"The carcase of a deceased pig was detected on Saturday, in the market, by Ellicombe, the warden of the shambles, who combines the experience of a practical butcher with the acute scent of a policeman
"The owner of the carrion, Charles Clements of Cheriton Fitzpaine, was admonished by the Mayor and the pig sentenced to be burned.
"The execution of the sentence took place in the waste spot near the City Prison."
*
The word shambles, meaning a butcher's' row, according to Eric Partridge, derives curiously from a shambling or unsteady walk. Shamble is an obsolete word meaning an (unsteady?) bench, especially one used by butchers to chop meat. Hence the shambles becomes the meat market and hence also a place of slaughter where gobbets of flesh are to be found lying around and the occasional deceased pig. Ellicombe was the warden of the shambles at the Market in Exeter. Artificial Intelligence seems to think shambles derives from an anglo-saxon word fleshammels meaning flesh shelves. Others derive shamble, a bench directly from the latin scammel, a bench,
The City Prison stood where now the Mercure Rougemont Hotel stands. I am told there are still traces of the prison in cellars beneath the hotel. The County Jail was not opened until 1853.
I imagine the burning of the diseased deceased to have been publicly executed outside the city wall to the amusement of young and old.
Source: The Western Times, 11th January 1845.
