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.

 

THEM POACHIN CHAPS, AXMINSTER, 1844.

 "I wish ked stap them poachin chaps, they've bin out gen ta night:

With theck ther nit that they've a got, an they've catch'd sich a zight.

Why dont 'em tek a rod and line an try ta git a dish,

But not ta g'out wi nits an traps an distroy all tha vish.

"We've tried ta stap et times enough, bit all that ther's na good:

If constabels did g'oot by night, wy than ya noo they cood.

Bit ther' I don't think voks da kear if they da git a dish,

How they w's cotch'd er wot becoms ov al the tother vish.

 

"Th' ginlmin wot coms bout here, ta vish in our river,

Da mek complaints all bout th' town, that they can't ketch noan niver.

No moore I don't spose that they can, wheniver they mid g'out;

The reysn's clare ver they ther' chaps da burk maust all the trout

"An all th' vish them chaps da git they zulls 'em by the poun,

An what they cant they drows away, zoonder than they'd be vound.

But now I think tis maust a time ta zee ta that ther's work,

Er els' wi all the vish bout here, they'l  play the vurry turk"

'Clericus'  was, one might guess, an Anglican clergyman ministering in Axminster.  According to The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette he was the author of a work entitled Rural Sketches in the Dialect of.East Devon   Of him and his book(?) I can not yet find any further trace.  The newspaper published the above sample of his dialect verses under the title Lines to Mr. Piscator in its poetry-corner on  28th September, 1844.

It's pretty crude writing (not very consistent) and how reliable an idea it gives as to how East Devonian countryfolk spoke in the middle of the nineteenth century is hard to say but 'Clericus' was clearly making an effort.

It would have been the salmon that the poachers were principally after but it's easier to find a rhyme for trout.

It's interesting that the word burk turns up, here perhaps meaning quietly to put out of existence .  It had only entered the language fifteen years before when William Burke was executed in Edinburgh.  He had made a business of suffocating people and then selling their bodies for dissection by surgeons.

I remember there was still much mutual ill-feeling with the licenced net fishermen and the line fishermen of the Exe in the nineteen-seventies.  

The Axe fishing would appear to have been an attraction to piscatorial ginlmin.  I don't believe they ketched noan niver.

A LOT OF FINE FAT SHEEP, EXETER, 1844.

The Exeter Flying Post  of Thursday 19th September, 1844 reported to its readers the following life-affirming story:

"On Friday last, as Messrs. Darke, butchers of this city, were driving to their slaughter-house a lot of fine, fat sheep which had been purchased in the market that day, when near the Island Bridge, from the passing of some Omnibusses, &c., the animals were frightened, and one of them sprung on the parapet wall, jumping at once off into the Exe Island below.

"Singularly though, the animal escaped the least injury, which from the height might have been expected.  Several of the others jumped on the parapet also, but turned back again."

*

I blog this not so much for the sake of the daredevil leaping sheep as for the sake of the omnibuses. The quaint plural form and the capitalization reflect the extent to which  'Omnibusses' were still a novelty in 1844.  The very first omnibuses apparently were to be found in the city of Nantes as late as 1826.  Hence the concept and the Latin part of the name, voiture omnibus, are importations from the French. 

The meeting of sheep and horse-drawn omnibuses on the Island Bridge is a neat instance of the old world meeting the new in Exeter.  It would seem that there were still  troops of domestic animals being driven about the streets. Darke's slaughter-house, I think, was in Smythen Street.  Generally the omnibuses, as newcomers, were taking the blame for congestion and dangerous driving but they were to prevail.

Sprung as the past tense of spring, like rung as the past tense of ring, was deemed correct by The Flying News.  It sounds very Jane Austen!

I'm very pleased the bold sheep was not damaged by her momentous leap from the bridge, - just a pity she was on her way to Messrs. Darke's slaughter-house! 

THE FURY OF BACK, WOODBURY, 1844.

 "On Wednesday, Perram, a sheriff's officer residing on St. David's Hill in this city, went with his father to the house of Richard Back, labourer, at Woodbury, to distrain.

"Having taken possession in the absence of Back, they proceeded to take an inventory of the goods, when Buck hastily entered, and uttering a vindictive expression of recognition, snatched the poker from the hearth and belaboured Perram so unexpectedly as to render both his arms powerless, and then struck him on the head with such violence as to produce an effusion of blood from the ear, and render him insensible.

"The fury of Back then vented itself on Perram's father, whom he knocked down by a blow on the nose, which cut it open.

"The sister-in-law of Back, who lived in a contiguous house, tendered some assistance to Perram, who lay, apparently dying, in the doorway, for which her brutal relative kicked her so severely as to fracture a portion of her ribs."

For these outrages Back has been summoned to appear at the Castle of Exeter on Friday, when the case will be investigated."

The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette  (14th September, 1844.) clearly does not let the fact that there is a case yet to come to court restrict its telling of this story.   The vindictiveness of Richard Back's expression, his violence,  fury and  brutality, are literally prejudicial assessments although they are probably true enough.  I don't, however, believe Perram was dying, not even apparently.  

The life of a sheriff's officer was never easy and leaving the civilized world of St. David's, Exeter, in order to visit wild Woodbury clearly held dangers for one and for one's 73 year old parent.  Indeed, old Mr. Perriam   (The name is Perriam not Perram.) died only a fornight later. He died of natural causes said the coroner although violence such as the deceased was said to have been subjected to might have accelerated it. The Gazette, 29th September.)

Sisters-in-law are always spoiling one's fun. 

  

A JOHNNY RAW, EXETER, 1844.

"Elizabeth New, a lady of the pave, was brought up in charge by Perriam, of the night police, having been taken into custody about a quarter before 1 o'clock that morning in West-street, under the following circumstances as detailed by a young man named George Farrant of Budleigh Salterton, carpenter and joiner, - a sort of johnny raw, - now residing in Preston-street, in this city.

"He had been spending the evening at his brother-in-laws's on Quay Hill, where there had been a bit of a jollification and good supper, and of course the party got a little swipy.  At the hour mentioned however, he was on his return to his lodgings, when he encountered in West-street Elizabeth New with several other damsels.

"New ran to him, caught him round the waist, using much endearment, and saying "this is the man for me."  Poor Farrant, in his innocence, was astonished, he had never been so tenderly treated before, but still he was perfectly horrified that any woman should thus act, and piteously entreated that she should let him go.  Thus gently and piously urged she yielded to his earnest request, but, he was no sooner liberated from her powerful grasp, than he discovered his watch was gone.  he then at  the top of his voice sung out "watch" and, as before stated, Perriam came to his assistance.

"The watch was gone sure enough, the silk guard, round his neck to which it had been suspended having been dexterouly severed with a knife; an implement such as was found on the prisoner after she was brought to the Hall.  New, however, protested her innocence - (having meanwhile urged her companions to "cut.")   - nor was any watch found in her possession.

"Farrant, on the question being put from the Bench, said he could not say the prisoner had taken his watch.  And this not being deemed sufficient ground for her further detention, New was cautioned and directed to be liberated, and the case was dismissed.

The Flying Post's court-reporter, as so often, invents as much as he reports.  The naivety of  George Farrant,  the strength of Elizabeth New's arms, the (not proven) dexterous severing of the silk guard,  the crying of "watch" (a horrible pun!?) &c. cannot be more than assumption; still, it makes the story more entertaining.

There must be more slang terms to describe an excess of alcohol than anything else.  I had not met swipy/swipey before but I learn that Dickens uses it and it derives from swipes, another slang term,  once used  to mean thin, tasteless, washy beer and, according to my wonderful Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895, cognate to a Danish word: svip.  (there's many a svip twixt cup and lip!!)

There was a constable to hand!!!

I'm irrationally pleased that Elizabeth New was not sent to prison or worse.  Even if, as seems likely, she did steal George's watch, she sounds a jolly sort of young woman,  the kind one finds with her damsel mates roaming Exeter these days at a quarter to one any morning of the week. 

Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 29th August 1844.