A SHIP-BOY, EXETER, 1844.

"On Tuesday, Frederick Bodley, the master of a trading vessel lying in the basin was summoned to the Guildhall by the mother of a boy whom he had taken from Exeter as a ship-boy on his last voyage  (but who had been left at Dover), for payment of a sum of money, as wages for one month and twenty-eight days, the period the lad was on board the ship, in order to get him home.

"It appeared that the defendant took the lad on board, having agreed to give him what he was worth at the conclusion of the voyage;  but the youth was ill from sea-sickness all the while, it being his first trip out to sea.  His shoes being worn out, he applied to the defendant to buy him a new pair; but he replied he had no money.  It was not clear whether the boy absented himself from the ship at Dover, or was unable to continue on board.

"The Bench suggested that Bodley should give ten shillings to the mother; but this he refused, saying it was much more than the boy was worth, and the summons was enlarged until the boy came back, which the mother said should be next week, if she "distressed herself of the last thing to do it.""

As so often, I find myself wishing for more information than is given by the report  (The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2nd October, 1844).  How old was this boy?  What was his name?  &c.  Nevertheless I blog him as an example of  ship's boys of the mid-Victorian age and  of the notorious mistreatment of them by "cruel" skippers.  There must have been responsible, even generous, masters of trading vessels but Frederick  Bodley was clearly not one of them.   By the sound of it he took this 'boy' to sea for two months and then stranded him in Dover with no money and no shoes to his feet and was not prepared to give the 'distressed' mother any help to recover her child.  The Exeter magistrates seem not to have remonstrated with him!

LIKE THE SKINNED EELS, EXETER, 1844.

 "Yesterday morning, as the Half Moon Railway Omnibus was standing in front of the Star Inn, the horses started off, and galloped at a furious rate down Fore-street Hill, across Exe Bridge and into the shop of Mr Bond, cooper, at the corner of  Okehampton-street, St. Thomas.

"As the accident occured so early as four o'clock, it may naturally be supposed that the happy inmates must have been rocked, not only out of their slumbers but absolutely out of their beds,

"Let it not surprise our readers that such was not the case;  in fact the worthy cooper, like the skinned eels, has become so used to such occurences, that although he thought them cruel in the first place, he is now quite quiescent under the infliction -with the proviso, of course, that the damaged glass be replaced.

"The horses, as well as the shop windows, received but little injury; and what renders the incident more interesting, is the fact that a lady and a gentleman were inside the "buss," and they also came off unharmed." 

This report of little import, from The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette  of 26th October, 1844, is another example of how the 'new' omnibuses were perceived to be monsters causing havoc in Exeter.

The Half Moon Hotel was a prestigious coaching-inn on Exeter High Street.  The Star Inn was on Fore Street, opposite the Tuckers Hall.  

The reference to skinned eels is from a popular book, Thoughts upon Hunting, written by Sir Peter Beckford, and published in 1781.   Beckford meets a girl skinning live eels.  He asks her if she does not think this cruel.  She replies:  "O, not at all, sir, they be used to it."  Clearly his skinned eels had become idiomatic by 1844.   Later, Winston Churchill uses the phrase idiomatically at least twice.  Lost now?  Bring it back!

It is interesting to see the diminuative "buss" already in use.  Soon to become bus. perhaps to distinguish it from buss meaning kiss.  (My father could not resist writing 'bus with the apostrophe.)

I can imagine the lady and gentleman hurtling down Fore Street Hill in an empty bus.  I dare say they were clinging to each other -  but not bussing I think!

, 

THAT WOSH LIKELY!, EXETER, 1844.

"On Tuesday, at the Guildhall, two girls in the employ of Lewis Barnett, a Jew slop-seller residing in Goldsmith-street, were charged by their master with appropriating money realised by selling goods in his shop.

"He stated that on Friday he was out of town and whilst his wife was at market the girls sold a "Jim Crow" cap for 7d, and a boy's cloth cap for 1s. 4d. to a person who had come from the country.  They informed Mrs. Barnett when she returned that they had sold a "Jim-crow" for sixpence for which she blamed them, as it was not the proper price.

"On Tuesday, however, the purchaser of the articles brought back the cloth cap to be exchanged for a smaller one, and the transaction was discovered.  The cap cost Barnett two shillings, and his anger and astonishment at the wrong which had been done him may be readily conceived; nor was his desire expressed during his immediate interview with the magistrates "to sharve them out" any more than natural.

"The mistress of the girls stated, that when she went to market on Friday, she said to them "Now girls, don't refuse any money."  The girls in their defence, said that she added,- "and keep it for yourselves;"  to which Barnett replied with a sneer, "That wosh likely!"  It did transpire, however that the complainant owed them ten shilling for wages......

....The complainant was advised to discharge his girls without a character; and in case they sued him in the Courts of Requests for the wages, to set up the transaction of the caps in answer to the action:  to which the Jew, with a keeness that could only be imitated not felt in the enactment of Shylock, promised faithfully - "Yes, your vorship, I vill,- I vill, immediately." 

This report, from The Exeter and Plymouth Gazetter  of 12th October, 1844, gives us a glimpse of how, I imagine, most citizens of Exeter saw their Jewish neighbours at the time.  Not surprisingly Shylock is the model, wanting his pound of flesh.  Jews are essentially money-grubbing and mean but also they are 'funny'.  They are comic characters with their strange speech and foreign ways.

Slops are ready-made clothes.  Respectable people visit tailors and hatters but the humbler classes use slopshops.  Victorian sweatshops, where cross-legged tailors sewed their lives away, produced the goods.  Many of Exeter's Jewish community were slopsellers.

To (sharve) serve somebody out,  meaning, says Dr. Brewer, to punish, to get revenge, to get one's own back, is hardly to be found these days.   

The girls were probably younger than 16, otherwise they would have been young women.  The fair sex had to grow up quickly in an age where 12 was the age of consent.

Jim Crow had the popular meaning, a black man.   Clearly, everybody knew what a Jim Crow cap looked like.  I don't. 

The Court ruling might seem severe but at least the girls escaped prison.  

There is a sentence omitted which I considered to be of little interest.  

SPLASH TUMBLER PIGEONS, EXETER, 1844.

"At the Guildhall yesterday, George Brannen, 17 years of age, and presenting an appearance of great emaciation, was committed for trial at the Exeter Michaelmas Sessions, for stealing two splash tumbler-pigeons from the dwelling of Charles Wills in Quay Lane.

"The prisoner had been shown the pigeons in an excess of innocent vanity, and must have watched him afterwards, as ingress had been obtained to the pigeons by unlocking the house-door with a key. which had been secreted by the prosecutor about the window when he went out.

"The prisoner sold the pigeons to Mr. Ford  (Jennings and Ford) of this city for 2s.6d. The prisoner said he had been induced to steal the pigeons from hunger, having had nothing to eat for four days, and that his father, who resided in Magdalen-street, had turned him out of door necessitous, and he was not allowed to return.  He had been formerly apprenticed to a tailor, form whose service he had run away."

Here is more evidence, if it were needed, of poverty in mid-Victorian Exeter.  A poor teenager, the emaciated, necessitous runaway-apprentice, George Brannen, had been in Quay Lane.  He had not eaten for days.  He was probably thinking only of food.  His father had kicked him out from the family home.  Charles Wills invited him in to admire his splash tumbler-pigeons. Young George stole them and sold them to Mr. Ford for half-a-crown.  He must have known that Mr. Ford was something of a pigeon fancier.  Now he was facing, at the least, a prison sentence.    

Jennings and Ford  was an estabished firm of carriers in South-street, Exeter.

Splash is still in use to describe a form of colouring in tumbler pigeons.  As far as I can make out they can be either splash or grizzle but not necessarily exclusively. 

For once a Gazette reporter, here in the second paragraph, is having trouble with his style.  These days,  O tempora O mores!, newspaper journalists abuse the English language as a matter of course.

Source:  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  5th October, 1844.