A BAD SHILLING, EXETER, 1845.

 "Two boys, named  ROBERT HORE and WILLIAM RAWLINGS were brought up on suspicion of passing base coin.  They had been lodging at the  Pestle and Mortar - a very suspicious haunt; and Wolcott and Joslyn who were sent there for evidence in another case, finding the youngsters in bed, thought it proper to search their pockets - in one of which they found a bad shilling.  

"The boys told their stories very circumstantially.  One of them had come the previous day from Chard, where he had been working.  The other said that he ran away from his parents at Falmouth; that he went to sea and to Swansea, for his first voyage; that having been discharged on the vessel getting to London, he had walked hither. He gave the names of the towns he had passed, and spoke with the earnestness of truth. He had made the acquaintance of the other boy in Exeter, and they had agreed to stay here till Monday, and then go on for Plymouth; they had got but five shillings, including the bad one, between them; and they protested that they "never took nothing from nobody."

"They were discharged." 

*

This is a rare mention of The Pestle and Mortar, a public house in Exeter on the corner where King Street (then known as Idol Lane) meets Smythen Street.  The few mentions of this house at this time note its disreputable nature.  It was, says one Exeter mayor, tantamount to a brothel.

These two boys, finding lodging there, would , I feel sure, have been very little lads.  These days they would have been sent home to their mothers and their "sixth form colleges".   Instead they were tramping the country and jumping on ships and making friends in strange places.  London to Exeter is two hundred miles.   Chard to Exeter is thirty miles,  an impressive day's walk.  Britain was still, as in the days of Richard Whittington,  an age of pedestrianism with working men and women tramping the highways of Britain seeking what?  The bubble fortune? The better life? 

As so often, the Exeter policemen seem to be stupid. over-zealous. and unable to foresee the likely response of the magistrates.  To rummage through the pockets of two boys who just happened to be in an inn where they were looking for evidence in another case and then to book them on suspicion of passing base coin just because they found one bad shilling is just bad policing.  That sort of thing couldn't happen now, could it?

Let us wish Robert Hore and William Rawlings well as they journey to Plymouth and beyond.

Source: The Western Times,8th February, 1845.