away my clothes and hosed me with icy cold water and then six of the horrid Turnkeys put me into the shameful prison clothes and locked me in a filthy prison cell with horrid iron bars and,  O Woe!  O Death!  I was there alone.

And the next Day there came the Cornwall County Prison Chaplain to my cell.  So, what was this Chaplain?  He was a filthy drunkard that drinks a pint of ale every day and a half of gin, rum or brandy every Night before he goes to bed but I was glad he came for I was born to tell drunken Chaplains the Truths of the One Wise Almighty.   So this Chaplain says he has come to do what Judge Coleridge had said at my Trial.  He was come with his Bible and his Prayer Book to make a Christian of me so that I might go to  Heaven and I said that Judge Coleridge was an unjust Judge which he would discover in his Last Moments and so would the clever Barrister who had come to Bodmin to persecute Tom Pooley and the drunken Chaplain said that was the pious Judge’s Christian Son and he was a good Christian but his Father, Judge Coleridge, was the most Christian Judge in the land and some Men said that this Judge was like Christ in Character and Beauty.  And I said he was more like Pontius Pilate crucifying honest Labourers. And the drunken Chaplain said:  Now Pooley, Judge Coleridge only wants that you be saved and go to Heaven.   And I was glad he said that.  It made me excited and put me in a Passion and I told him that I was a Friend to the Peace of Man with honest Laws, honest Labour and honest Justice to all Men and I looked back on the Christian History with Horror of Horrors,  its Wars, its Vice, its Torture, its Blasphemy and I said that what  the Christians have robbed and burned and trampled the Fruits of this Globe underfoot is horrible and lamentable to unfold and what Christians should do was to do away with their filthy Bibles with their disgraceful characters such as is that Lot that slept with his two daughters and that David that murdered Uriah the Hittite and that Christ who stole the Donkey and if Christ had not stolen the Donkey no Policemen would have been wanted for Lot and his daughters are enough for to prove that the Bible is a Book to keep the whole Human Family in Misery and Strife and I told this Prison Chaplain that it was to destroy these horrid Deeds that Tom Pooley took his Trial before Judge Coleridge and then I told that Prison Chaplain that Heaven is Gammon.  I told him that Heaven on High was a tool for lazy fools to catch a lot of silly Dupes by gammoning them about Globes on High which was not True.  For all things fall on this Globe even to a Feather which is a Law of the One Almighty and a Law of Gravity. For, Pause and Think!, even if Men could grasp the Sun or Moon with ropes or hands to help them from this Globe, the ropes would break and the hands would surely fall back to this Globe for even a Feather falls back and it is a Law.

And I told this drunken Clergyman, the Chaplain of the Cornish County Gaol, Bodmin that all the Christians, Male and Female, should ponder on the Laws of this grand Globe for Christian Tyrants have pawned it, sold it by Auction, drenched it in Blood and made it a Wilderness of Sin, Vice, Injustice, Whoredom, Misery and Blasphemy.  But the drunken Parson only said:  You are mad Pooley and I shall tell the Governor that you are mad.

So, for that I was mad and in a Passion and so I took off my shameful prison clothes and tore them into pieces and sat naked in the corner of my Cell.  And when the horrid Turnkeys came by, there were six of them, and clutched me and dressed me again I waited when they were gone and I took off the shameful clothes again and ripped up their filthy clothes again and after that they left me alone in my Cell, cold and naked and persecuted but not in those disgraceful prison clothes.

This Cornwall County Gaol was a horrid Hell but if the Gaol was Hell the Governor of it played the part of the Devil complete.  The Turnkeys were feared of him.  He had learned his Cruelty on the Hulks and they called him Jack.  This Governor came by my Cell.  Behold the horrid shaking limbs his Christian Tyranny had brought him to!  He said: So this is the Jew, Pooley, but I said: Tom Pooley is not a Jew but a Jew is not so horrid as a Christian, and he swore a great oath at me.  So I asked this Devil of a Governor for Pen, Ink and Paper so that I could write a letter to Mary,mywife, but this cruel Devil  only laughed and his horrid limbs shook and his horrid voice was like thunder and he said I must put on the shameful prison clothes or go back into the Dark Dungeon and eat only stale bread and drink only the horrid prison water again,  So I put on the prison clothes.

But why did this shaking Governor who called me a Jew not let me write a letter to Mary-my-wife?  It was an Honest Request and why should an Honest Request ever be refused?  Is this Christianity I ask or is this Christian Torture?  And Governor Everest will come to learn in his Dying Moment that he will never rest in the Grave.  

And the Drunken Chaplain came back to my Cell with his Bible and his Prayer Book and he said that the pious Judge Coleridge only wanted to save me and that he was now suffering because people were saying he was cruel and unjust but he was not and I was glad to hear that Judge Coleridge was suffering because I was suffering and it is nothing but Fair Play that the Rich Man should taste the bitter cup of the Poor Man’s misery. 

And the Drunken Chaplain said to me:  Pooley, are you not feared of Death?  And I was glad he said that and I told him that though Clergymen dress up in Christian Clergymens’ gowns and Judges dress up in Judges’ wigs and though Christians have horrid Dungeons and Snares, they cannot trap Death nor can they destroy the Victory of the Grave for as a Child plucks a flower so Death plucks back a Man and while the Tides Ebb and Flow by the Living and Thinking Power of this Globe the Grave must be a thinking Womb of Life for what is Man?  Man is a plant on this Globe and can’t be destroyed.  For Truth is Truth and all Men and all Things fall on this Globe but the Grave has two Laws, a Law to Give and a Law to take back..

AndI told him that happy were the Days when all Men could plant their own vines and eat the fruit thereof.  In those Days Peace reigned with Happiness and Man lived on this Globe as do the Waters that cover the Deep.

And I told him that  Christians should be very careful and should show to all Men honest Law and do away with their old Laws for they are very bad and I said that the way how David murdered Uriah the Hittite was filthy and so was Lot and his Daughters and the Christian Bible upholds these horrid Crimes. 

And the Drunken Parson said:  I do not think that I shall ever make a Christian of you, Pooley, and I shall not come to you again.  You have Delusions and I shall tell the Governor you have Delusions and that you are mad. 

So, O Woe! O Death!, another long week went by and every Day was like a Month of Torture and the Drunken Parson did not come. He had eaten his fill of Tom Pooley and had no appetite for more and only the disgraceful Turnkeys came to bring me food and I had no Pen or Ink or Paper to write and the noises of the Cornwall County Gaol were horrid, the sobbings and shoutings and weepings and wailings Night and Day and I did not rip off my clothes for that I did not want to be put in the Dark Dungeon again and I wanted to go home and grasp Mary my wife again but I could not and I did not sleep right.

But at the end of that filthy time,  after I had been in the Hell that is Bodmin Prison for fifteen long Days, the Devil that was Governor Everest with his shaking limbs came to my Cell and in his horrid, loud voice he  shouted: Pooley, the Chaplain has told me you are mad andThe Secretary of State has heard about your Delusions and the Secretary of State has ordered that you go to the Cornwall County Asylum, Bodmin, where they will put an end to your Delusions and make a Christian of you. and he said to the Turnkeys: take him away! and two of them grasped me and took me away and dressed me in my own honest clothes.  And I was glad that the shaking Governor had said this and I would have shook the Secretary of State by the Hand if he had come to Bodmin for I knew that, however horrid the Cornwall County Asylum was, it could not be so horrid as the Cornwall County Gaol which was Christian Hell and the Governor was the very Devil and the Turnkeys were the Christian Fallen Angels and if mine were Delusions they carried me from Hell into that Christian Heaven which is the Asylum where they say mazed people are to be found but this I stoutly deny for there is madder and more unjust Men left loose on the face of this Globe than are in the Cornwall County Asylum, Bodmin and so the Delusions raised Tom Pooley up and saved me from that Hell and that shaking Devil and his Drunken Chaplain and his Fallen Angel Turnkeys.  So I knew then that the One Wise Almighty rescued me and the Secretary of State rescued me  but I did not know then that it was also Mr. George Holyoake and his Humanists in London that rescued me.

So two Constables, they were only beardless boys, came and carried me in a van to the Asylum and so I was not long in that Hell they call Bodmin Gaol  but I will remember to the Grave the Horrors of that place where I was three Days and Nights in the Dark Dungeon with only bread and water and all for shaking the hand of Mary, my daughter, and they had set a Drunken Parson on me and they had set me down as a Jew.  And if that was Hell then the County of Cornwall Asylum was Heaven.

And when I entered into the Asylum I was met as though I was no common Madman. by Mr. Hicks, the Governor and by Doctor Adams, the Doctor,   And this Governor is a little, fat Man and his eyes are bright and shining and he says to the Doctor:  Ah, so this is Pooley, the Man whose name is in all the Papers. and I did not know what he meant and I thought maybe my Trial had been printed in The Cornish Times but the Governor knew something that I did not and Doctor Adams who is an honest Doctor, but only a boy for all his whiskers, said:  I think, sir, we should not excite Mr. Pooley.  And there is a Christian Chaplain there in white sleeves but Doctor Adams says to me:  Do not worry, Pooley,  we will not let the Chaplain bother you.  And that is the first time any one called Tom Pooley, Mr. Pooley and I think here are two very kind and honest Men and here is like the Christians think is Heaven. 

And Doctor Adams said:  this place is a Hospital and you are a Patient here, Mr. Pooley, and there is no Shame.  And for that he said there was no Shame in it I put on the Asylum dress that was better than my own and they did not hose me and the Food was better than in that Hell, the County of Cornwall Prison, Bodmin and they gave me Pen, Ink and Cornwall County Asylum Writing Paper that I could write to Mary, my wife, and I wrote to her and she wrote to me back and that was honest and kind and I wrote:  Mary, my mind is clear at present and I don’t think my mind condemns me as I put my faith in that Good and Wise and Powerful Almighty and he will bring me through all my Trials and Troubles and you and I, Mary, shall come together again.  So Truth must come to light as Time, Tide, Life and Death are here by the Power of this Globe so grand.

And I wrote:  How happy we would be, Mary, if instead of persecuting her Husband they would give him a rough Cottage on the south side of Saint Cleer Down and give him all the land he could have brought into cultivation in One Year and how grand this would have looked in Ages to Come and Men would have smiled at this kind deed and your Husband would have been the happiest Man on this Globe with this Land to call his own and why should an honest request be denied?  For all Men are Plants of this Globe and can’t be destroyed.

And I wrote to Mary-my-wife that there is none that can give her Husband a bad Character for he has done his Duty in the sight of the Almighty and I wrote to her about the three Days and three Nights I had in the Christian Dark Dungeon and I wrote her how for only shaking hands with my only daughter Bread and Water was my fare and I wrote to tell her that her Husband was a Prisoner of the Truth like honest Galileo and I wrote to tell her that some Men have no Love for their wives but that was not the case with her Husband and True Love would never die.

And I wrote a lot more things and the writings kept me from Excitements and Passions and

I wrote that Mary-my-wife should keep my letters for History and for the Time when such things would be needed and she did and Mary-my-wife wrote letters back to me but what she wrote I have forgot.

So honest Mr. Hicks, the Governor or Superintendant of the Bodmin Asylum said to me:  Pooley,  we think you should work in the Gardens but if you are weary you should not work at all.  Which was very kind but I know now that he had received  letters from London from Mr. Holyoake, which said how I was honest and industrious and that it was unjust to snatch me from my wife and family and so he was being kind but he was being careful and the Gardens were grand and I worked there like two men and I found for Mary,my wife, two big pears from the pear-tree and I found for her two grand turkey oak acorns to plant on Thomas Pooley’s Grave and I meant that they should grow into two grand turkey oak trees and future Ages would be amazed to see such grand trees on Tom Pooley’s Grave but, O Woe! O Death!,  they did not grow.  And when Mary-my-daughter came to visit she took the pears and the turkey acorns back with her and each Day at Dawn and Dusk I thanked the One Wise Almighty that now I was in the Heaven that is the Cornwall County Asylum, Bodmin and Mr. Hicks and Doctor Adams are the good Angels of it.

But what was the news from Liskeard I did not know but Mr Holyoake, the friend of Humanity and the Captain of the Humanists, was come to Liskeard to find out about Tom Pooley and he went to our Rooms in the Tenement.  And I did not then know Mr. Holyoake, not even his name, but I do now.

So when Mary-my-daughter came to the County of Cornwall Asylum, Bodmin to see her Father she came to me in the Gardens where I was working and I was happy to see her honest Face and I could see she was excited but I did not know why.  I said to her:  What is the news from Liskeard, Mary?,  and, O Woe! she said:  Mother is working too hard and she is not well.   Her bad leg is bad again and she has a wound that does not heal and it is getting worse and no one comes to help us, but someone has come now.   And some days we have nothing to eat and William comes home but John mostly does not and a Christian Lady, a Clergyman’s wife, came to see Mother and we thought she might have something for us but she had nothing and she came to tell Mother that she was glad you were in the Cornwall County Gaol for that you deserve to be there and you were in the right place because you are an Infidel and Mother would not let her in the door and Mother stood there  with her hands on her hips and told this Lady: my Husband is an honest Man that never did any harm to anybody but the Christian Clergy did harm when they took him away from us for my Husband provided for us and the Christian Clergy have given us nothing and I have three Children to feed and how am I to live?  And the Christian Lady ran away and she did not come back.

And I said;  What kind of Christian Cruelty is that for this Lady to come to our door, empty handed and tell to your Mother that I was in the right place and I said I wager that Lady was the wife of that filthy Clergyman that I asked to say the words over Thomas Pooley when he was lying dead and that Clergyman said:  No, no Pooley!, and he said I was a filthy Atheist which I am not.  And did this horrid Clergy wife come to help us in our mortal distress? No, she did not.  She came to tell your Mother that I was in the right place when I was in the Hell that is the Cornwall County Gaol and that I deserved to be there and was that honest?  No, it was not.  And Mary, my daughter. said:  Yes Father, you are right.

And then Mary my daughter said:  And Mr Boase told us that the Reverend Mr. Paul Bush wrote a long letter that is in the newspapers and in this horrid letter he wrote how a Blasphemer had been sent to Gaol for one Year and nine Months at Bodmin for writing Blasphemy and that this Blasphemer was now in the right place and it was easy to put Blasphemers in Gaol and more Christian Parsons should send Blaphemers to the Gaol..  So I said:  Did the Reverend Mr. Paul Bush put my name in the letter? And Mary said ‘No!’ and I was troubled that my name was not in the newspapers but I said:  Let the Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush triumph for he will tremble and he will learn in his Dying Moments what it means to persecute Tom Pooley  He will find out that the One Wise Almighty will triumph over him for Death and the Grave the Victory will have.  And Mary,my daughter, said:  Yes Father, you are right.

But then Mary, my daughter, said:  But I have some news but I do not know how to tell it you for Doctor Adams says you must not be excited or in a Passion.  So I said: I will not be excited or in a Passion,  and Mary said:  You know, Father, in the Shire Hall, you said to me that some friend will rise up to rescue you,  well, that friend has risen up and he is a Gentleman from London who has said he will rescue you and he is going to write a Pamphlet about you and he will ask the Queen to pardon you and she will,  and his name is Mr. George Holyoake and he is the friend of Humanity but I must not tell you any more for Doctor Adams told that you must not be excited.  And this was the first time I ever heard the name of Mr George Holyoake the friend of Humanity and what Mary-my-daughter did not tell me was that, all that time she was with me in the Gardens, Mr Holyoake was there standing in the trees with Doctor Allen like a Spy and he wanted to meet with me but Doctor Adams would not let him, he did not want me excited for he knew it was not good for me.  And I gave Mary-my-daughter the two Pears and the two Turkey acorns for Thomas Pooley’s Grave to give her Mother and she left me in the Gardens. 

So what I did not know was that this Mr. Holyoake was come from Liskeard with Mary-my-daughter in a grand carriage drawn by two grand horses and she had never been with a Gentleman before and never in nothing more than a Donkey cart and that was why she was so excited but she told me nothing more because of what Doctor Adams had said and Mr. Holyoake drove her home in the dark, back home to her Mother and  he was staying at Channon’s Grand Hotel in the  Market Place but the next morning he went back ro 147 Fleet Street, London to write his Pamphlet about Tom Pooley, the Cornish Well Sinker but I did not know this.

But I thought a lot about the Gentleman from London who was Mr. Holyoake and about the Queen granting Tom Pooley’s Pardon and I thought the Queen will be at Buckingham Palace and Mr. George Holyoake will enter and he will be holding out my Pardon and he will say: Here is the Pardon for Thomas Pooley for you to sign.  And the Queen will say to Prince Albert:  Why should an honest request be refused?  And she will sign it and then the Queen of England and her Royal Consort  will know Tom Pooley’s name.

So while I was in the Asylum I tried not to speak of the One Wise Almighty and his Laws and I said nothing about them but I wrote to Mary, my wife, about these Laws for, although the Asylum was Heaven after the Hell that was Bodmin Gaol I missed my Family and wanted to grasp Mary, my-wife, in my arms and sometimes I wrote with Tears in my Eyes but mostly I was happy.   And honest Mr. Hicks had said I was a good Patient and the Asylum was a Hospital and so I was patient and did not rip up my Asylum clothes for that there was no badge of Shame or Crime in them.

And sometimes it was grand in the Asylum and there was always good food and there were mazed men there who were not so mazed as many I have known let loose on the face of this Globe and  and there came a grand time at the Asylum when honest Doctor Adams, he was not much more than a boy for all his whiskers, was married and they gave me a piece of the wedding cake that I sent home for Mary, my wife, and the Children to taste and we all wished Doctor Adams and the lovely Female that he espoused a good Marriage and a happy Life.

And in this Hospital where I was a Patient I had time to Pause and think.  And I had Pen and Ink to write down my thoughts for History on the Cornwall County Asylum Paper.  And I wrote: When will the Christians get sick of shedding Human Blood?  For it appears to me that they take a pride in murdering one the other and they make game of the One Wise Almighty’s Laws.  What horrors, what Groans, what Wars, what Strife, what Sin with Injustice, Torture and Tyranny has this Christ left with the Human Family!  And yet Christians are so blind that they won’t take Shame but they seem to smile to see one Christian make War and Slaughter one the other and they make prayers to this Christ for those Deeds of Horror.  And I condemn them to be worse than the mazed men that I see here in the Cornwall County Asylum or Hospital and worse than the Cannibals across the Ocean so they are trained like a Pack of Hounds to do these Deeds of Horror.  So those degraded wretches think that this Christ will pardon their filthy Crimes and Sins but let them be careful,  there is no Pardon for their horrid Crimes. They are Murderers guilty,  for Man that is born of Woman knows not what he is born for and what he has got to go through and I was born to call all Men to Pause and seek the Truth for Man and all things fall on this Globe none can’t deny.

Then, what is this Globe?  Why!, it is a body of living and thinking matter for Time, Life and Death are kept to a moment of Time so grand.   And where is that same Christian who will dare to say but what these Laws belong to this Globe and that it must be a living and thinking Power to keep those Laws so grand?

So an insane Christian sees Wonders with a diseased eye and brain from a foul Disease that never was divine.  O Christians! O take Shame!  This Christ is just a tool for lazy fools to catch a lot of silly Dupes, to gammon Globes on high.  Let Christians on this Truth but pause!  If they could grasp the Sun or Moon with ropes or hands to help them from this Globe, they are sure to fall.  So it is useless for Men to try.  -  T. Pooley, The Cornwall County Asylum, Bodmin.

All this I wrote down on the papers of the Cornwall County Asylum but I hid them away and Doctor Alan and Mr. Hicks did not see them but I kept them for History so that when I am in the Grave the World will say Tom Pooley was right.  And in this Hospital where I was a Patient I paused and thought how when I am pardoned by Queen Victoria I shall never again write on Fences and Gates and Walls and Stiles where it was washed away by the rains of which we have a lot in Liskeard, but I shall write in Ink on Paper so that the name of Tom Pooley will live for ever and History will remember me.

So Mr. Holyoake went back to 147 Fleet Street in London and wrote his grand Pamphlet and published it and sent it to all the Friends of Humanity in England  and I did not know it then but I do now.  And it is called:  THE CASE OF THOMAS POOLEY, THE CORNISH WELL SINKER and my name is there on the front  of the Pamphlet in grand fancy letters and on the cover is a clever drawing of the field Gate of The Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush but it is not very like and what is written on the Gate in the drawing is only Jesus and T. Pooley but I wrote more than this..  And every one in England  who could read, could read Mr. Holyoake’s Pamphlet and they could read how tall and powerful I was and they could read that I was honest and industrious and lots of Humanists wrote to all the Newspapers how it was unjust that I was sentenced to one Year and nine Months in Bodmin Gaol by Judge Coleridge and his Son and that Judge Coleridge was the worst Judge since bloody Judge Jeffries and clever Gentlemen all wrote letters to tell the newspapers and all England that they had read Mr. Holyoake’s Pamphlet and Mr. Holyoake was right except for some Gentlemen like the Reverend Paul Bush who wrote that I was in the right place and it was a good thing.  And when I found out that my name was in all the papers, that made me happy.  But nobody told me any of this when I was dwelling in the Hospital that is the Bodmin Asylum for fear that I would be excited and get into a Passion.

So I was patient in this Hospital which was the Asylum where I was a Patient and waited for the news that the Queen had pardoned me and it was October and November and so cold so that I stopped working so much in the Gardens and paused and thought instead and I wrote to Mary, my wife: Mary, I’m very glad to receive your letter and your Husband is very sorry to hear that your leg is worse.  This makes me grieve for I know you are a woman that has worked very hard and you must still work hard and to work in pain.  Your Husband is not so maze as to forget a Husband’s Duty.  Some Men have no Love for their Wives but this is not the case with your Husband,  True Love will never die that is built on the True and One Almighty’s Law.

So, Tom Pooley passed his Time at the Cornwall County Asylum but the Days passed slowly for I was wanting to grasp Mary, my-wife, and my Children and to be back in my own home but in the Asylum or Hospital the food was good and I did not need to work and Mary, my-wife, and Mary, my-daughter, wrote letters to me but I have forgot what they wrote and Mr. Hicks and Doctor Adams and  the Warders at the Asylum were kind and the Mazed Men and Women were not so mazed as the many drunken and filthy Men and Women that are walking down Dean Street, Liskeard.

So, one Day towards the end of my Fateful Year,  it was the fifteenth of December,  Dr. Allen said: Mr. Pooley, Her Majesty the Queen has granted you a Pardon and Mr. Hicks and I have concluded that you are not mad and that you will not harm yourself or no-one and so you may go home and you are special for that you have been granted a Pardon by the Queen herself and so Mr. Hicks and I will take you home tomorrow ourselves in our own Carriage and you will have your own clothes back which we have washed but we must cut off your long Beard or you will not go home.  And I thought it was unjust to cut off my Beard but then I thought when I get home I will grow it again and no one can stop me, so it was cut off and I grew it again when I got home but not so long.

And the next Day was the Day of Tom Pooley’s Triumph and I came home in a grand Carriage drawn by two grand horses and people in Liskeard saw Tom Pooley come home and it was in the paper that the Blasphemer Tom Pooley had come home in a Carriage but that they had cut his Beard off.  But I did not care that they called me a Blasphemer and I did not care about the Beard that I was growing again because I was home with Mary-my-wife and my Family and I grasped William, my youngest son, in my arms and I grasped Mary, my only daughter, in my arms and my son, John, was not there,  but mostly I grasped Mary, my wife, in my arms and I could grasp her whenever I liked.

So when they heard that I was come home, three Christian Clergymen came to our Door like three black Crows one at a Time, and they all said the same.  They were The Reverend Paul, Judas Iscariot, Bush who informed and complained about Tom Pooley and who wrote that disgraceful letter to the newspaper and The Reverend Hobhouse who got up the filthy Advertisement and The Reverend Mr, Tathum who committed me to Bodmin Gaol  and they all said the same thing.  They said:  Pooley, you must not write Blasphemy on Fences and Walls and Stiles and Gates or we will send you back where you came from.   And Mr. Hobhouse said:  Pooley, even you have a Soul to be saved and you must become a Christian.  And they all said:  Pooley, you must not triumph.  And I was patient with these Clergymen, like in the Hospital, and I said nothing because I knew that I was going to write on Paper with Pen and Ink and send all my Writings to Mr. Holyoake and I knew I would triumph for I had trampled Bible Tyranny underfoot but I said nothing and I loomed over the one like the other and they flew away.   

 

And when I learned about Mr. Holyoake and his newspaper named The Reasoner at 147 Fleet Street, London ,  I said to Mary, my wife:  Mary, your Husband has done his Duty by the One, Wise Almighty and he has been through the Christian Hell that is the Cornwall County Gaol at Bodmin and he has been through the Cornwall County Asylum with the Mazed Men and Women and he has been a Spy through the Christian Dungeons and seen their Horrors but now I will not leave you again. Never more will I write on Fences and Gates and Walls and Stiles but I will write on Paper with Pen and Ink and I will send my Writings to Mr. Holyoake and The Reasoner at 147 Fleet Street so that Bible Tyranny shall be trampled underfoot and History shall know that Tom Pooley had done his Duty to the One, Wise Almighty and Tom Pooley was right.  And Mr. Holyoake may print my writings in his newspaper if he will.  And Mary, my wife, said: you are right, Tom.

So I was back home and it was that grand time when the Sun rises and sets in the same place and Man knows that the Days will get longer and Spring will come again to Liskeard and it was the end of that Year which the gammoned Christians call 1857 when Tom Pooley was pardoned by Queen Victoria and I escaped all the Traps and Snares that the Christian Tyrants had laid for me but it was not the end of my Troubles for Man that is born on this Globe does not know what he will have to go through but  it was a Time of Triumph for I had escaped all the Traps and Snares that had been laid for me and for this I must return Thanks to those honest Infidels that did deliver me back to Mary, my wife, and my Children and I had found friends with Mr. Holyoake and the Humanists of London that are the Friends of Humanity and do not change their opinions to please Tyrants and who, like Tom Pooley, are standing to the Truth and working to keep the Human Family from Darkness, Vice, Gammon and Misery.

So, that was the end of my Fateful Year and I will write nothing about the Years that followed except that I never again saw  my Fancy Walking Stick,  for Policemen have a Need for Fancy Walking Sticks and Policeman Stripling had a Need for mine, and my two knives and my three Pence and the Halfpence,  just like Christ had a Need for the poor Donkey.  So there is still Darkness on this Globe and the End of my Fateful Year was not the End of my Troubles for Man that is born of Woman never knows what he will have to go through.

   -  T. Pooley. 

 

   

    

     

   

   

   

       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

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