SACRED LOBSTER POTS, TORQUAY, 1843.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

THE CORDWAINER AND THE RECTOR, EXETER, 1843.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TEN OR TWELVE PAUPERS BREAKING STONES, EXETER, 1843.

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

"Sir, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

AN INCRIMINATING TIPPET, DAWLISH, 1843.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A LAMP LIGHTER, EXETER, 1842..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MR. ASH'S APPRENTICE, STARCROSS, 1842.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: The Western Times, 24th December 1842. 

CRYING DRUNK AND DRINKING TEA.

The Times, with cruel irony,  gives the title 'Ladies of the Fish Market' to this account of Mary Matthews' apearance before the Mayor and Magistrates at Exeter Guildhall in December 1842.  The 'ladies', at least two of them, tried hard to keep poor Mary out of prison after all her only offence was being drunk in charge of a fish-stall: 

"The venerable Superintendent stated that on the previous afternoon he found Mary sitting outside her stall, 'crying drunk and drinking tea'.  He saw that her condition was likely to augment the crowd of curious assembled to see a woman bemoaning herself in her cups, and went to the Guildhall for a policeman.

"Mary, however was wide awake to the move, and made a bolt, followed by a mob of idlers, and took refuge in a public house, whence she was soon dislodged, and conveyed to the station house.

"Mr. Barton - was she bailed?

"A Policeman - No, sir, she has been here all night.

"Mary - I was taking a cup of tea; there was nothing particularly amiss with me, and when there is they make such a noise about it in the market.  Mary attempted to finish with a little crying, but the tears refused to flow.

"Another lady of the Fish Market here stepped forward saying she was Mary's aunt and wished to speak for her.

"Mary's Aunt - Your worships , she was quiet enough and only taking a cup of tea with me to freshen her.

"Mr. S. Kingdon - Tea?

"Mary's Aunt - Yes - sure!  She wasn't much gone, she's been drunker than that many times.

"Mr. S. Kingdon - I have not a doubt of it.; if you had put her under a pump and pumped on her for half an hour that would have done her good.

"The Superintendent - Before I saw her she had been using foul and obscene language. Mrs. Pomeroy, who heard it can be called.

"Mary -  And when Mrs. Pomeroy is drunk, doesn't she run about with a knife in her hand.

"Mr. Kingdon - and when you're drunk, you're not afraid of a hundred women with knives.

"Another lady of the market, whose nose was a good deal damaged, apparently from a recent thump, now came forward to plead for Mary, but she pleaded in vain.

"Mr. Barton - Did Mary give you that nose?

"The lady - No, the basket did it.  Wont your worships let her off.  I'll go bail she wont get drunk again.

"The Mayor - She must pay the fine, or go to the House of Correction.

"The lady - [with a curtsey and a kind look] - do say a little less, your Worship.

"The Mayor - No.

"The lady - [with a lower curtsey and a kinder look] - Will your Worship give us a week to pay in.

"The Mayor - She must pay or go  to prison.

"The lady - [imploringly] - Well,  give us credit for two or three days.

"The Mayor - She must be removed now, and when you have raised the money go and take her out." 

So, the Superintendent (of Police) found Mary bemoaning herself at the new (1838) Higher Market but needed to fetch a constable.  When they returned she had gone but he considered her offence so grave that he pursued the poor girl into a public house and she spent the night in a prison cell.  

The pleading of the aunt and the 'lady' with the curtseys and the kind looks suggests that there was an admirable solidarity among Exeter's market women.  

Again and again I am amazed by the lowly citizens' familiarity with the magistrates -   Do say a little less, your Worship!  

Sam. Kingdon's comments about putting young Mary under the pump for half an hour would raise a few eyebrows these days.

I notice The Times does not find an apostrophe here, and in other places, for won't.  I wonder how general this was. 

Mary's aunt's use of sure!, to mean for sure surprised me.  Could it be a usage Exeter exported to the United States rather than the other way round? 

A YOUNG HEBREW, EXETER, 1842

From the same column that I quoted from the day before yesterday in The Western Times of 26th November, 1842, we learn that the Mayor of that year, Samuel Kingdon, began his career as Chief Magistrate at Exeter Guildhall by summoning drapiers of the Hebrew Persuasion for hanging out their clothes in front of the line of their walls and windows.  Rumour had it that there was one such business opposite Sam Kingdon's house and it irked him..   

In any case he rounded up four of the Hebrew persuasion and fined them five shillings each for this misdemeanour.  They were none of them too browbeaten by their day in court and, as so often in Exeter Guildhall, one has the impression that there was a certain levity about the proceedings, or maybe that is only 'the way The Times tells them'.

One of them, a Mr. Marks, looked around the Court and delivered the commendable sentence: I am a free-born Englishman as much as any gentleman here.  (A sentiment I have yet to hear from any of the many Islamists that share our small island.) 

But my favourite was young Mr. Mordecai Hart, who, it seems, preferred to be called Mark, who clearly was as sharp as a needle:  

MARK HART was the next Hebrew summoned; but it appeared that they had given him the wrong name - Mordecai and not Mark was he called by.  He was summoned for hanging out his clothes.  Mr Mordecai was very fiery and peppery - he declared that when the officer came he had his clothes all in - he had a pretty sharp eye of his own - in fact a Jew's eye - and he could see the officer.  

"LASCELLES, the active officer, who has a decent orb of his own, averred that the offence was actually seen, whereupon Mr. Hart asked how he was to get his living if he could not expose his goods.

"THE MAYOR could not see what difference it would make if they were all put upon the same footing.

"MR HART - I've seen Mr. Kingdon's key hanged out - I shall have a summons for him - (laughter)

MR. SAM. KINGDON. - I have no objection—you are little sharp —how come you keep two shops ? 

MR. HART—Because one won't answer. 

"MR. HART -  KINGDON - You are very sharp—l could say a sharp thing upon you. 

"Mr. HART—Very well, sir—l should have some answer for it. 

"Mr. SAM. KINGDON would not take up the challenge to this keen encounter of wits, and so the public are not able to decide which is sharper. 

"His withdrawal from the combat appeared to excite the young Hebrew to deeds of daring.  He waxed warm, took off his coat, and we feared that he was about to prove his English descent and challenge to the collective Bench to step out and let him maintain the reputation of tbe Hebrew school after the fashion of Mendoza,  Aby Belasco, and Dutch Sam.

"After flourishing the garment to and fro he tendered it to the Bench,  saying, 'you had better take my coat next.'

" THE MAYOR—l cannot hear any indecent language— you are fined five shillings. 

"He offered his coat in payment, but there was not a Magistrate on the bench that could by any means get into it—and if it had fitted any one they could not have permitted so gross a breach of the truck laws as to have received it.  Defendant was first inclined to resist the law even to imprisonment, but eventually put on his coat and paid the fine."

To be worth a Jew's eye, was apparently a common idiom meaning that something was worth a great price.

Daniel Mendoza, Aby Belasco and Dutch Sam were all champion boxers of the Regency years.  They were all Jewish.  Dutch Sam was known as The Terrible Jew.   Here they are being remembered long after their pugilistic careers. 

Incidentally, the only man who managed ever to beat Dutch Sam was Bill Nosworthy, an Exeter baker,  who met Dutch Sam before a record crowd at Mousley Hurst, on Tuesday 8th December 1814 - I quote from For Love of Williamina,  Agre Books, 2001: 'Before the fight Dutch Sam was reported as saying to Nosworthy: 'So help me Cot!  Bill.  I will not only fight you first but I will afterwards take you home and nurse you like one of my  own children!'  So, it would seem the 'staredown' is no new phenomenon.  Bill Nosworthy died in Lympstone in 1816.

I can't work out what is meant by truck law but it sounds like something Keir Starmer should have observed.

COCKLERS AND SOAKERS , EXETER, 1842.

"Several mayors have signalized themselves by vigorous attacks on local irregularities and offences.

Mt. Alderman Woolmer, when he was mayor, attacked the sin of drunkenness, consigning to the stocks, both male and female soakers, with a stern determination to show no favour to persons.

The next event in civic history was the attempt of Mr, Sam Kingdon, the cousin of the present mayor, to drive the Cocklers out of the streets.  These vendors of shell fish were often pitied before there was a proper accommodation for them, on account of their exposure to all weathers, whilst plying their clamorous vocation; and when the new market was opened several unsuccessful attempts were made to drive them into it - and of all the magistrates, Mr Justice Kingdon was the most vigorous in his efforts.  He, however, failed; and, notwithstanding all his fines and fulminations, the Cocklers still walk the streets."

 I have blogged this short passage from The Western Times of 26th November, 1842, for the sake of the Cocklers.  I realize that I have never given them notice before. They must have been part of the social fabric for decades, probably for centuries.  Did they wheel barrows like Molly Malone?  They were clearly thought a nuisance if only by Mayor Sam Kingdon,  Mayor of Exeter in 1835, and they were still there in 1842.  That  they too, like Molly, cried 'cockles and mussels, alive alive o!' through streets broad and narrow' is suggested by the words clamorous vocation.

It would seem that Mayor Edward Woolmer, Mayor of Exeter in 1835, was still regularly putting soakers into the stocks outside the Guildhall.  There are still soakers, male and female, sometimes sharing the same sleeping bag, outside the Guildhall, and still, somewhere, I think, the stocks, but the two never meet.  Pity perhaps?

Fines and fulminations is a pleasing alliteration.  It would be even more fun if it were: fining and fulminating Woolmer.   

.

TOM POOLEY'S FATEFUL YEAR, LISKEARD, 1857.

I have been enjoying myself trying to create an account of Tom Pooley's adventures in  the  year 1857 as he  himself might have written of them had his mind not been quite so excitable and his vision not quite so passionate.  He certainly wanted the world to remember him and he wanted the many letters, which he wrote to the Fleet Street offices of George Jacob Holyoake's  'Reasoner' from 1858 onwatds to be published to the world viz: "I hope the Friends of Truth and Goodwill with Honest Laws will be so kind as to place these writings in Print and let them be handed down in History for they will come handy when Truth will be looked for and one day, after I am in the Grave, the World will say:  Tom Pooley was right." 

In the event, unsurprisingly, his letters were not published but, surprisingly, neither were they put in the waste paper basket. They were preserved, with other records of "The Reasoner" and today are to be found in The Hoyoake Collection at Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester. I don't think many people have looked at them.

What I have put together, I can hardly say I have written it, for so much of it ,and all of the vituperation, is verbatim-Pooley. This story is neither 'academic', nor 'history' but I hope it is heuristic and that others will learn something from the Pooley Year and I fondly hope it sheds the light on this poor man's life which he craved. I also hope these 16000 words read like a novella, for Tom Pooley is so dramatic that he constantly makes one, me at least, think of literary characters. Pooley is Quixote, Alice in Wonderland, Holden Caulfield, The Good Soldier Svejk... I could go on!

So, who was Tom Pooley? He was an eccentric, Cornish, general labourer who decided to take on the Victorian Christian Establishment single-handed. He campaigned against 'Bible Tyranny' by writing rude things about 'Christians' on gates and walls. It was the nearest he could get to 'hate-mail'! In 1857 he was convicted of blasphemy and his sentence was reported in the papers and the justice or injustice of it was much discussed.

But you can read his story, Tom Pooley's Fateful Year, by pasting the link above or by googling waylandwordsmith3. N.B. Not for the woke!