COMELY, ENGAGING AND GAY, EXETER, 1844.

 J. SOLOMON and Co.,  City Tailoring and Oufitting Establishment at at 193, High Street Exeter, were responsible for these truly pathetic verses published in The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 14th December 1844:

At a season like this when the juvenile folks

Are beginning to count on their holiday jokes,

When numberless glad preparations appear,

To welcome the season of Christmas with cheer;

J. SOLOMON feels inclined to impress

The importance of buying their "Juvenile Dress."

If parents and guardians wish to be suited

With garments whose value was never disputed,

If they wish for their youths to be clad in a way

Which makes them look comely, engaging and gay

Let them purchase at once of J. SOLOMON

Those suits which such marks of approval have won.

The "Juvenile Dresses" of SOLOMON are made

In the newest of Fashion, with beautiful braid;

The dresses are formed just to suit tender age

And therefore your children are sure to engage:

You'll not find them made in an old fashion'd style,

Which often makes persons with ridicule smile;

Their taste and their elegant neatness have won

Ten thousand approvals for J. SOLOMON,

These garments are made in a manner so firm,

That really we're quite at a loss for a term.

Your children may join in the juvenile sport,

But they'll hurt not their garments so firmly they're wrought.

Then hasten this season , as thousands have done,

For the juvenile clothing of J. SOLOMON."

It is not easy to compose verses for commercial purposes. - I write assuredly as one who was once recruited to supply "poems" to an advertising campaign selling Life Insurance! - and J. Solomon & Co. have done their best.

I like the image of the little Victorian boys and girls being fitted out at Solomon's by proud parents and guardians, anxious that their children should be fashionable and beyond ridicule.  The bespoke posh kids and the aspiring ready mades.  

The composer, however, of these verses was not forgetting that this was a business matter and adds a couplet under the title: "OBSERVE."

"In figures plain we mark the prices paid,

And no abatement can of course be made."

I have not read or heard comely for a while.  The OED says the word  "as used of persons, implies a homelier style of beauty, which pleases without exciting admiration"

It is still the case that people in Exeter go to great pains to make their little children comely, engaging and gay but it is also apparent that, these days, parental influence soon wanes. 

A GUNNER IN THE NAVY, TOPSHAM, 1844.

 Below is a death notice from The Exeter Flying Post, of 7th November, 1844, that caught my eye:

"Oct, 28, at Topsham, Mr. Thomas Dodd, gunner in the Navy, aged 95.

"He was nearly 40 years in active service, and received upwards of 30 wounds.  He was one of those who escaped at the blowing up of the "Amphion" at Plymouth, in 1796; one of Captain Macbride's crew at the taking of the Count d'Artois and one of Sir R.Pearson's crew in his engagement with the noted Paul Jones.

"He was a man of the most industrious habits and abstemiousness."

*

I don't know that Thomas Dodd is forgotten but it seems to me he is worthy of remembrance.  Only twelve people of the three hundred and twelve aboard the Amphion survived the explosion.  Thomas, was forty-seven at the time.  The explosion was blamed on a drunken gunner, one of his messmates.

At the taking of the Count d'Artois  in August 1780, Thomas was aboard the Bienfaisant,  The prize money would have been significant.

In 1779, Thomas was aboard the Serapis when she met a French and American Squadron under Paul Jones.  Captain Richard Pearson held off the enemy long enough for the convoy which he was escorting to sail to safety, then he surrendered his ship, for which he was hailed as a hero and knighted.

I have lately met a couple of young English people who had never heard of Horatio Nelson  - not their fault, poor young things! -  but their ignorance, which I don't imagine is exceptional, seems to contrast sharply with the awareness of British naval history illustrated by this 1844, deaths-column notice.   

 

 

A GLARING SOURCE OF CORRUPTION, EXETER, 1844

"John Wotton the landlord of the Mermaid Inn, Exeter, was summoned for allowing Card playing on his premises.  

A lad named Davey aged 14 stated that on Tuesday 5th  Nov. inst, he and several boys spent several hours  at the defendant's house playing at bagatelle and cards.  Witness was also there on the next night playing at cards in the tap room with several other lads.  The landlord himself played with them. - Witness brought the cards with him in his pocket, they played for beer.

His Worship the Mayor, after consulting with his brother magistrates, addressed the defendant in very strong terms upon the immorality (as well as illegality) of his conduct in encouraging youths to gamble.  The Bench were determined to stop the card playing in public houses which had now become a great and glaring source of corruption to the boys of the city of Exeter, the robberies so frequently committed upon masters and employers were solely the result of public house gambling.  The defendant was fined 50s. for each offence and 12s. expenses.  ordered to pay within a week, or distrained upon for the amount."

Card-playing was  seen as a prevalent offence.  Five pounds, twelve shillings was a hefty fine in 1844.  It would buy four donkeys!  I hope John Wotton found the cash.

The Mermaid was a famous, ancient, Exeter hostelry between Combe Street and Preston Street.

Bagatelle canot have been illegal per se because the tables were installed in many public-houses but it seems card-playing was - and you needed to bring your own cards in your pocket.  The gambling for beer though was certainly deemed not only illegal but a great and glaring source of corruption. Of course the age lacked social scientists to test such assertions.

The lad named Davey was fourteen, some of the other boys were perhaps younger. I imagine them with little old men's faces sitting round the pub-table knocking back the beer, smoking and gambling, - a hand of cards with the landlord, -  laughing and joking and thinking themselves very grown up. 

Nowadays, as perhaps an equivalent,  one can see, behind the plate-glass, alarmingly young-looking cocktail-sippers sitting around tables in the  Queen Street gin-palaces, each one intent on his or her own mobile-phone,  -  privately playing online poker perhaps! 

Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 21st November, 1844.

THE IDENTITY OF THE CABBAGES, EXETER, 1844.

At the Castle of Exeter on Friday 15th November 1844, a man named Dinham, who five months before had been taken up by the constable of the parish of St Thomas, Ratcliffe for stealing cabbage plants at Alphington, came to court accusing the constable of malpractice.  

Dinham swore that the day after he was arrested....

"....Ratcliffe came to him in the lock-up house and offered to cut off the ends of the stumps so as to destroy the identity of the cabbages, if Dinham would give him 5s.  This he could not do; but he said his wife should bring him a pawn-ticket for a watch, which was done the following morning before he went to the Magistrates at the Castle.

"The tale was to be corroborated by the evidence of Dinham's wife, but she was contradicted.  Ratcliffe did not deny he had the ticket,  but he proved that he took it honestly for his expenses after this case was dismissed, as it was from not one of the stumps fitting.  Who cut the stumps, however, remans a mystery.  The bench dismissed this complaint," 

This altogether bizarre case defeats me.  Here was Dinham, virtually admitting to the Great Cabbage Robbery by saying he had bribed the constable with a pawn-ticket to cut the stumps off the 'evidence.'  This, presumably, because the prosecutor in the cabbage-case depended on evidence collected in the cabbage-field by trying to match the cut cabbage stumps to the stumps still in the ground. (an interesting image!)   

The constable, Ratcliffe, still held the pawn-ticket and Dinham's watch was still in the pawn -shop.  Dinham's alleged cabbage-stealing had been dismissed for lack of stump-evidence.  Ratcliffe somehow convinced the Magistrates that the pawn-ticket came his way legitimately.   It is hard to imagine how.  

The Gazette avers that the stumps had been cut but that who had cut them remained a mystery.  The bench dismissed the complaint.  

Curiouser and curiouser!  

Source:  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  16th November, 1844.