"THE FINGER OF ART," EXETER, 1845.

" WOOL"

"We cannot find language sufficiently full

To speak of the blessings afforded by "Wool""

Its benefits mighty, its wonderful worth

Are felt to the uttermost parts of the earth.

'Tis pleasing to view how the finger of art

Transforms this production at SOLOMON'S famed Mart:

Here the "Wool" which once coverered the back of the sheep

Is roll'd up and pil'd up in many a heap.

Give a call at this house, and behold what is done

With the produce of sheep by J.SOLOMON;

At SOLOMON'S famed warehouse, choice coats are displayed

In many a pattern and many a shade.

You'll find that the Show Rooms of SOLOMON are full

Of charming habiliments form'd out of "Wool;"

To heighten the blessings conferr'd by the sheep

J. SOLOMON & Co. make a rule to sell cheap.

Their purchase of "Wool" is at all times so large,

That they are able of course to diminish their charge;

Then pray do not wait for your purse to be full,

(For no one need find it a very hard pull,).

To purchase a garment of very choice "Wool.""

*

John Solomon was an ingenious outfitter.  He was a Jew and, during his time here, a generous supporter of the Exeter synagogue.  His Exeter premises extended from Waterbeer Street to the High Street.  He regularly advertised in bad verses.  I don't know who wrote them but I would like to think these particular verses were writtem by his 'shopman' whose name was Lamb!

The above is another example of Solomon's versifying which speaks for itself.  I am all for bad verses. I have written some.  I think more people should write bad verses;  they would lighten up what is becoming a Dark Age.  

John Solomon's candle gave a lovely light but lasted only a few years. He was a bankrupt at this time and his much puffed 'emporium' burned completely to the ground in 1847 and he and Mr. Lamb found themselves in the City Prison awaiting trial for arson.  I don't yet know the end of their story.

The prices of Mr. Solomon's woollen coats ranged between one guinea and four guineas.

Source:  The Western Times 11th October 1845.

"KNOCK HER DOWN!" EXETER, 1845.

"JAMES DENLEY was summoned for an assault on Robina Warren. 

"The parties had been drinking at Mrs. Knapman's in Rack-street, and a quarrel arose between Denley's brother and his wife, who is sister to the complainant.

"As Denley was encouraging his brother to "knock her down and serve her right," the complainant told him he had no right to interfere, upon which he struck her in the eye.

"On being asked if he admitted the charge, he said he had struck her, and he "thought it was his place to do it, because it was very hard a woman should be let to put out such expressions at her husband, and he never to touch her.  The magistrates, being of a different opinion, fined him 5s and expences."  

*

Men hitting women was a prevalent offence in 1845.   There is nothing special about this case except that James tells us quite clearly what was his motive.   James was out drinking with Mr. and Mrs. Denley  (his brother and his sister-in-law,) and with Robina Warren  (his sister-in-law's sister.)  He told his brother to knock his wife down for being cheeky.  Robina Warren told James he had no right to interfere. James thought it was his place to punch Robina in the eye and did so. 

Rack-street:  still exists and is between King St. and Preston St.  It was so named from the time when serge was being racked and stretched there.  There was a ragged school there.

Mrs. Knapman's was perhaps a kiddlywink.  There was no public house listed there in 1845.

Source: The Western Times,  4th October 1845.

WEAKER VESSELS, EXETER, 1845

"The other day Mr. Geo. Martin, the draper, having an ugly barricade before his door, placed up a sort of decoy  notice to ladies, that it was "safe to enter."   The ladies would not take his word for it, but kept on the public side of the barricade.

"Now Mr. Martin has removed the ugly barrier, and displayed to the public eye a most handsome shop front, lighted with magnificent plate glass. This gives to the goods a very enticing lustre of light, and now it is so unsafe to enter that ladies who get inside have great difficulty in keeping a single shilling within their purses.

"The husbands should to hold a meeting, to have the shop "put down," for its bold front does not give the weaker vessels half a chance of escape."

*

George Martin, was, in 1845, an enterprising Exeter draper with a shop at 233, High Street.  He was, in his own words, Linen and Woollen Draper, Mercer and Haberdasher, Silk Mercer, Hosier and Hatter and he held the largest, cheapest and best assorted stock of bonnets out of London.  His plate-glass window amazed the city.  The Exeter Flying Post  (2nd October 1845) commented: "The windows of this shop is fitted with panes of glass of such magnitude that each pane contains nearly forty square feet! being the largest sheets of glass which have been used for this purpose; and, we are told, a shop in th Quadrant , London alone being in this respect equal to it"

"Safe to enter":  a more considerate version of "Business as usual"!  " I liked this piece because it envisages an ordered world (it never existed!) of charming lady wives, too timid to enter Mr. Martin's shop, whose business in life was to spend on finery the shillings their kind husbands put into their purses.  I find ideas like this a soothing antidote to the realities of life in contemporary Exeter. 

Weaker vessels:  " Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life." (1 Peter 3.7.)

Should to hold:  Elegant?  I find it so.   Grammatial?  I don't think so.  Noteworthy?

Source: The Western Times,  4th October, 1845.

EXON'S LASTE BYSHOPPE. EXETER, 1845.

Under the title 'SYMPTOMS OF THE END,'  The Western Times (4th October 1845) published this remarkable report.

"The tomb of Leofricus, first Bishop of Exeter, bears the inscription: -

"Leofricus, first bishop of Exeter, lyeth here.

"It is reported that an ancient stone hath been brought to light, which states that.

"Exon's laste byshoppe shall lie everywhere.

"We have not seen the stone, but the simple people who place the last day on the 10th October are making a great fact of it, though in what way it bears upon the subject we do not exactly see.

"Prophesies , like dreams, go by contraries perhaps.

"It may therefore mean that the last Byshoppe shall be one of a restless disposition, constantly roaming through his diocese, and never resting from his apostolic toils. 

"In that sense, perhaps, the prediction may apply somewhere."

*

The whole is first and foremost another attack by the newspaper on Bishop Henry Phillpotts.  How much truth there is in the stone that was brought to life  I do not know.

Lyeth/ Here and everywhere:  It's a pun!   Get it?

Leofricus:  Leofric was Bishop of Cornwall and Crediton before, during and after the Conquest. That perhaps means he was something of a trimmer though he is remembered as a 'good' bishop.

The tomb of Leofricus:  is itself a fake in the sense that it was not constructed until some 500 years after the bishop's death and the inscription lieth when it states that he lyeth there because he lieth somewhere else.

The ancient stone: was surely another fake, if indeed it ever existed.  There is, in my opinion, too much of Ye Olde Tea Shoppe about the inscription for it to be anything other than Victorian.

The simple people:  It was a time of millennary fever.  Mountebank 'preachers' had, in Exeter, been foretelling  Second Comings, that kept coming and going.. Somehow the report of this stone was exciting the expectations of simpletons.  The next Second Coming was scheduled to take place the next week which, if it came, would make Henry Phillpotts Exon's laste byshoppe.

Apostolic toils:  Now comes the paper's laboured attack on Henry Phillpotts.  The prophecy, if that's what it was, predicted a bishop who, if that's what it meant, was busy doing the things a bishop should  do.  This could only be true of Henry, who shamelessly spent all his time playing the politician in London or living the high-life in Torbay, if prophesies go by contraries.

Whew!

  

 

"TRUNDLING HOOPS." EXETER, 1845.

Under this title The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette  of 27th September 1845 briefly reported the serious crime of William White who was brought to the Exeter Police Court by Mr. Charles Sclater:

"William White,  a lad, was charged by Mr. Charles Sclater, with trundling a hoop on the pavement in Sandford-street, New-town.

"Mr. Sclater stated that he frequently saw the public subjected to the annoyance arising from twenty or thirty boys trundling their hoops in the street at once, and the practice of using iron hoops was considerably more dangerous than of using wooden ones.

"The parents of the defendant having attended, and engaged both for his present penitence and future good conduct, the Magistrates dismissed him with an admonition, on paying for the summons."

Sclater: looks a more exotic family name than it is.  It is a form of Slater, i.e. it is a well-established  English occupational surname.

Mr. Charles Sclater,  Charley (as he was called) Sclater was one of a large Exeter family, a family whose sons seem all to have been nurserymen and/or seedsmen,  He was also at one time the city councillor for St. Sidwells and was the owner  of property in Newtown, Exeter.  His nursery was at Summerlands, near where now is the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.  He was unhealthily keen on litigation and particularly on bringing young people to court for misdemeanors.

Sandford-street: was a street in Newtown, perhaps where now is Sandford Walk.

Poor hoopless Willy White!  You can bet that none of the other kids in Sandford Street will have been deterred by Charley Sclater.

Trundling hoops:  this is the first reference I have seen in the local papers to hoops as a child's plaything but clearly they were a 'craze' in Exeter in 1845 and for many decades each way.  I suppose the metal hoops were barrel-hoops; they must have been noisy and, yes, painful if one was trundled into you!.  

TWO VALUABLE ANIMALS, EXETER, 1845

 The Western Times of  13th September 1845 reported how:

"A raffle distinguished for its novelty took place at the Old London Inn on Friday last. by 120 members at £1. 1s each, for the fine North Devon Ox, bred by Gubbings Newton, Esq of Bridestow.  After an interesting lottery as to who should be the winner, Only 2 tickets remained undrawn, when the holders agreed to divide the prize; and probably, the fine animal would soon have graced the stalls of the "Anatomists,"  but for the intervention of the owner Mr. William Rookes, who saved him from the fatal axe by re-purchasing him for exhibition at the approaching Barnstaple fair previously to his being fed for consumption at Christmas."

This was the famous, in his time, 'Millaton Ox',  at seven years old, five feet high, fifteen feet long and weighing a ton.  He was bred by John Gubbins (Gubbings!) Newton, the bachelor owner of Millaton House, Bridestowe,  (6 miles beyond Okehampton) which still stands and appears currently to be for sale at a price over £3,000,000. 

Anatomists is a fun word for butchers. 

The Old London Inn, long gone, was near the East Gate of the city, where the High Street meets Sidwell Street."

Mr. William Rookes: was a philanthropic, gentleman farmer on the Heavitree Road.

The fatal axe:  Was that really how one slaughtered an ox?

The two winners, according to the report of the same auction in The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of the same date, were Mr. Burgoin of Sowton, "hind to Mr. John Garrett Esq." and Mr. Hodge of Plymouth.  

Hind:  meaning an agricultural servant, looks llike it ought to have gone out of service in the late Middle Ages but it is a word regularly to be found in newspaper reports in Victorian Devon. 

The fun is that: "Mr. Burgoin had obtained his ticket in exchange for a dog which proved a  more valuable animal than he had anticipated."  I like the idea that the triumphant Mr. Burgoin, a farm worker, was one of the 'humbler' of the 120, guinea-paying punters.

A NOODLE, BRIXHAM, 1845.

 The Brixham correspondant to The Western Times (6th September 1845) sent this report below to the paper:

"About a week since, one of those tricks played off by adepts in the occult science, on the unsuspecting,  was performed here on a cultivator of spinach and asparagus, residing in a cottage detached from the other buildings in the neighbourhood.

"It appears that about the hour of six o' clock in the evening a female called at the house of a market gardener, and asked him if he would like to have his fortune told?  She could assure him that it would be to his advantage as she knew from what she saw of him, that great good fortune lay in wait for him.  She was asked her charge for a peep into futurity, and in reply she observed that if told by 'the lines'  it would be ten shillings but if 'by the planets' three sovereigns.  What was the difference was next asked between the two modes? The ready answer was that the latter method was the most correct, and told of things very shortly to come to pass.  This decided the matter, 'the planets were the things. After having spoken of horoscopes, lords of the ascendant, houses of fate, malign aspects and favorable conjunctions - the noodle was told to put a tin cup half filled with water in the 'fork' of a tree in his own garden, on which the sun's first rays would fall, and visit it the next evening,but on no account before, and he would find six sovereigns there.

"The secret instructions were faithfully kept, but alas! the cruel sorceress had duped her victim."

*

I suspect this Brixham correspondant was a romancer and his failure to provide details of time and place makes him seem almost as untrustworthy as the female who told fortunes.  We know she appeared at six in the evening  about a week since but we are not told which day.  We know the market gardener cultivated spinach and asparagus but he is given no name and his cottage no address. Nevertheless, there is, it is said, no smoke without a fire and this remarkable story of a gullible Devonshire peasant being hoodwinked must have had a foundation and probably did occur just as accounted here, in Brixham as recently as August/September, 1845.  

The cunning of this fortune-teller rings true.  The fanciful distinction between a ten-shilling 'fortune' and a three-guinea one is original and ingenious as are the daft details: half filled with water, sun's first rays;   &c. 

The way the correspondant uses the question mark is also ingenious......and wrong!