"NOSING", TORQUAY, 1842.

"Great dissatisfaction is felt in the neighbourhood of Hope's Nose in consequence of the Preventive men coming across a store of tubs which had been landed there early in October.

"It is said that one of the parties split, and that his daughter took her station on a rock in front of the cave, and the Preventive men walked right in and took the tubs.

"The honest man had his conscience smitten, and was obliged to split to ease it,  he having been engaged in runs for fourteen years and upwards, and now doing the illicit in the matrimonial line at Torquay, the expenses of which caused him to "nose".  The men of the "moonshine" are very indignant at being done out of the results of a successful run."

A nose, like a snitch or a snout is, as every schoolboy knows, common as a noun and means a police-informant, or in this case an H.M.Customs informant. 

NOSING was The Western Times' (12th November 1842) title to this piece,  here used as a verb. To split, meaning more or less the same, is not felt to merit quotation marks.  Of course it is the location, Hope's Nose, that inspired the choice of words.

Hope's Nose is said to be a form of Hoop's Nose, so called because of the shape of  this headland although it seems more of a hook than a hoop. 

The Preventive Men came by sea. (I assume) The informer's daughter stood on a rock to betray the cache of tubs.  Her father was doing the illicit in the matrimonial line,  (horrible euphemism!)  How did the Times' correspondent know all these details?  It is pretty clear where his sympathies lay.

Men of the moonshine, I find admirable.  It would make a good title for a novel about smugglers.

"Moonshine signifies smuggled spirits, which were placed in holes or pits and removed at night" - Notes and Queries, May 1884.

THE NOTORIOUS FAIR, NEWTON POPPLEFORD, 1842

 "At the Newton Poppleford fair on the 19th inst, there was the usual number of gipsies, pickpockets, and prostitutes for which this fair is notorious; the robberies were numerous, females being mostly the victims.

"The most distressing case made public was that of a person from Whimple, who had the value of thirteen hundred weight of cheese stolen from him; and the thieves seemed to carry on their nefarious calling with perfect impunity.

"There was also much fighting caused by two hostile tribes of gipsies coming in frquent collision, the most conpicuous of the combatants being a young lady....

"'who not only had black eyes herself/ but could furnish a friend with a pair, too. if wanted'

....after the manner of Miss Grace Gregson, of pugilistic memory."

I found this description of the Newton Poppleford Fair quite dramatic.  Tribes of gipsies fighting between the stalls and a wonderful black-eyed Carmen leading the fray,  bands of daring thieves,  a cheesemonger from Whimple being robbed of his takings and more pickpockets and prostitutes than you could shake a stick at.  But I'm pretty sure it could not have been quite as exciting as it reads. 

I find two puzzles here:  whence comes the 'black eyes' quote?,  and: who was Miss Grace Gregson?   The first was perhaps a music-hall number and the second, one whom some today might call a girlfighter but I cannot yet find trace of either.

 Makes Saturday nights in Exeter seem quite tame!

Source:  The Western Times,   October 29th 1842.

  

A HIRED SANGUINARY ASSASSIN, EXETER, 1842

The Western Times of  8th October 1842 tells at some length a story of the Landlord of the Ship Inn, John Roberts,  and a  Recruiting Corporal of Marines, Corporal Thomas Apley, who had been handing out the Queen's shilling to Exeter lads for some nine months.  The corporal was a remarkably powerful man standing about six foot high.  The Plaintiff was very much the lesser man.

At one point in the trial the attorney for the plaintiff said:  "the service which he followed, and the clothes which he wore, the allegience he owed the queen, and the gratitude which he owed to the people who paid for the various trappings which adorned his person, and for the rations which kept his body up - these all should have bound the corporal over to a knowledge of the Queen's peace and his duty to preserve it."

But the Bench heard how Corporal Apley had been mightily provoked  the plaintiff had called him a  " .... hired sanguinary assassin, to which he added a  "foul and loathsome epithet.  If you call me that name again John (said defendant) I will knock you down.  He repeated the name the corporal kept his word, and and floored him - he admitted it.  The corporal seemed to be labouring under a mistake.  He apparently imagined that being sworn to maintain the Queen's honour and dignity, and the national weal by deeds of arms - that he was entitled to excercise his gallant calling in defenceof his own honour and dignity - and that he could declare war on his own account but the Bench did not encourage him to hold this belief , for although Sergeant Herbert took his corporal oath in support of the corporal's statement yet the Bench decreed that no provocation would justify the assault.  They admitted, however, that the disgusting and abusive language of the plaintiff must come in mitigation and administered the lowest fine - one shilling and costs."

I was impressed by the idea that there was in 1842, apparently, something like a contract between the public and its servants which is expressed here.  We have lost all trace of it.  There was a time, that I remember, when soldiers felt their 'service' was to the nation.  Now we have no nation, and soldiers, and policemen think and act ever more like the servants of a sometimes tyrannical government.  On the other hand 'society' expresses little or no gratitude to its 'servants'.  I can recall, for a trivial example, as a young soldier in uniform, being ushered into the best seats at the local cinema free of charge.  Nowadays soldiers in uniform just get stabbed.

The Ship Inn, I assume, is the same one in Martin's Lane which Drake is said to have visited and where 'royals' still visit.   They were already 'royal' in Corporal Apley's day. 

These days those who abuse have a strikingly degenerate and limited vocabulary. -   Discuss!

But I think perhaps the witty writer of the column is paraphrasing!

Corporal Oath is a pun worthy of The Times.  A corporal  (corporax), as in the legal term corporal oath, being sacred cloth such as covers the host or indeed , who now believes?, the binding of the Holy Bible.  

THE GROCER AND THE EXCISEMAN, EXETER, 1842.

The Western Times of 17th September 1842 published this tragic tale: 

"On Tuesday last, an individual, of repectable exterior, named James Heartsoak, was brought before the Bench at the Guildhall charged with the following gross outrage.  It appears that the prisoner, who is a officer of excise, and a lodger of the prosecutor, (whose private residence is situated in Clarence Place,  Blackboy Road,) came home on Monday night last about half-past 1 o'clock and knocked furiously at the door for admission;  but in consequence of the prisoner having kept very irregular hours for some time previously, and notwithstanding repeated warnings, persisted in this inconvenient practice."Mr. Jury came to a determination not to admit him at these unseemly hours, and accordingly on the present occasion, no notice was taken of his knocking.  After a short time the prisoner left, with the intention, it is presumed, of endeavourung to procure a lodging for the night.  In about 5 or 10 minutes afterwards, however, another tremendous knocking was heard at the door which seemed from the sound to be yielding to the violence, when Mr. Jury rose from his bed, and, raising the window sash, he saw the prisoner raise a pistol at him, said, "If you don't let me in, I'll blow your brains out." and immediately fired.  Part of the contents of the pistol, which missed Mr. Jury, lodged in the left cheek of his wife who had, by this time also arisen from bed, and was standing by the side of her husband.  Fearing still further violence from the prisoner, Mr. Jury then threw the key of the door over the stairs, and the prisoner was admitted by his sister, and proceeded to his room.

Mr. Jury then went down to the prisoner's room to remonstrate with him, when the former, a second time narrowly escaped with his life - the prisoner, who had in his hands a pistol and a cleaver, threatening to take away his life.

In the mean time,  a general alarm having been created, Inspector Taylor and another watchman were attracted to the spot, and by Mr, Jury's directions the prisoner was given into custody and removed to the station house." 

Mr. Jury was a grocer on the High Street and I get the impression that he and his mother and his wife were a pretty mean bunch.  The pistol was loaded with shot.

James Heartsoake was young and good-looking and of a respectable appearance.  and his Captain,  Captain Bennison, - he had been working on the hulks - gave him a good character but this did not stop an Exeter Assize Jury from finding him guilty nor a 'merciful' Judge from sentencing him to transportation for life.  We know from the shipping records that he survived the voyage and a year later, listed as James Heartzoke,  he arrived on Norfolk Island to serve his life sentence in Australia.

All he wanted was to get to bed!

And poor Mrs. Jury with her wounded cheek,  although I suspect she made the most of it.

And, hey alas, the poor sister!

 

AN IMMORTALITY OF GOOD, EXETER, 1842.

 WRITTEN ON THE BANK OVER BELLE-ISLE FIELD

I have been toss’d, how rudely toss’d,

Upon the troubled tide of things -

Now in th’ abyss of misery lost,

Now borne on high on rapture’s wings:

And fifty busy years have shed

Their griefs, their joys, upon my head.

And now I sit in quiet thought

Upon the very bank where oft

I sat in buoyant youth - and nought

Is changed: the self same birds aloft

Seem to flit o’er me - while below

The ancient tranquil waters flow.

The island field, we call’d the fair,

Besprinkled yet with bathing boys,

Is there: the trembling reeds are there

And the mole-hillocks -and the noise

Of Isca dancing o’er the weir -

The herds - the elms - the bees are there.

The breeze as fresh as in its prime -

The hills as green - the plain as gay -

Here lovely nature laughs at time,

And never knew a yesterday:

And many a morrow’s eye shall see

The beauteous things that round us be.

O happy that while death and birth

Triumph o’er man from year to year -

The more enduring charms of earth,

Their light, their love, their music bear -

Triumphant through vicissitude,

An immortality of good.

J.B.   Sept. 3 1842.

These verses grace The Western Times of 10th September 1842. I had never heard of Belle Isle Field but it sounded glorious and I was intrigued. I find that Belle Isle Park is the City's newest park. I visited it and was underwhelmed but it still has potential to become again, two hundred years, almost, after J.B.'s poem, a place where many a morrow's eye shall see/ the beauties that around us be.

Exeter's glory is that it has so many green spaces. If parks and gardens were given the attention and the money they deserve, the City would reap great benefit from its greenness. We may now be short of moles, bees, elms and herds but we still have more green space than most cities. What we seem to lack is qualified gardeners and imaginative planners.