HER MAJESTY'S BROAD R., DAWLISH, 1843.

In the mad March days of 1843 another ambitious smuggling endeavour came to light in the neighbourhood of Dawlish

 "On Saturday morning the wind was very fresh from the eastward, and the tides unusually high - this untoward circumstance caused part of a cargo of contraband spirits, which had been sunk, to wash ashore, which as matter of course was discovered by the coast guard service on duty, which immediately made them on the alert, and in the course of the day and the succeeding day and night several kegs washed ashore, and as soon as the storm abated the service put off in their boat in quest of the remainder of the booty, which they very soon got scent of, being a number of kegs lashed together into what is called a raft, but from its being entangled in the rocks they were unable to take it up.

However, they have taken every precaution to secure it, by setting a buoy over it, bearing her Majesty's broad R, and in a few days the whole of this valuable cargo, which is a very serious loss no doubt to the speculators engaged in it, will be landed and conveyed to her Majesty's stores in Exeter, much to the annoyance of the would-be free traders, and very little to the profit of the men in the preventive service."

I have written of Preventive Officers using the 'broad arrow' to designate confiscated goods but this time it is the "broad R."  perhaps beneath the crown like in the royal cipher, painted on a buoy over a 'raft' of moonshine brandy.

I could not find many references to this broad R. but it apparently was to be found everywhere. I found this snippet from Tom Paine:   "Is not the G.R. or the broad R. stampt on every thing?  Even the shoes, the gloves, and the hats which we wear, are enriched with the impression and all our candles blaze a burnt offering."

The last few words of this report pointing out the annoyance of the "free traders" and the "very little to the profit"  of the preventive service seem to me to suggest the columnist, like so many people, had a secret sympathy with the smugglers.  I, however, am sure the preventives were upright men,  pleased and proud of themselves for having thwarted the "free trade" and that they rejoiced to deliver so much brandy into store at Exeter.  Perhaps, at least one keg stayed in Dawlish:  - broached by accident?

Source: The Western Times, 4th March,  1843

SACRED LOBSTER POTS, TORQUAY, 1843.

I try not to stray too much from the poor people of Victorian Exeter but today I have gone as far as Torquay to remember once again the obscenely grasping Henry Phillpotts, the bishop who milked the Anglican Church for the every penny it was worth and who died disgracefully wealthy.  The Western News of February 25th, 1843 notes with sarcasm how he commutes from London to his new palace in Torquay without thinking to stop in Exeter where he was much hated and it continues, in a report, ostensibly about the seizure  of spirits, to lambast him.

"If our dear prelate did but know how heartily we rejoice over his flights from those sad scenes - how proud we feel when we see his carriage driving past our humble threshold, whirling him along to the soft scenes of this beloved region - we think it would gladden his heart.

"Our right reverend and respected prelate not only loves these charming scenes, but he loves the finny tribe that float in the briny waves beneath.  He has established a fishery at Anstey's Cove.  Cod, turbot, soles, maids and dories, all grace his table, and come to the aid of his generous spirit - to be scattered as presents from the episcopal fishery.

"Along shore in the sunken recesses, at the foot of the rocks, lie lobster pots and crab pots, save when the Brixham fellows come sneaking along to sneak them up.  Parson Lyte, the Brixham parson, it was that taught our dear diocesan how to shoot a net and lower a lobster pot - why the Brixham people disturb the episcopal fisheries we cannot for the life of us imagine.  But it so happens that he is too often disturbed, as we have before said.

"But a new source of annoyance is now pursued.  The 'free traders' finding that the Bishop's sanctity had thrown the Coast Guard off their guard, have actually been sinking their kegs near the sacred lobster pots.

"Last week, soon after the Bishop returned from London, where he had had such a bad run of spirits himself, 153 tubs of contraband spirits were seized in Babbicombe Bay ! ! by the officers on that station, and are now safely deposited in Dartmouth Custom House." 

The Bishop's Walk leads down from the Palace Hotel ( Bishopstowe) to Anstey's Cove.  The BBC (being very bbc!) made me laugh out loud:  "Here the bishop would go on his regular constitutional and have moments of contemplation.  Some 150 years later the coast path is still there for us all to enjoy - thanks to to the bishop's hard work."  I suspect the thing Henry of Exeter mostly contemplated at Bishopstowe was how to keep the hoi polloi from sight of his house and land and the most hard work he did was his proverbially self-serving. 

 It was a great joke of the time that the fisherfolk of Brixham were emptying the bishops' lobster pots. 

I don't think Henry Francis Lyte, Brixham's poetical parson, had much to do with Phillpott's interest in his fishery project but he, Lyle, had a deserved reputation as a fishermen's friend.   I don't think either of them ever hauled up a lobster pot.

Incidentally, at this time Lyle must have been just about to publish his chart-topping  Abide with me and then to go off, on full stipend, to spend four years touring the continent while half his congreation deserted the Church for the Plymouth Brethren.  Yes, he was ill at times, but privileged. He died and was buried at Nice. 

The smuggling recorded here shows how busy the 'free traders' still were in 1843.

What kind of fish is a 'maid'?  I guess a maid must be a mullet but I can't find evidence.

 

THE CORDWAINER AND THE RECTOR, EXETER, 1843.

 The Western Times, as here of 11th February, 1843, in its sceptical coverage of all religion, took a mischievous delight in reporting the advance of Puseyism and the local reaction to it: 

 "PUSEYISM is going a head in Exeter.  At St. Olave's church, the rector preaches in a white surplice, to the great horror of the old inhabitants:  a couple of parsons go to the communion table - 'the altar' they will have it, one turns his back to the people in reading certain portions - and the clerk Colman has been deposed from the duty of giving out the venerable Sternhold, by the ruthless hand of the rector.

"Clerk Coleman is a cordwainer by trade, and the sensible people in the parish do say, that all the rector hath done by this new move of deposing the clerk from the discharge of of one of his most important functions - is to break the heart of a most worthy shoemaker, and prove him but an indifferent 'psalm-smiter.'

"The rector may see the last of the shoemaker, but we doubt whether the public will see the last of his folly just yet if he go on as he hath begun."

It seems amazing these days that good church-going citizens in 1843 were bothered by a white surplice and by 'you say communion table but I say the altar' but there you are now!

I read the ambiguous second paragraph as meaning that the Puseyite rector of St. Olave's has  dispensed with 'Sternhold' altogether.  Sternhold being the Anglican Church's metrical psalmbook dating from the time of wicked Henry Vlll. 

Need I say it?   The rector may see the last of the shoemaker is an outrageous pun and the hath and the cordwainer are consciously archaic.

In our local parish registers for the eighteenth and early nineteenth century cordwainer is the word mostly used, shoemaker hardly at all.  The etymology, a worker in cordovan leather, is fun! 

Going a head  meaning, as here, to prosper is another Americanism that may well have travelled from Devonshire.  It is subtly different from going ahead and I would bet my boots this is not just a typographical error.

TEN OR TWELVE PAUPERS BREAKING STONES, EXETER, 1843.

 On 28th January, 1843, this letter from 'A SUBSCRIBER' was published in The Western Times:

"Sir, 

Some gentlemen of Exeter, styling themselves Commissioners of Improvement, have for months allowed a most abominable nuisance in the shape of a depot for stone for the road to be brought into upper Paul-street; and as myself and my family are daily and hourly annoyed by the incessant hammering of 10 or 12 paupers in breaking these stones, I should wish to know for what length of time, the Commissioners alluded to, intend to further trespass on our patience and forbearance.  A spot of ground so valuable ought surely not to be appropriated to such an illegitimate purpose and one so disgraceful to the city.

"If a spot for stone-breaking be necessary, let the Commissioners go on Northernhay, where they would annoy no one and at the same time show a little feeling for their neighbours and payers of the improvement rate."

I have been weighing in my mind whether I would rather have ten or twelve paupers breaking stones outside my city residence or ten or twelve homeless hanging thereabout swigging from bottles and rolling  cigarettes.  It seems to me the stone-breaking paupers then were perhaps of  some use to the city in a way the  homeless now are not. 

Noise pollution in the city, like city-centre residents' concerns generally. gets little consideration I think.  There is a lot of unnecessary noise that I could catalogue.  For example there is a new breed of ghetto-blaster that can produce as much volume as a symphony orchestra playing Brueckner,  there are the Exeter College, juvenile motor-cyclists with defective silencers to their machines, there are car-radios blasting the peace of a car-windows-open,summer's day,,  there is the depressing rattle and roar when the bottle-bins are emptied; there are, of course, for ever,  the road-works to be done and, not least, there is Exeter's speciality, the rowdy  drunken crowds and individuals' 'acting out' in the city streets every evening, mornings too,  shouting and screaming and altogether unchecked. and unchallenged. 

And we are promised a Winter Wonderland coming to provide an abominable nuisance for any one who lives, moves and pays council tax within half-a-mile of Northernhay Gardens about which one might borrow from SUBSCRIBER the comment: a spot of ground so valuable ought surely not to be appropriated to such an illegitimate purpose and one so discreditable to the city.

I much enjoyed the subjunctive in the SUBSCRIBER'S last paragraph.

 

AN INCRIMINATING TIPPET, DAWLISH, 1843.

 "Stealing from a parcel. - The wife of a porter at one of the inns, in this place, has been charged with the above offence which, we are sorry to say is one of frequent occurence here.  It appears that a lady of the neighbourhood had occasion, a few weeks since, to send to London for a dress, and in the course of its transit here, it had to pass through the porter's hands, and while in his custody his wife opened it and cut off one yard;  adjusted the parcel again, and carried it home.

"The lady, finding one yard gone,  wrote to the house in London for an explanation; a correspondence took place between the parties, the result of which was, that the shopman who served the order was immediately dismissed, and in fact charged with  embezzling the property.

"Nothing more was known of it for several weeks, but at last, whilst coming from church one Sunday, the lady espied a piece of the same fabric on a child's back in the shape of a scarf or tippet.  Upon enquiries she soon found that it had been presented to the child's parents by the porter's wife, who, upon being charged with the theft, at first denied it, but ultimately confessed it and begged forgiveness, which was granted on account of her family."

It seems a remarkable theft, to open up a parcel, find a dress and cut off a yard of material and tie up the parcel again and send it happily on its way. It couldn't happen  today in the Dawlish we know -  drug pushers, yes, but dress slashers, never !

And then the remarkable way in which the lady, after church on Sunday, sees a scrap of her lost dress  material around a child's neck. 

The porter's wife begs for forgiveness, and receives it.  There is, however, a shopman in London who has lost his job.  I hope he is re-instated.

Tippet is a pleasing word.  There is something, I learn, called 'turning tippet', which is a more elegant way to saying: making a 'U-turn'.   Bring it back?

Source:  The Western News, 7th January, 1843.

A LAMP LIGHTER, EXETER, 1842..

 "Two youngsters were charged by Mr. Waterman, a respectable lamp-lighter, with causing him divers annoyances whilst he was out in pursuit of his nightly business.

"Their names were Cumins and Thorn - the former was considerably the biggest of the two, but the latter was more perverse.

"They are apprentices to a turner in the Island, and were in the habit of pelting the plaintiff.

"Cumins received an excellent character from his master,  who believed he had been led away by the youngster, whom he charged with being a very bad boy.

"The evidence did not bring the case home to the boys, who were dismissed - the Bench sharply rebuking Thorn, and advising his master to bring him up when he misbehaved"

We are not told how old they were, these little apprentice lads, larking in the dark on a winter's evening.  Mr. Waterman the lamplighter was fair game in the deserted(?) streets as he went around with his pole, half an hour after sunset but what did they pelt him with?  Their master, a turner on Exe Island, then Exeter's industrial hub, had taken a very bad boy in Thorn but a good one in Cumin.

Is biggest for bigger a slip or is it, in 1842, acceptable usage?,   

MR. ASH'S APPRENTICE, STARCROSS, 1842.

This is one of those stories where one would like to know more!  Young John Passmore had sailed from Starcross to Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He was bullied on the voyage out so he absconded and it would seem that it was more than a year before he was brought up before the Bench in Exeter, charged as a runaway apprentice.

 "John Passmore, apprentice to Mr. Ash, of Starcross, was charged with absconding from his master's service.  The prisoner was serving on board one of Mr. Ash's ships, and deserted her at Halifax, in May 1841.   He pleaded ill-usage by one of the men on board, but the Bench told him this was no justification, and if his master pressed the case he must go to prison.

"Mr. Ash, however, on the magistrates' suggestion, said if he would consent to serve up the year and a half which he had lost, he would withdraw the complaint.

"This was agreed to, and the boy was discharged." 

I find myself wondering what adventures young John Passmore had during the year and a half he was a runaway in Canada.  I hope he was not too displeased with this outcome whereby, somehow, he was back with his old master and obliged to go to sea again.

The Exeter Bench, predictably, did not hesitate to rule that being ill-used by a shipmate did not invite investigation and could be no excuse for a young boy to jump ship.

Appropriately, Passmore, [passe-mer], is a grand old Devon surname implying a seafarer.  There are a few Passmores up and down the Exe estuary.

Source: The Western Times, 24th December 1842.