BAD FRENCH, EXETER, 1841.

 This was different:  a hearing at Exeter Police Court but conducted in (bad) French by Mr Blackall, one of the magistrates and printed in French by The Western Times, without benefit of translation, to its Devon readers  Nor, apparently,  in 1841, did  setting the French language, accents and all, cause any problem to the hot-metal typographers at The Times.

The circumstance was this:  an impoverished German youth with a melancholy expression and tattered habilliments had , in time-honoured fashion, turned up at the Guildhall to seek relief.   The Court could speak no German.  The youth could speak no English.  Mr Blackall addressed the youth in French:

"Mr. BLACKALL - Eh bien, que voulez-vous de nous?    

"German - De l’argent, Monsieur, s’il vous plaît.  J’ai faim, Monsieur,  et, (pointing with woe-begone looks to the remnants of a once fashionable pair of boots, but which now barely kept together by the aid of a  pair of straps.) regardez mes bottes nous avons été bons amis trés long-temps, mais, helas! Monsieur, vous voyez que - 

"Mr. BLACKALL - Combien long-temps avez vous ètè en Angleterre?  

"German - Quinze jours, Monsieur.

I

"Mr. BLACKALL - Et d’ou venez-vous?

"German - J’ai été à Paris à Jersey et à Londres.

"Mr. BLACKALL - Mais de quelle ville veniez -vous à présent?

"German - Je viens à présent de Plymouth, Monsieur.

"Mr. BLACKALL - Que voulez-vous ici, donc, que cherchez-vous?

"The German appeared not to understand this question - perhaps because Mr. Blackall’s pronunciation is. as a Frenchman would say , un petit peu Anglicé - though otherwise he speaks French well and with fluency; there was a misapprehension, however, and the applicant at length replied with a bland smile and a true continental shrug  of the shoulders,  “Jene vous comprends, Monsieur; ce n’est pas bon Français ça.”

"Mr. BLACKALL - Ah! I believe you are an imposter - that’s my opinion.

"The German, who looked like a man sensible of having committed a faux pas  continued to urge his case in broken sentences,  “Ah Messieurs,  que je suis misérable - de l’argent, c’est de l’argent qu’il me faut."

"The Bench, however, after a short consultation, coincided with the opinion expressed by Mr. Blackall, and dismissed the applicant, telling him they could do nothing for him.

"The German, after making a profound congé, turned on his heel, muttering, as he left the Court,  ”Mon Dieu, que je suis bête!“ evidently thinking that he had done no good for himself by criticizing  the hon. magistrate’s ”bad French“ ".  

*

I suppose a German youth might mutter to himself in French having, as it were, once got into gear.

I am inclined to think this German youth was a romantic figure and the city of Exeter ought to have helped him.  After all he was fluent in French and he had a lively turn of phrase; his once fashionable boots had long been his good friends. I can imagine his continental shrug, and his bland smile as he fenced with the unlovely Mr. Blackall and his parting bow as he left the Guildhall.  Yes, I'm convinced he was at  the very least a Freiherr, travelling incogito, who would return to his domain and tell about the mean-minded Exeter magistrates. 

As for that Mr Blackall,  one gives him credit for his bad French but he seems, not for the first time, to have let false pride weight the scales of justice.

,

 

Source:  The Western Times, 2nd October 1841.

A "WEY GOOSE", EXETER, 1841.

We learn from The Western Times of 26th September, 1841, that a Miss Channing was the mistress of a tobacco-pipe manufactory in Exeter.   She employed a number of girls at her manufactory one of whom was "a young woman called Hookins".

One Monday morning Hookins , The Times grants her no further name or title, did not turn up for work and her absence continued.    Miss Channing had a "written agreement" which bound Hookins to her bench.  She was brought before the magistrates at the Exeter Guildhall charged with  "neglecting her work and leaving it in an unfinished state". 

Poor Hookins tried to defend herself.  She denied having made the "written agreement".  She claimed she was bullied by the other girls and then:

"The next reason appeared  a much more plausible one - namely that they had had a 'Wey Goose' on the previous Saturday night and had kept up the jollifications to a late hour, or rather an early one the next morning - the consequence of which was that the lady's 'coppers' were rather hot and she had recourse to the usual means of cooling them by a drain of 'the dew of the valley' or 'Prince Albert's own' vulgarly called gin.

"Mr Blackall advised her to go back to work immediately, But the effects of her libations did not appear to have left her yet, for with a most outrageously squinting twinkle of the eye, she insisted she would not and would rather go to prison.

"'Very well' said Mr.Barton 'we'll endeavour to accommodate you that way - how long would you like to go for?'

"'As long as you please, sir - I'd rather stay in prison altogether than go back there again - if I wouldn't I'm blessed!'

"In kind compliance with her desires the Bench sentenced her to a fortnight's imprisonment.  She was walked off by the officers but scarcely had they got her to the bottom of the stairs before the lady's valour had evaporated and springing away from the grasp of the officers she darted upstairs to lay her recantation before the Bench; but to her great mortification, the door of justice was closed in her face.

"She was recaptured by the officers, and marched off in a more penitent mood to her solitary quarters in the city prison, where the glorious associations of a 'wey goose' were, alas! never understood or dreamt of."

*

A travesty, it seems to me, of justice.  But neither the Court nor the newspaper had any sympathy for the pathetic Hookins,  hung-over, bullied, no doubt over-worked and, it might seem, with a bit of a squint.

The popular names for gin, 'dew of the valley' and 'Prince Albert's own'  are intriguing.  Did the Prince Regent have a penchant fot gin?

"Wey Goose" is these days usually written "way-goose" but there are several variations.  It is said to derive from a Dutch word  meaning a road-house and thence a jubilation.   It might well have come to Devon with the Dutch traders who landed at Topsham and other ports.  It was one of those many popular terms which came from Britain but which are now more common in her sometime colonies, America, Australia &c. 

MUCK TURTLE SOUP, EXETER, 1841

"The Right Worshipful the Mayor, Sir W. W, Follett, and a select party dined with W.H.Furlong, Esq., on Friday last, at his residence on Northernhay.

"A sad mishap occurred in relation to this dinner.  Billy Nokes was carrying a jug of turtle soup, going carelessly along as boys will, and when he came up to the New Dispensary, of which Mr. Furlong is Vice President, he tripped against a stone, fell, and spilled the soup,   

"He was in a terrible state of consternation, roared as if he had broke his leg. One of the Town Councillors happening to be passing enquired the cause of his grief.  He said he'd broke 'Turney Furlong's pitcher of turtle soup - twelve shillings worth.'

"The boy was inconsolable at first, but reflecting that crying would not create more soup, he gathered up the force-meat balls in one of the shards, and going to an itinerant pieman who was very fortunately at hand for gravy, they soon compounded some muck turtle out of the dregs but what he did with it we have not learned."

*

And did his Worshipful the Mayor and W.W. Follet, Exeter's MP and Her Majesty's Attorney General, and Turney (Attorney) Furlong eat Billy Nokes' muck turtle soup?   I'd like to think so.

12 shillings in1841 would have been two days wages for a skilled worker and therefore equates to at least £250  today.  I have the impression that the 'itinerant pieman' supplied Billy Nokes with the gravy gratis and for the fun of it.

The New Dispensary had not yet been completed but the foundation stone bearing Mr Furlong's name had been laid.  It is now the 'music centre' of Exeter College where young people learn to play guitars  and perhaps , but I do not see them, other instruments.  Mr Furlong's house would have been the old Northernhay House.  The only 'residence' on Northernhay' these days is mine. 

I note that the inscription-stone  of this sometime Dispensary, where once doctors cared heroically for the city's cholera and fever patients,  has been overpainted by Exeter College and is now barely legible.   I suspect that the respect of this educational establishment for Exeter's history is on a par with its music centre's respect for, let us say, J. S. Bach..

Source: The Western Times,  18th September , 1841.

"THE SAILOR LASSEY", BRIXHAM, 1841.

Brixham is a long haul from Exeter but this curious and thought-provoking report in The Exeter Flying Post of  22nd July, 1841, surely deserves to be remembered.  I hope young Ellen Watts found  joy in her later life and I subscribe her story without further comment:

"A considerable degree of excitement was caused last week in the town of Brixham, by the discovery of a female sailor, on board one of the trawler boats, in which capacity she had been employed for some time with much credit, and in which she would have continued but for the exposé which discovered her sex.

"It appears she was left an orphan, and was bound an apprentice to a farmer, whom she served as an out-door male-servant; before her term expired, she determined to leave the plough to plough the deep, and having dressed herself in a deceased brother's clothes, who had been unfortunately drowned, she entered on board a trawling sloop as an apprentice, to serve three years; she performed her duty manfully, enduring all the privations of such a precarious calling with a degree of hardihood and recklessness necessary to such a life, and her exertions were such as to cause a degee of envy in the other lads.

"On Sunday last she accompanied two lasses to a fruit garden where she treated them, behaving with all the gallantry imaginable; there  a tailor who was enjoying his otium, attempted to interfere with our hero's girls;  the sailor boy resented it, high words ensued and blows followed; Snip showed fight like a man, while the pretended sailor was no less active, but alas fortune does not always favour the brave; the tailor was too much for his opponent, and the sailor lassey was so beaten that she was obliged to give in, and on several persons coming around her, her sex was discovered, to the great surprise of every one, the tailor not excepted.

"She is now dressed in apparel more becoming her sex:  she is an interesting and rather good looking girl.  The reason she states for adopting her late mode of life, was that she could enjoy more freedom than in domestic servitude.

"She is sixteen years  of age, and her name is Ellen Watts; she adopted the name of Charles Watts, and stated that she was a native of Plymouth.

A CART-AND-CARRIAGE-CHASE, NEAR NEWTON ST. CYRES, 1841.

 The Exeter Flying Post of June 24th, 1841" reported:

"On the evening of the 12th inst as the Hon. Newton Fellowes was on his return to the city to his seat at Eggesford; when near Newton St. Cyres, he met a farmer's boy driving an empty cart at a very furious rate.

"Although the hon. gentleman had ladies with him, he turned his carriage, gave chase to , and, after pursuing hem some distance, took the offender into custody; and bringing him to the Magistrates' Clerk, at Crediton, convicted him on his own view, and fined him £2.

"The most serious accidents are constantly occurring from the wild and furious manner in which empty vehicles of all descriptions are driven on our roads." 

*

One of the joys of reading stories in old newspapers is that one can label people as goodies ot baddies to one's own satisfaction without much thought and without further ado.   One can take sides.   In this case the Hon. Newton Fellowes, who was only a couple of weeks off his 69th birthday, is, for me, a vicious old aristocrat with no  sense of humour and I rate the farmer's boy as an unfortunate lad who must have suffered from being so strangely pursued and judged and fined.

I should have liked to have been an observer when this cart-and-carriage-chase took place. 

It seems to me that the Hon. Newton Fellowes sweating his horses, and with ladies aboard, in pursuit of a happy farmer's boy was the more irresponsible of the two speed-hogs.   And then for the old man to judge the case 'on his own view' seems to me to have been a travesty of justice.

It is no surprise, however, that The Flying Post found the actions of Newton Fellowes to be altogether in the public interest. 

Some twelve years after this incident the Hon, Newton Fellowes, politician and an 'energetic supporter of Liberal policies' succeeded to the peerage as the 4th Earl of Portsmouth  but had only a few weeks of life to enjoy being an earl.  

  

PLUMPERS AND HIRELINGS, EXETER, 1841.

Mr. Edward Divett was a Radical Member of Parliament for Exeter from 1832 until his death in 1864.  

The description below, from The Western Times of  June 1841, is of one of a great many meetings, often in poblic houses, that took place in the lead up to the Election of that year:

"On Tuesday evening, at eight o' clock, another large meeting took place at the Black Dog Inn, North Street, which was addressed by Mr. Divett, and Mr. Wilkinson, at great length.

"The meeting was disturbed by the presence of some of the drunken hirelings of the tories, who, having swilled of beer to repletion, came there for the purpose of indulging their swinish propensities with a few groans and grunts.

"Mr. Wilkinson happily told them to groan away, for theirs was a 'groaning cause.'  The insulting behaviour of these fellows was met with perfect good humour,  and their object being thus defeated, they soon after slunk away. 

"The meeting then proceeded with perfect harmony, and terminated amidst the enthusiastic cheering of the whole assemblage."

This was the same election in which Mr Jorrocks (R.S. Surtees,  Hillingdon Hall) was elected to Parliament.  In Exeter the run-up to the voting seems to have been carried on with the same vigour and with similar machinations to those that were practiced in Hillingdon.

The Liberals/Radicals looked for support to the many teetotalers and to those citizens who did not swill beer to repletion,  hence, perhaps the emphasis here on the swinish propensites of the tory hirelings who  disturbed the meeting at the Black Dog Inn.

At The Victory in St Sidwell's, it was reported in this same newspaper article, "a number of plumpers for Mr. Divett assembled."  Now there's a nice word for you!  A plumper was a voter who, in multiple elections - which this was -  gave his vote to only one candidate, thus increasing the chance of his election.

 

HUNTING IN HAPPY HEAVITREE, 1841

 "On Saturday last Mr. R. Cockburn's hounds met at Sandy Gate, at half past ten,, when many of the knowing ones who were let into the secret, were on the qui vive.  The dogs were soon in Mr Salter's brakes, and the music of the full-toned hounds gave notice of what we might expect if we looked sharp out - and so it was, for Reynard, after dodging about the furze, made a bolt through the fir plantation, up the quarry lane by Mr Tuckett's farm, in a line to Heavitree Church, as if he were about to take sanctuary, but finding his friends too close at his heels, he made towards Mr Yard's, and there we were at fault, we thought he was gone to the Tanner's to change his coat, but shortly, after he was discovered crossing the gardens, thence over to Mr. Eardley's chapel to Miss Blunt's gate - finding that shut he went away into the adjoining garden where the hounds fresh found him.  He seemed so  taken with the happy village of Heavitree, as to be determined to end his days therein for he scampered away across the church path to Mr.Swale's to the great amazement of the villagiers;  the dogs were close to his brush, ands he once again reached his brake, but with all the appearance of having had more to do than he had anticipated on his first set out from home, which he never again quitted, the dogs having mawled him at the end of the brake."

*

I find it odd that this report from The Western Times of 10th April, 1841 makes no mention of horses leaping over gates or horsemen falling off and breaking their bones or whatever.  Presumably there were  horses galloping in and out of the gardens of the happy village of Heavitree in 1841.  In any case the sporting citizens of Exeter, the 'knowing ones', our hunting fathers, did not have far to go to watch the unspeakable pursuing the uneatable.

What an amazing contrast can be sensed between the spirit of community that is here and the anonymity of our modern life.   Mr. Cockburn and the Salters,  Mr. Tuckett a farmer, Mr. Yard,  Tanner, a tailor?, Mr Eardley, a dissenting minister, dear Miss Blunt,  Mr. Swale, Uncle Tom Cobley and all:  all  (okay, except the last!) have their names casually dropped with the assumption, it seems, that much of the readership, in the city and in towns and villages other than Heavitree, might have some acquaintance with these neighbours.

Mauled, spelled above with a w, - a typo I imagine, as with villagiers, is the just word,  The dogs would have smashed the fox as with a mallet,  not, as the word tends to mean nowadays, leaving the job half finished.   

 

"CHUGGY," EXETER, 1841.

 The Exeter Flying Post for 8th April 1841 reported how, at the Guildhall in Exeter a master-butcher, Mr. Slocombe sought damages for assault from a butcher's assistant called Lang.  The assault had occured at the slaughter house.   Mr Slocombe was leading two calves to their doom and Lang, who was butchering a pig, was blocking his way.

Lang, "not removing  when requested to do so, Mr. Slocombe capsized chuggy and the whole concern.  Enraged at which Lang struck and abused him.  

"William Palmer, a witness, said, 'I saw Lang strike Mr. Slocombe twice.'  On which Lang rejoined, 'I'll bring a witness to prove you were out of sight when I did strike him.' - This admission, of course, put the assault out of all question; and Mr. George Manning, and Mr James Spark, who were called on the part of Lang, could only speak to mitigatory circumstances.   These, however, so operated  that Lang was fined 1s. only, and expenses, making  4s. in all."  

*

I am fascinated how scrupulously The Post, here and in general, finds the epiphet 'Mr.' for 'respectable' citizens like this master-butcher, and omits it for base mechanics like the not-very-bright butcher's assistant, Lang.

 Clearly the readers of the newspaper were expected to recognise this pig under the name 'chuggy'.   I have as yet found no other chuggies.

Chuggypig or chuffypig is a south--west dialect name for the wood-louse and wood-lice look uncannily like pigs if you look them in the snout.  Of the eighty or so 'country' names for woodlice many have a piggy connection.

A VIRAGO IN MINIATURE, EXETER, 1841

 "A dwarfish Amazon, named Eliza Marshall, who appears to be emulous of the fame of Lady Barrymore,  and whose visits to the Guildhall,  unlike  "angels' visits few and far between," are of continued recurrence,  was charged with being drunk and disorderly.

"She was fined `10s and costs , or in default of payment, a month's imprisonment.

"As Milford, the night watchman, was conducting this virago in miniature to the lock-up, she suddenly made a violent attack upon him, scratching his face and drawing the blood copiously from his nose.  For this second offence she was ordered to be brought up tomorrow."

*

This Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, (10th April 1841)  typically brutal, police-court report is perhaps of interest only in so far as it mentions Lady Barrymore.   

Until her miserable death in 1832 "Lady Barrymore", properly Mary Ann Pearce, had been, for one or two years only, the cosseted mistress of the obscenely wealthy and decadent aristocrat, Richard (Hellgate) Barry the seventh Earl of Barrymore, (hence Mary Pearce's "title", unto which she had no right), and subsequently she was famous only for drunkeness, appearances in court and assaults upon watchmen.

No doubt Eliza Marshall's sins were scarlet but it wasn't her fault that she was small!

The angels quotation is from  Thomas Campbell's poem The Pleasures of Hope.  

 "What though my winged hours of bliss have been / like angels' visits few and far between...."

Campbell was still alive when Eliza Marshall bloodied Watchman Milford's nose.  

Oh to have lived in an age when words like emulous and copiously were flung to the people that they might leap and catch them and when the words of poets were read and remembered and quoted in the Exeter newspapers!

Nowadays language becomes less  elegant by the day.  Only today I read in Devon Live:

"A train passenger has received praise after they refused to give up their seat to an elderly woman.  The female passenger defended her decision .... &co."  (my emphasis)

How daft can you get?

   

TRENCHER CAPS, EXETER, 1841.

 From the Western Times, March 13th, 1841:

"Every body in this city has seen the Diocesan school boys parade the streets in their trencher caps.   Bishop Phillpotts enforces this daily airing in the open streets by way of advertising the existence of the school.

"Some of the lads look lank and hungry,  We hope their trenchers are filled at home as well as their trencher caps are out. 

"But we neither publish, hint, nor insinuate aught that would imply a doubt of the fact."

*

The Western Times liked a pun as much as it disliked Bishop Phillpotts.  The insinuation is, however much we are assured that there is none, that the twenty-six or so schoolboy/choristers of the cathedral's school were being half starved by a penny pinching Bishop, Dean and Chapter.

A trencher cap is nowadays more usually called a mortar-board.    Both appellations attempt to be pleasant.  It is called a trencher cap, say some, because, upside down, it looks like a trencher coming to table with a bowl upon it but certainly it is so called because the flat hats look like trenchers (wooden plates or platters) at the dining table.  Hence the Times' somewhat heavy pun.   

I wonder whether these caps were worn by schoolboys elsewhere.   

The lank and hungry boys must have looked cute in their 'academic dress' as they passed through the streets of Exeter, just as do the somewhat plumper graduates of the Open University these days. 

A SINGULAR EPITAPH, TOPSHAM, 1840

 "A correspondent has sent us the following epitaph found among the papers of the late Mr, Coysh, schoolmaster, Topsham.  Mr, Coysh had been for many years in the navy.  He was author of a work on which he much prided himself - 'The British Pronouncing and Self-instructing Spelling-book.'  The date of his death is supplied by the Executors: 

"TOPSHAM -

By the Grace of God,

Here lies moored in peace the hulk of
GEORGE COYSH,

who was launched into this ocean of misery on the 18th September, 1781, and who, after sustaining a variety of damage during a boisterous voyage through life, became at last so much impaired as to be rendered unfit for further service, and in consequence of his rotten and infirm state, was in pursuance of orders from aloft, brought to his moorings in this port on the 12th of November, 1840, in sure and certain hope of a thorough refit through him who hath said 'Because I live ye shall live also.""

*

It is no doubt a fact somewhat overlooked that George Coysh's British Pronouncing and Self-Instructing Spelling -book  was written in Topsham.   This somewhat crazy work can be found online.  It was well received by the educationalists of Exeter and at his death he had another such work in hand.  The quaint epitaph which he composed for himself reveals him to be have been a character who deserves to be remembered.  

Source: The Western Times, 6th February 1841.

"THANK YE, MY BOYS!," EXETER, 1841.

On Tuesday 26th January 1841, while the Mayor of Exeter and the other magistrates were dealing with the larcenies of the week at the Guildhall, the two constables on duty in the portico had occasion to disturb His Worshipful and the lesser worshipfuls as reported by The Western Times. (30th January 1841):

"JAMES JONES, a one-legged man, was here hurried into the Magistrates' room by Ginham and Lascelles, charged with creating a disturbance at the door, and with threatening to 'pare' the latter officer.

"His conduct was excessively impertinant before the magistrates, and he was ordered to find two sureties in £10., to keep the peace.

"On being taken away, in default of bail, he triumphantly shouted aloud,  'Thank ye, my boys, this is all I wanted - I only wished for grub and lodging without cost.'"

-

The constables in Exeter were so few and so well-known to the readers of The Times that this report (and many others) simply uses their surnames.

James Jones' cunning plan was hardly original.  Many poor men must have preferred to seek prison rather than suffer cold and hunger on the winter streets but not many had so much fun in the process of being committed as he, apparently, did.   Nor were others so  excessively impertinent and upbeat as to call the officers of the court 'my boys'.  James must have been quite a character.   I wish we knew more about him.  The granite columns must have quivered! 

To pare someone is new to me.  It sounds rather nasty - death by a thousand cuts?

 

A CHURLISH PRIEST, EXETER, 1841.

 William, Webber, a smith in the employ of Mr. W.C. Bodley, Bonhay, wrote to The Western Times  (9th January 1841) this letter:

"Sir, - Having a child lying dead,  I applied to the Rev. Mr. Atkinson,  Rector of St. Edmund's parish for its interment.   I waited upon him on the Wednesday, intending to have my child buried on the following day,  and he directed me to come again in the evening at half-past seven,

I did so, and his order then was , I were to be in the yard at 1 o'clock the following day.  I told him I could not, as I had some friends in the country coming to the funeral.  To this he answered by asking what had I to do with the appointment of the funeral - and added that he would not be in the yard at any time else.

I sent to him again the next morning, and his answer was just the same.  I was then obliged to apply to Mr. Wood, a Dissenting Minister, who buried my child, after having had another grave dug.

Knowing you to be a working man's friend, I take the liberty of writing to you the above, and trust you will be so kind as to insert it in your paper, which will always be remembered by your very grateful and humble servant,

WM. WEBBER

-

It was not uncommon for poor parents to have trouble with Anglican parsons when it came to burying their dead children and without a parson a child could not be buried.  Often Dissenters came to the rescue bur not always.  A last resort was the Quakers.

The editor of The Times subscribed this letter with the comment:  "The act of this priest, if perfectly lawful, was at the same time, perfectly churlish."

"Having a child lying dead." reads like the first line of a poem.  Walt Whitman?

Though a working man,  William Webber wrote a fair hand.  Something, I guess, that came as a surprise to the Rev. Mr. Atkinson.  The March of Mind was changing the game.

SALLY GRIBBLE, EXETER, 1841.

 Western Times of 2nd January 1841 reported at length the inquest following the death of a fortune teller called Sarah Gribble who had died in her bed in the two-room tenement she occupied in a back court in St. Mary Arches Street the week before.    The report includes this description of her:

"Clothes or linen upon her person, she had none - if we except an old pair of stays which she wore next her skin and a piece of coarse fustian cloth which was tied round her waist.  A dirty brown handkerchief was thrown over her shoulders, and tied in a knot upon her breast, and her head was covered with a cap, which she had never been known to change during the time she had resided in the house.  She wore neither shoes nor stockings, but, dressed as above described, used to sit continually in her bed, remaining constantly in the same position, with...."her nose and knees together."

"In her bedplace were found, after her death, a great quantity of articles of food, which appeared to have accumulated for some time, and which there is much reason to fear had been purloined by servant girls, who probably found it more convenient to satisfy their curiosity at their masters' expense rather than their own.  There were heaped together, in one heterogeneous mass, potatoes, turnips, and vegetables of all kinds, fruit, butter, bacon, dripping and a variety of articles of similar description, which the deceased was never know to have purchased, and the possession of which can only be accounted for in the way in which we have described.  A half pound of butter was found under her thigh immediately after her death and the other provisions were directly at her feet.

".....And yet, wretched as was her abode, Sally Gribble had numerous visitors, many from among the more respectable classes of society, and on a market day especially, her ante-room was thronged with customers, anxious to obtain admittance.  She was the daughter of a woman who was famous as a fortune teller in her day, and had never been married, and she delivered her predictions with an air of authority, which no doubt gave them all the greater weight.  Her manner was anything but conciliatory; and when displeased or unreasonable interrupted, she would order the intruder away, with the most horrible imprecations.

"She was always pretending the greatest poverty, although....a large quantity of money  was found in her apartment, and the necessaries of life were evidently supplied to her in abundance."

-

Sometimes Victorian Exeter seems not to have moved far from the Middle Ages.  The description of this old witch whose imprecations could be most horrible sitting on half a pound of butter in her bed with her naked legs drawn up to her chin  and telling fortunes to silly servant girls and matrons who should have known better could be Geoffrey Chaucer's.

It's a pity we are losing the fun of the old pet names.  I had forgotten that Sarahs were Sallys.

.

A MOURNFUL PROCESSION, EXETER, 1840.

 "On Wednesday last, the solemn and imposing spectacle of a military funeral took place in this city, the late Serjeant Major of the 14th Light Dragoons having been interred with full military honours:

"The mournful procession  walked from the Cavalry Barracks up Longbrook -street, through the High and Fore-streets, through North-street, unto St, David's church-yard.

"The charger of the deceased followed the corpse, appropriately caparisoned, and the remainer of the troop of the the regiment, together with the depot of the 75th foot, accompanied by the officers, attended.  The band preceded, and played the Dead March in Saul, through the city."

-

What a treat was this for the hat-doffing burghers of Exeter and their tender-hearted wives and daughters!:  The dragoons, on foot for once, in their gorgeous uniform, with steps solemn, mournful and slow, marching through the town looking imposing,  the infanteers slow-marching (better!) behind, the Serjeant Major's coffin, (on a gun-carriage?) the caparisoned charger,no doubt looking mournful, all to the the music of Handel echoing throughout Exeter.

The little boys, OK, some little girls too, must have loved the drama of it and followed the procession all the way to St, Davids .  They went home with 'Saul' ringing in their ears.

Nowadays the profile of the military in Exeter is so low that a snake could crawl under it.  For the last two years the City has scraped together only a handful of regular servicemen in uniform to attend the Northernhay memorial-service (and that in the shadow of vulgar Winter Wonderland construction.)

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Source: The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  26th December, 1840. 

THE BRIG 'HOWARD'', TEIGNMOUTH, 1840.

On Monday the seventh of December, 1840, the brig, Howard, of Exeter,  with a cargo of timber from Miramichi,  anchored off Teignmouth, took on a pilot and waited for the night tide.   But a gale blew up and she parted from her anchors and came on shore on the beach near the public baths:

"At about half past 12  the inhabitants were roused by the report of a cannon, which proved to be Captain Manby's apparatus, that had been brought to the spot by Lieutenant O'Reilly of the coast guard, who, with his men, used every exertion to convey a line to the ill fated ship, which was now labouring very much and her crew, and the pilot, thirteen hands, were seen imploring for relief.  

"After several attempts a shot from the apparatus took a line across the ship, by which the crew hauled a hawser on board from the shore....The pilot with great difficulty and danger reached the shore much exhausted; another man that followed him met a watery grave, the rope having broken.

"At this juncture,  Mr. William Warren with great promptitude constructed a grummet or sort of rope cradle. which was hauled on board, and by which nine more of the crew were safely landed....Two men were still missing, but as they did not make their appearance it was thought they were lost.  It was now half-past five a.m., Tuesday morning, and all having been done that human aid could accomplish the vessel was left to her fate.

"The gale now moderated and she held together, and on the falling of the tide the two misssing men were discovered on board safe.  Thus twelve of the thirteen were providentally saved."

-

Captain George William Manby was still alive in 1840.  He died in 1854.  Between 1808,  the first such rescue, and 1842 over 1000 lives had been saved by his mortars (rockets came later).  

A gallant rescue effort but the two deckhands who went below and spent the night in their bunks (?) rather took the gilt off the gingerbread.   Providence gets it wrong sometimes! 

Mr. William Warren's grummet I take to be an improvised lifebuoy woven on the spot from rope and then hauled ashore ( through the waves ?)

Source: The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 12th December, 1840.

PROVIDENTIAL HERRING, THE EXE ESTUARY, 1840.

"THE HERRING FISHERY IN THE ESTUARY has continued during the past week and we are told that it is calculated that 1000 tons have been taken during the month of November.

"The Oyster fishery has been a complete failure, but Providence has bountifully supplied the fishermen of the district with a more profitable substitute.

Notwithstanding the plenty, the fishing has been carried on every day, though Lord Devon's water bailiff, Lieut. Cornick. R.N. has warned the Exmouth portion of the fishermen, to desist from Sunday fishing, but the Starcross and Topsham people have had a perfect immunity, or if any notice has been taken of their working the Sunday, they have not attended to it: many hands were out last Sunday.

The herrings have been sold at two shillings a thousand. They are small but exceedingly well flavoured and great store has been laid up, by the working classes, for the winter."

-

A dried herring with a little bread, black or white, was a pretty standard winter meal for the working classes on the estuary.

I would think that Lieut. Cornick. R.N. had his work cut out trying to stop Sunday fishing when the herring were running up and down the estuary (presumably) in their thousands.

Ah yes, this must be that same Providence that sees to it that the holly has lots of berries before a hard winter so that the birds won't starve."

Source:  The Western Times, 5th December, 1840.

A STURDY VAGABOND, EXETER, 1840.

 "William Stevens was brought up before the bench, charged with an act of vagrancy.  He was a stout able bodied person, with a dark shock head and some five or six weeks beard.   He had a small bundle of brimstone matches under his arm, and a few shreds of shirt under his waistcoat but it sadly wanted mending, as it did not extend much below his throat, and the public , if so minded, had a full opportunity of judging the colour of his skin by actual inspection - for with the exception of an old waistcoat nothing covered the upper part of the matchman, so that his shirt wanted about as extensive a repair as Paddy's knife, which merely required a new blade and a new handle to make it complete.

"His trousers....with the repair of a leg up one side, and a leg down the other, some addition to the seat, and a few repairs in the front would still have been passable. He had shoes on - slashed and cut through to give air to his feet, and also to show that he had no stockings - his whole garb and garbage being so contrived as to give the appearance of great destitution and consequent suffering, which contrasted strongly with his able well coditioned frame which was equally significant of the fine feeding of cadger's hall....

"He was an incorrigible vagrant and had been sent home to his parish - some distance off - by Topsham at an expence of sixteen pounds. 

"Having nothing to say for himself save that he mumbled out that he could get no work, and had only a few matches.  He was sentenced to fourteen days imprisonment and hard labour.

"The Superintendent of Police said that much mischief was done by the 'relief' which cadgers were certain of finding in this city, having a billet always prepared for them on application to any of the Relief Society, whose humanity was often imposed upon by sturdy vagabonds of this class"  

*

William Stevens must have been one of the last of brimstone matchsellers.  Such matches were on the way out in 1840.   He carried a few sticks dipped in brimstone (sukphur) which could  only be used in conjunction with flint and steel to create a flame.  He probably carried them only to escape a charge of vagrancy but the Exeter magistrates were having none of that. 

No-one in Exeter, certainly not newspaper reporters, went around wearing T shirts with the logo 'BE KIND!' in those days.  

Source: The Western Times,  17th October 1840.

A MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT, TORQUAY, 1840.

 This blog seldom strays so far from Exeter, but Mr. J Hammick's extraordinary take of herrings at daybreak, Tuesday 10th September 1840 somewhat above Maidencombe, about a quarter of a mile off the shore, as reported by a correspondent to The Western Times  of 19th September, 1840 seems to me the fisherman's tale to beat all fishermen's tales, not excluding that of Saint Luke:

"....after drawing the sean near the shore, the body of herrings now enclosed proved so dense that all further exertions were abortive; in consequence of which the sean was immediatley laced up beyond the coarse yarn, it being a mackerel sean, and from this time until Sunday the fish were continually with a tuck net drawn out of the sean, which was now moored with four anchors to keep the sean from strapping or falling together.

The weather being particularly fine, parties were formed from all the neighbouring watering places to visit the scene of slaughter and as many as 20 boats were present at a time, filled with all the fashion of the neighbourhood, standing astonished at the immense body of fish before them, whilst the sides of the sean presented a mass of fish resembling a wall 20 to 25 feet deep.

There was at least 100 boats load of fish taken, besides a quantity of fish that were taken in sloops to Portsmouth, Weymouth and Guernsey, and on Sunday boats from all parts of the coast were obliged to return unladen, thus six days were spent in emptying and taking up the sean, besides the spoiling of from 10 to 20 boat loads of fish.

The whole of the fish was sold, and made about £500, at the low price of 3s. per thousand, thus well paying the men and proprietors for their exertions, and rendering a great public benefit to the country at large. The above sean belonged to Messrs Joan and Thomas Hammick, William Rossiter, &Knightons, of Torquay as proprietors."

There seems to me to be a worthy touch of national sentiment implied by this correspondent's spelling of seine.

Alas!  The great shoals of herring come no more to Maidencombe. 

STRANGE AND DISGRACEFUL HOAX

Under this heading The Western Times of 5th September 1840 reported how all the old sympathizers of the slave were fooled into attending a meeting at the Exeter Subscription Rooms that never took place.  It was advertised that Dr. Scoresby would be there as chairman.

Dr. William Scoresby was a whaler, a scientist, an explorer and a clergyman.  He was a great man, too great to require more to be written about him here.      He had been well-known and well-loved in Exeter, where he had been, for seven years, 1832 to 1839, Chaplain of the Bedford Chapel. but he left Exeter, according to The Times, 'under a cloud'.

The bills advertising the meeting had, allegedly, been sent up from London and they read:

"Abolition of Slavery, Royal Subscription Rooms, Exeter.  A Public Meeting will be holden (D.V.) at the above rooms , on Monday August 31st, 1840.  The Rev Dr. Scoresby in the Chair, to take into consideration the propriety of adopting means of procuring the general abolition of negro slavery, throughout the United States of America....The Chair will be taken at one o' clock precisely."

Accordingly at one o'clock:

"A full muster of the Bedford Chapel congregation took place, and the ladies schools in which he (Dr. Scoresby) found so many admirers poured forth their pattern pupils to see the worthy doctor as President.  The general question drew forth all the old sympathizers of the slave, and many a drab bonnett with mild and gentle features beneath graced the foremost seats,  the broad brim and the peculiar cut broad-cloth betokening the presence of the genuine devoted undomitable. haters of slavery and oppression. We observed also most of the leaders of the evangelical sections of the Christian Country and the sturdy Unitarian also was present - and taken in." 

It was no more than an elaborate hoax.  Neither Dr Scoresby nor any of the promised speakers turned up.  Some disgraceful, 'cakes-and-ale' joker had had his fun with the then Exeter progressives.  After waiting over an hour the sympathizers and the admirers all went home. 

Bring back 'holden'!!  

Undomitable is different.

I like the subtlety of 'D.V.'-  He clearly wasn't willing! - and in 1840 everybody knew what D.V. meant  - and  I like the ambiguity of 'taken in'! 

There is a crater on the moon named after William Scoresby.

A DEN OF VICE AND MISERY, EXETER, 1840.

I have not yet found Rockfield Place.  Was it where  Rockfield House is, off Longbrook Terrace?   Anyway, in 1840, it clearly had an alarming reputation.  There you could find vice, misery and wretchedly unfortunate creatures.  

The Reverend Mr. Harrington who had warred against the wicked women of Rockfield Place seems to have exercised his right not to bury one of them, she not having been baptised. Her burial had been arranged but  for some hours no clergyman turned up to perform the service.  This report is a typical Western Times (19th August 1840) attack on what the liberal papers saw as a vicious Anglican priesthood.  Declining to officiate was fairly common practise and caused problems for the relatives of the unbaptised dead in so far as a funeral service was necessary to the burial.

Fortunately that worthy Reverend Worthy turned up, albeit late, to enable this unfortunate creature to be laid to rest

"One of the wretchedly unfortunate creatures who inhabit that den of vice and misery, Rockfield Place, died, and was taken to be buried last week in the cemetry. Owing to some circumstances which we have not heard explained, neither of the parish clergymen (the Rev, Messrs Harington and Worthy) could be found for some hours; at last, after waiting from six o' clock till past ten at night Mr Worthy was found, and in the beautiful, solemn, but we regret to say, ill-applied language of the liturgy, the body of "our sister" with all her frailties was committed to its kindred earth.

"Knowing how the Rev, Mr Harrington has warred against this nest, we can easily understand the loathing with which he would turn away from the task which the ritual of the church had imposed on him - had the "sister" been a baptized member of the church."

THE POWER OF THE PRESS, EXETER, 1840.

 This was a common imposture in Victorian Devon:  you forged a 'brief' or certificate from a magistrate to the effect that you were a sailor who had survived a shipwreck and were now in need of charity.and you carried this from door to door in country places, waved the piece of paper at the credulous and collected, sometimes, large sums of money.

The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (18th July, 1840) cautioned that four such 'sailors' were operating in Broadclyst. The newspaper had corresponded with the Ilfracombe magistrate, who was in London at the time, whose name appeared on the brief.  The next week their Ottery correspondent was able, triumphantly, to report:

"The paragraph which appeared in your paper of Saturday last, relative to 'four men calling themselves Sailors and stating that a Vessel bound from St Cuba to this country, and to which they belonged, was struck by lightning on her passage, wrecked and nearly all the crew perished, &c.' has been the means of bringing one of the four delinquents this day (Wednesday) to justice.

"A man calling himself George Jones introduced himself to Mr.Jos. Cock, of this place, gamekeeper to Sir J. Kennaway, Bart.. (who had just noticed the paragraph alluded to,) and solicited alms of him, afterwards producing him a brief or certificate purporting to be drawn up and signed by 'N.V. Lee' of Ilfracombe, one of the Magistrates of this county.  

"Mr. Cock immediately charged the man with being an imposter, and, after a scuffle, took him into custody. Mr, Cock who was desirous to compare the particulars of the certificate with the Newspaper report, was about to do so, when the man exclaimed, with an oath, 'You shall not overhaul my papers' and immediately snatched the certificate from Mr. Cock's hands, and tore it into pieces, the whole of which was immediately collected, and has since been pasted together on a sheet of paper.  The man endeavoured to eat some of the pieces, but Mr. Cock prevented him.

"After a great deal of difficulty he was taken before the Rev. George Smith, the Vicar of Ottery St. Mary, who, after hearing the complaint, on oath, convicted the imposter as a rogue and vagabond, and commited him for 3 months to hard labour.

"The certificate bears the signature of many respectable subscribers who have given to the amount of nearlt £10....

"Great credit is due to Mr. Cock for his spirited exertions in preventing this imposter, who is a very powerful fellow, from collecting alms under such fraudulent pretences."

  

IDLE BOYS, EXETER, 1840.

The Western Times of 2nd June, 1840,  thought  it a good idea to include this in it local news column;  the sidewalk stone-kicking must have been noticable:

"A correspondent writes to ask us, are there no proper authorities to prevent the footways of this city from being  in some streets rendered nearly impassible, in consquence of a game which has been much patronised by idle boys of late, namely kicking about a stone with as much energy as their young muscles will admit of, to the imminent risk of the shins of all sedate passengers.  

"He states that a woman had her leg laid open a few days since in St. Sidwells, by a flint stone sent spinning vigorously along the pavement by a determined kick.

"He states that in other towns which he had visited, having far less pretensions to civilization than the emporium of the west, such practices would not be tolerated."

I suspect that the correspondent is overestimating the dangers of vigorous flint-kicking to sedate passengers;  (isn't it curious that nowadays you are only a passenger when someone is transporting you?) perhaps the woman in St. Sidwells with the leg laid open was his auntie.

The emporium of the west still lives up to its reputation for tolerating the intolerable, although these days the local council seems not to bother with greater pretensions to civilization - too elitist for them I suppose.

At least these idle boys had boots to their feet.

A WRESTLING MATCH, EXETER, 1840.

"The lovers of this manly exercise had a rich treat on Wesnesday last, in a Match beween the worthy hosts of the Victory and Acorn Inns in this city,  The match was for a crown aside, and came off in a field behind the Cavalry Barracks.   

"At setting too (sic) Boniface of the Acorn had the best of it, not being encumbered with so much flesh as his antagonist of the Victory, who exhibited strong signs of piping in the first and second bouts, suffering from the heavy falls he received,  but being decidedly the most scientific man, he gave the man of oak such a crossbussler that he came to the ground flat as a pancake, which the referees decided won the wager."

In the merry  month of May, two well-set Exeter innkeepers wrestled each other to win or lose a crown (five shillings).  They met in a field behind the Cavalry Barracks and no doubt, among others, their regulars turned up to cheer for them and someone would no doubt have made a book. 

Mine host of the Victory , the heavier man, won the wager.

The other was the man of oak, i.e. of the Acorn - very witty!  Was his name really Boniface?   (Saint Boniface, who went to the schools in Exeter, has been revered locally for some thirteen hundred years and is, but only since 2019, officially the patron of Devon in the courts of heaven)  Perhaps it was just that this host had a bony face. 

Piping here means gasping for breath.  It is used thus, I gather, only for boxers and wrestlers.

A crossbussler is a cross-buttock, a throw across the hip.

Encumbered with flesh might prove a useful euphemism for sensitivity readers.

Flat as a pancake has been around since, at least, the sixteenth century. 

Innkeepers nowadays aren't as sporting as once they were.

Source: The Western Times, 23rd May, 1840.

THE WISE WOMAN OF MILL STREET, EXETER, 1850.

 

“Last Tuesday sennight a company of the lower kind of people, working men, their womenfolk and paupers of this city gathered in Fore Street to give ear to a crazy harangue from the so-called wise woman of Mill Street, Jenny Vinnicombe. She addressed a mob of perhaps two or three hundred people. A few respectable citizens were also drawn to listen to her prognostications. What she had to say was as dismal and as unworthy of belief as we have come to expect from this visionary.

“' I see this city,” she squawked, waving her bony fingers towards heaven, 'far distant from now. I see the House of God surrounded by mud.  I see a drunken man shouting out filthy words in Peter's churchyard. He holds a bottle in each hand. He is not alone. There are many of them there,,- ,foul-mouthed women too.  Alas! these monstrous beings now rule the city streets.   I see three of them carousing  beneath the very porch of the Guildhall.'” (at this, a gasp of horror from the crowd) “'others squat in the dust opposite the city market supplicating alms from passers by. It is a city without watchmen or constables. ( A cheer from the less reputable auditors).

"The market is a market no longer. I see only gluttons feeding like there were no morrow. The streets are full of noise and vulgarity. Norney, our treasured pleasure ground  has lost its groves and its charm.  The  green turf  is browned and, the walks are everywhere blocked or locked.  Childish scribblers have daubed the castle walls and the seats, and whatever can be desecrated.  Wherever the eye lights is shabbiness and neglect. (a groan from the fragrant multitude)  I see the gates of the people's Castle Yard made fast against them, the castle of  Rougemont lost to them for ever.  (yet another groan.)   I see ....'

“But we have reported quite enough of the wanderings of this crazed old beldame. She kept up her silly rant until Policemen Guppy and Bray tired of her  nonsense and marched her away to spend time in the back grate where she still awaits the opportunity to harangue His Worshipful the Mayor and the Magistrates."

Well,  this wise woman was clearly no progressive!  

There are still plenty of people today claiming they can see what horrors the distant  future holds.  Let us hope they are all as pathetically wrong in their dark visions as was Jenny Vinniccombe.

Norney of course, is the Northernhay Gardens.

Peter's churchyard is the Cathedral Green.

Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 32^nd March, 1850.

A MASTER'S BIRTHDAY, EXETER, 1840.

 "The Pupils of King's Lodge Academy, in this city, on Saturday last, testified their respect for their talented preceptor, on the occasion of the anniversary of his birth, by presenting him with a handsome piece of plate, on which the following sentiments were beautifully engraved: - 'Presented 9th May, 1840, to Mr Quicke, Master of King's Lodge Academy, by his Pupils as a token of their grateful sense of his efforts, in promoting their general education, and as a memento of the sincerity of their affectionate esteem, for his parental attention.'

"Master Wood, eldest son of the Rev. B. Wood, Rector of Inwardleigh, near Oakhampton, was selected to present this tribute of regard, who expressed his feelings and those of his school-fellows in a very appropriate and happy address;  the master, in his reply, excited the liveliest emotions of joy  in the hearts of his youthful friends, and the spirit of harmony and hilarity was continued to the close of the happy day.

"Such a manifestation of juvenile attachment must be highly gratifying to to a tutor and any instance of this nature warmly recommends both the instructor and the instructed."

The boys subscribed, says The Western Times of 16th May, 1840, voluntarily and spontaneously for Mr, Quicke's engraved piece of plate.  Did they have a sincere affection for him? - all of them?   Were they all grateful for his efforts?  Maybe not!   We, however, hear too much about the barbarity of Victorian education and, although there is no doubt that the Dotheboys Halls existed,  it seems to me Mr. Quicke must have been doing something right to earn the boys' respect and the King's Lodge Academy, here, right in the middle of the city, must have been a well-ordered and harmonious school.  

When now, by example, I see the liberated Exeter College 'students' swarm beyond the walls of their place of education  like a plague of locusts let loose on the city,  I allow myself to wish that their 'lecturers' took a rather more holistic view of education and kept them within bounds and acted with a little more authority and in the spirit of in loco parentis.  like, I imagine, did Mr. Quicke and his son. 

Then perhaps their youthful friends would voluntarily and spontaneously present them with handsome pieces of plate on their birthdays.

 

 

MRS. BARTRUM AND THE MERLIN, EXETER, 1840.

 "Nature red in tooth and claw."

"One day last week a merlin flew in through the window of a cottage on the Topsham Road, and made an attempt to grasp a canary which was in a cage near the window,  The owner of the canary, Mrs. Bartrum, happened to be present, and struck the merlin to the ground with a parasol;  it however soon recovered and again made an attack on the canary, but was ultimately killed by throwing books at it.

"The merlin is not a native of this country, but generally visits it in October.  It is one of the smallest of the hawks, not being much larger than the thrush, but it is very courageous.  It is easily tamed, and is used for hawking quails, larks, and other birds."

Rejoice , perhaps, for the redoubtable, parasol-wielding, book-throwing Mrs. Bartrum and her fat pet-canary but spend a night of sighs regretting that beautiful merlin!

We have killed too many birds, early and late, one way or another.  Gone are the days when merlins frequented the Topsham Road;  gone too the skylarks that they fed to their chicks. 

I wonder which was the flung book that finally dispatched the merlin.  My money is on Mrs. B's brass tipped and clipped  Book of Common Prayer.

Source: The Western Times, 2nd May, 1840.  (Also: Alfred Lord Tennyson.)

A POISONED PEN, EXETER, 1840.

 I blog this as a brief example of the fun and games that, for many years, The (Whig) Western Times had when reporting Church news:  

"ORDINATION. - Bishop Phillpotts held an ordination last Sunday, at the Cathedral.  The ceremony did not excite any particular interest, and the following gentlemen had the hands of that distingushed prelate  laid on them, by which they were ordained and set apart for the work of the gospel - some being moved thereto by the prospect of family livings, but all professing to have been moved by the Holy Ghost:"

Whence follows a list of some twenty or so, new Deacons and Priests. 

What wonderful innuendo!  Our reporter clearly had little respect for Exeter's bishop nor for the beneficed clergy ordained under his hands. 

Phillpotts was, in fact, so much hated by the working people of Exeter that they burned him in effigy on Guy Fawkes Night 1841 while he was hiding in his palace protected from his own people by a troop of yeomanry cavalry. But it was the Cornish socialist historian, A.L.Rowse, who oiled Phillpotts with the most vitriol when he wrote that he was: “a nauseating character..., a nasty political pamphleteer who recommended himself thus for ecclesiastical promotion to the Tory reactionaries of before the Reform Bill, who recommended himself still more by marrying Lord Eldon’s niece, a grabber of every scrap of church preferment he could lay hands on to serve his family - he had seven sons in Orders and almost as many sons-in-law; who kept clear of his cathedral city the whole time of the cholera, an oppressor of the poor, who built himself a fine marine villa at Torquay (now the Palace Hotel), from which he administered his diocese and went up to speak in the House of Lords on behalf of every bad cause:"

It is said that, when in the House, Phillpotts fulminated against every reform of the age in a manner that shocked even his fellow diehards while in his diocese, in the name of his personal perfunctory interpretations of Christian doctrine, he put fear rather than love into the hearts of his clergy.

Nevertheless, I myself, with these my ears, have heard a Bishop of Exeter lecture on that distinguished prelate, Henry Phillpotts, for an hour without saying one negative word about him.  No doubt the Holy Ghost or perhaps the Apostolic Succession had something to do with that.

Source:  The Western Times, May 2nd, 1840.

PRATTLING WARBLERS, BROADCLYST, 1840.

 In March, 1840, William Barker, the vicar of Broadclyst, was at war with his rustic parishioners over the question of Sunday drinking.   He had summoned before the magistrates the keeper of a beer-shop for serving ale during divine service which naturally caused this vicar to be unpopular with his beer-swilling parishioners. 

The Western Times of 6th March 1840 clearly had sight of these remarkable lines written, and somehow published first by one of William Barker's flock and then, with, I imagine, some difficulty for the typographer, by the newspaper in its original form,  thus: 

"This of a little Cot not built on a rock, 

But it stands on the heath quite secure 

A black bird of Note tried to Set him a floate

And to wash A way from him Strong beer

 Choraus

So Now my boys you Must take Care

And Mind the hours of Prayer

Or Els the black bird will Sind rown

And take A way your Share

Theair is Two Prattling warblers that Prade rown the town

the A Sist the black bird when out of note

the Strach every vain for to Sit him in tune

But the Cot is not quite yeat A floate

Strong beer is its Pride And the house will Abide

In Spite of the black bird or warblers

The will Open their doors, And be Strick to theair hours

And feair Neaither One Nor the Oathers

Choraus

Now you black bird of note mind this is no joke

you  warblers that Prade round the town

Some bird of great fame will Strike Out your name 

And level you flat with the ground."

I have seen 'the' for 'they' before.  It is a phonetic rendering of the leisurely speech of Devon countryfolk.. 

The black bird is the Parson and the two prattling warblers are the Parish Constables.  There seems to me to be real anger expressed here.  Threatening to level parsons and policemen to the ground is in all probability no joke.

I can imagine this 'song' being sung round a table at the  Broadclyst beer-shop in the manner of Tony Lumpkin and his base companions at the Three Pigeons.

BLEWING A YACK, EXETER, 1850.

 C. Cross, Junior was walking up Fore Street Exeter on his way home at two o'clock of a Sunday morning (3rd February,1850) when Harriet Salter and Elizabeth Wilkie came out from King Street and caught hold of him and asked him to give them a cup of coffee.  He told them he could not because he had only a halfpenny in his pocket.  Harriet held him by the waist and pulled at his waistcoat and found his halfpenny and his watch and passed them to Elizabeth.  He discovered his loss and held onto Harriet and called a policeman and Policeman Bray was there like a shot.  (Try that nowadays!)  Bray charged Harriet with the theft, took her to the station, came back with his colleague Policeman Guppy (whose name was so often in the Exeter papers that I wonder if Dickens  (Bleak House 1852/53) found it there.) and apprehended Elizabeth coming up the Stepcott steps.

Later, the two girls were together in the cells and the redoubtable  Guppy was eavesdropping at the door of their cell.   This is what he said he heard: 

"Wilkie said, - 'All I fear is, that the yack will be blewed before we get turned up on Monday morning.  I had only just blewed it when I saw them coming.'

"Salter replied, -  'Oh never mind , not now, we shall sure to be together to-morrow, over at Gully's (the Keeper of the City Gaol).  Is it all right?'

"Wilkie - 'What did the splodger say? Did he find the yack blewed before you were gone?'

"Salter replied - 'Yes.'

"Wilkie again said - 'What did he say, then?'

"Salter - 'The B---- said 'you have robbed me' ; I said 'robbed you!' and he said 'yes, you have stolen my watch from my right hand waistcoat pocket.'  He then gave me in charge of a Peeler,'

"Wilkie - ' I was a b.....  fool to get pinched tonight.'

"They were both committed for trial."

To blew a yack from a splodger is, of course, to relieve a sucker of his watch.  To blew is also to get rid of, to sell, a Romany word (?).  This is a rare, genuine (but only if Policeman Guppy was reliable in his evidence) report of a conversation between these two feral girls who roamed the wintery streets of Exeter at night looking for splodgers. 

At a distance of 173 years, I find myself feeling sorry for Harriet and Elizabeth.  They never had a chance!

 Where would one expect to fnd a coffee that time of night?

Source The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 9th February 1850.

FIRE AND CANDLE, EXETER, 1850.

 

William Somerville was a discharged soldier who lived, together with his mother-in-law and others, in rooms belonging to Mr. Porter.   Young Abraham Gosling pointed him out in the Exeter market to Inspector Fulford and said, wrongly, that he had witnessed William stealing oil-cloth from Mr Cleave's store in the High Street on the night of Tuesday 15th January.  

Without further enquiry Inspector Fulford  took William Somerville into custody and the next Monday, having spent some time in the cells, William was brought up in front of the Magistrates at the Exeter Guildhall.   But William  had not done the wicked deed and he had an alibi.  His mother-in-law told the Court:

".... they all went to bed by six o' clock every night,  for her husband had had no work for the last three months, and so they could not afford to burn fire and candle.  She could swear that the prisoner was in bed by six o' clock on Tuesday,....

"Their landlord, Mr Potter, spoke as to the general good conduct of the prisoner, and said he always went to bed between five and six.  He had no particular recollection of the Tuesday night in questiion, but he believed he went to bed as early as usual;  he thought his wife could tell better about it, as she always stopped up till half-past eight o' clock, when she locked the front door.   

"She was not in court but was sent for;  when she came she swore positively that Somerville was in bed on the Tuesday night by six o' clock.

"The Bench dismissed Somerville, telling him that he left the Court with no imputation on his character." 

Well, I should think that was the very least they could do!   But what crushing poverty!  I wonder how many other paupers in Exeter went to bed every night at sundown because they had not fire and candle.                     

Source:  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  26th Januaty, 1850.

SO RASH AN ACT, COWLEY BRIDGE, 1850.

"On Thursday last week an inquest was held at the Three Horse Shoes Inn, near this city, before F. Leigh Esq., coroner foe the County, on the body of John Wills, about 21 years of age, a corporal in the 9th regiment of Foot who was found drowned on Wednesday morning, in the river under Cowley-house.

"The deceased left his father's house, situate near Cowley bridge, the previous morning, in good health and spirits, and dined with a relative named Shorland, after which he spent some time there playing at cards.

"He subsequently attended a dance at Pitt's public-house, Upton Pyne,  where he appeared to enjoy himself very much,  not leaving until a late hour, when he proceeded in company with several persons towards his father's home.

"After passing over Pynes bridge he left his companions, wishing them good bye, saying they would never see him again, at the same time giving one of them a letter for his father, and returning as if to go back to Upton Pynes, the others proceeding on, nothing being thought of this strange coduct of his.  He was afterwards seen walking to and fro the bridge by some persons passing, and a little afterward sitting by the railings close by.   On the following morning his body was found as described above.

"The letter to his father assigned no reason for his committal of so rash an act, but after stating where they might find his body, concluded by requesting to be buried by the side of his mother in Upton Pynes churchyard.

"The jury, under these circumstances, returned a verdict of felo-de-se, and he was accordingly interred where he requested, at midnight without funeral rights."

Poor Corporal Wills!  A good dinner with an old friend, a game of cards, a jolly dance at the pub and then suicide!  My guess is he suffered more than most the sudden chill ito the pit of the stomach, the grand melancholy that young soldiers often know at the end of a week's home leave.  The thought of rejoining the regiment was perhaps just too much to bear. 

It was not until 2010 that the Church of England allowed full funeral rites to people who had taken their own lives.   There is something particularly callous about these midnight burial denied ceremony.. 

'Three Horseshoes' is a common enough pub name, so called because losing a shoe made the rider seek an inn where there was a smithy.  The name persists here in Exeter for the district but not for the inn:  now it is called, appropriately enough, 'The Stables'.

Source:  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 19th January 1850.

A SAD AFFAIR, BUCKLAND, 1850.

 "A sad affair has occured at Buckland, which has created a great sensation in the neighbourhood.  About four months ago, a farmer named Bird, being in want of a servant, applied to the Union, and took therefrom the daughter of a man named Parsons, who was transported some years since from this place; she was well recommended by the Governor.  On Saturday the girl died, and an inquest was held on her body, the result of which proves that her death was the result of ill-treatment.

"A verdict of Wilful Murder was returned against the farmer and his wife, and they have been commited to the county Gaol to await their trial at the Assizes.

"The treatment of the deceased as deposed to by the various witnesses was brutal in the extreme, and the description of her body as given by the surgeon, Mr. Gunner, and others horrified the assembly in the Court.

"Suffice it to say that her body was a mass of wounds, bruises, abscessess, and cuts from whips, sticks, &c.; and the deceased was reduced to this frightful condition by the prisoners.

"Their conduct excited the deepest indignation, and it was with difficulty that the perpetrators of this horrid crime were kept by the Police officers from the hands of the infuriated mob on their  being conveyed from the Court to prison.  So much excitement has not been witnessed in this place since the unfortunate omnibus accident three years ago.

"On the morning of their departure for Exeter, the bridge, which they had to cross, was thronged  by hundreds of people, - but the authorities judiciously ordered a car at the gaol door, in which the prisoners were conveyed two miles out of town, to await the arrival of the Exeter mail.  No doubt, if this step had not been taken, the prisoners would have been torn to pieces."

No comment, -  Too sad!

Source:  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 12th January, 1850.

A JAW TO WAG, EXETER, 1871.

On 1st May 1871 there was a lively meeting held at the Temperance Hall in Exeter to support The Permissive Bill that was passing through Parliament.   Many working men were in the audience and several of them spoke from the platform.   Their concern was with the Licencing Bill which looked fair to restrict the Sunday hours that a man could spend in drinking beer in a public house:

"A young fellow named DARKING, said to be a lumper, then got up on to the platform amid laughter and confusion.  He informed the meeting that he was not cast into a wood 'to be brought up in the state us is in now,....I have got a tongue within my jaws to wag and Mr. Jones ha'nt got no more than I have.  Us have jaws given us to wag.  We ban't ignorant, but I wasn't sent to College to learn my knowledge.  

"Gentlemen and ladies,  what's the  question us has come here about this evening?  That's it.  I believe 'tis the little bit 'bout public-house shutting up on Sundays....There's deception in those who wear black clothes - (hear, hear).  You can say hear hear or not, just as you like, it's no odds to me, 'cause I got to work for my living.  But these gentlemen on the platform gets their living by being paid for it, and different to what I does - (A VOICE -  Have a drop of beer,, Darkey?)  Yes I could drink a glass if I had it.  Let the gentlemen shut up their cellars and clubs on Sundays on Northernhay.  'Tis deception.  If they gets drunk they haves a cab to take 'em home, but we poor fellars got to go through the streets.'"

The Western Times (2nd May 1871) has done its best to capture the speech of the working man and we can clearly hear the voice of young Darking after a century and a half.  He protested that he was not ignorant;  he had not been cast into a wood.  This phrase is odd and sounds like it might stem from some fireside legend or folk-memory of idiot children raised by beasts.    Those who wear black clothes are first and foremost the ministers of religion..  A lumper worked  lading and unlading ships.

 

CROSSING-SWEEPERS, EXETER, 1850.

 "Two youths, named LEE and FULFORD, were charged with being on Saturday at the bottom of Paris-street, the former with a broom with which he swept the crossing, and then they each begged of the individuals, who availed themselves of this clean part to cross on, something to remunerate them for their troubles, but at the same time using impertinent language to those who did not reward them.

"The Superintendent informed the Bench that he had had many complaints made of him of late of the insolence of these boys.

"The Bench ordered Fulford to be locked up for six hours,  and the other was dismissed with a reprimand."

What these boys, they would have been very little boys, were doing was surely a public-service, a bit like being a lolipop-lady.  These days they might have found themselves in the running for an M.B.E.

Clearly the Magistrates at Exeter Guildhall did not see it like that.  It would have been the impertinent language that they leveled at those respectable citizens who failed to pay for their swept-clean passage across the filthy road  that caused them to be charged.  I should like to know just what the boys said.

I notice these days that the mendicants of Exeter , with a few exceptions, are wonderfully polite to people, like me, who do not give them money.  The much muttered "Have a good day!" being the depressing mantra that they address to our, the meanies', retreating backs. 

Source:  The Exeter Flying Post, 10th January, 1850.

IMPURE EFFLUVIA, EXETER, 1833.

From a letter to the Editor of The Western Times, Saturday 19th January 1833:

 "It will probably be, Mr. Editor, within your recollection, that I have already, on a former occasion, called your attention to the existence of a nuisance,....I allude to the fact of a great number of pigs belonging to the London Inn, being kept immediately adjoining the foot-path in Longbrooke-street, contrary to an act in existence, as also to the general practice of the judicial body, when the poor man (from an endevour to add to his scanty maintenance) chances to become the offender, by keeping a pig, not in the public thoroughfare....but perhaps in some unfrequented part of the city yet not so entirely obscure as to evade the vigilance of their officials, as the police reports weekly demonstrate; yet those very individuals, with a singular discrimination, (or owing to some strange defect of vision, arising most probably from that prevalent disease which we of the faculty term 'aurum foliaceum, ' cannot discover nuisances so palpably evident.

"Really, Mr. Editor, this is too bad, that the stern measure of Justice should be meted out to the poor man, and not to the rich;  again let me reiterate the good old motto, "Fiat Justitia ruat coelum."

"Mr. Editor,  yours truly,

"A SURGEON.

"P.S. The stench arising from the weekly removal of the manure on which they herd, is so revolting to the senses, that I have learnt...from the inhabitants of Hill's Court, that during these periods they are necessitated to take a considerable circuit in going to and from their houses in order to avoid an effluvia than which, for impurity, nothing can possibly exceed." 

I suppose the modern equivalent might be the waste-bins which are herding around every corner of the city.  The poor man is obliged by Exeter City Council to hide his bins except  on the day when they are to be collected but the rich man, for which read the fast-food outlet, leaves his bins lying about the streets of Exeter.   The poor man is obliged to  not overfill his bins whereas the  'commercial' waste-bins gape and spew rubbish from Fridays to Mondays and no official sanctions this.  I don't know that any aurum is involved but I shouldn't be at all surprised.   True, the measure of Justice isn't as stern as it used to be, indeed  all too few of the many wise, city bye-laws seem to be enforced.

I think I would prefer pigs to burger bags or plastic (or biodegradeable) coffee-cups.  The pig just happens to be my all-favourite animal.

Let Justice be done though the heavens fall!

bit.ly/40M2w0g

KIDDLEY WINKS, ALPHINGTON, 1833.

At the Castle of Exeter:  "John Rugg, of Ide, complained of Mr. J. Way, a respectable farmer, of Alphington, for an assault, arising from the following circumstance....He was employed by Mr. Way, to hoe a field of turnips which Mr. Way stated to be eight acres, he was to have four shillings an acre and a gallon of cider per acre for his labour.

"In the course of the performance of the work, Rugg discovered, or was informed, that the field was nine acres, of which fact he informed Mr.Way,  but, however contented himself to complete the job as if it was only eight acres, as he stated.

"On the Saturday after the work was finished, and wages paid, Rugg being at Alphington, and having refreshed himself in one of the "Kiddley Winks" in that village, he invited a pot companion, called Shobrook....to call with him at Mr.Way's and drink the 'ninth gallon' of cider for the turnip hoeing.

"Shobrook waited otside Mr.Way's door and Rugg went in and demanded the cider, in very improper and abusive language.  Mr. Way would not give him the cider, and ordered him to leave the house, when he refused to go.  Mr. Way then used force to get him out, and in doing so, or from Rugg's own conduct, he having been a 'little sprung,' he got his clothes badly torn, and his face and head considerably bruised, which made them bleed profusely.  He was confirmed in the latter by Shobbrook; and Mr. Way called witnesses to prove Rugg's improper behaviour in the house.

"But the Bench were unanimous in opinion that Mr, Way had used more force than was necessary, and therefore convicted him of the assault, and fined him 20s. to cover costs, 7s.6d. of which they allowed Rugg for lost time, and 2s.6d. to Shobbrook." 

Good for the unanimous Bench, I think, not to find for the respectable Farmer Way but for the improperly behaving turnip-hoer, Rugg.

The jolly expression being a little sprung  which I am taking to mean being a little tipsy (bur which, I learn from the internet, now has another meaning)  doesn't appear in my Oxford Dictionary of Slang.  

But I chiefly blogged this for the sake of Kiddley Winks which is a sweet and early usage for the newly created (1830) beer-houses which were licenced to sell beer only, but where a wink in the taproom might favour you with smuggled brandy. 

Source: The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  2nd November, 1833.

A NOBLE BIRD, STARCROSS?, 1844

"On Monday as Messrs. Hutchings and Frost were walking over their grounds, their attention was attracted by a screeching noise proceeding from the Kenn Brook, where they soon found that a fine heron had entangled its legs in some night lines, by which it was held at bay;  on their approach, the noble bird, arose with an effort, carrying the line and two heavy stones attached to it, to a tree in the immediate neighbourhood, where it got bound fast.  The two gentlemen now endevoured to free the bird, which with the assistance of a labourer they eventually managed, not without much difficulty and trouble, as the bird showed fight, and it proved no easy matter to release it from its accidental trap.  After obtaining its freedom, it winged its way towards Powderham Park."

This is just the kind of story that it is a joy to find  -  delightfully inconsequential,  for mankind at least - and with a happy end.   Two Victorian gentlemen strolling  across their own grounds, beside the Kenn brook, now called the Staplake brook (?), on a sunny (?) day in late May, 1844,, (I would guess where is now the Starcross golf-course) to find a  screeching heron tangled in some night lines. Do they shoot it and send it to Exeter to be stuffed?  No, no, no!  They put themselves to the trouble of rescuing the noble bird despite it being one that showed fight, and with that wicked bill too.   And the story gets in the paper!

Those were the days!,: when  gentlemen could always find a nameless labourer to lend them a hand!

Source: The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 1st June 1844.

THE SKULKING SPECTRE, EXETER, 1829.

 From The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette,  10th January 1829: 

“A few evenings since, as a servant girl was passing through the burying ground opposite the Hospital,  in charge of two children, some mischievous fellow attempted to frighten them by playing ‘the Ghost,' for which purpose he had covered himself with a sheet, and when they had arrived opposite a grave stone, behind which he had secreted himself, he started forth exclaiming, “I am a spirit rising from a tomb.”

“Fortunately the girl possessed more nerve than generally falls to the lot of females in her line, she replied, ‘Then lie down again;’ and, bidding the children not to be alarmed, proceeded on her way without further noticing the skulking spectre.

“We regret that the fellow was not effectually laid, by an oak stick well applied by some manly arm.  It is no doubt in the recollection of many of our readers, that about eight years ago a young woman of the parish of the Holy Trinity was frightened by the thoughtless folly of a youth who also arrayed himself in a white covering;  the unfortunate victim has been ever since in a state of idiotcy - a lamentable spectacle to her friends and an expense to the public ! !”

Wrapping up in sheets and jumping out from behind gravestones to frighten servant girls seems to have gone out of fashion. It is just as well; one would not want too much public money being shelled out to females in a state of idiotcy (this was a correct form of the word at the time.)

The reporter's expressed wish for a well-applied manly arm to lay out 'the Ghost' with an oak stick seems somewhat harsh. After all, the mischievous fellow probably had a mum waiting for him.