"COUSIN JACKEE " IN EXETER, 1882.

"Cousin-jacky", according to Jago's Glossary of the Cornish Dialect, Truro 1882,  was current in Cornwall as "a local term of contempt".    In the Exeter newspapers of the first half of the nineteenth century, Cousin Jackey or Cousin Jackee was used to mean a Cornishman or Cornishmen and, as often as not, contempt was  implied. 

Cornishmen in Exeter two hundred years ago, at least those who made news,  seem in the main to have been either those wrestlers who visitied the city to contend for a prize,  and the many who came up from Cornwall to support them, or innocent peasants,  simple countrymen, come to Exeter to be duped and robbed and thus to amuse the sophisticated citizens of this city.

The nickname "Cousin Jackey" was used as a plural  as when Olver, a  famous Cornish wrestler, came  from London to compete in The Ring that had been established behind the Countess Weir Inn,  (Olver, by the way, was also a founding officer of Peel's Raw Lobsters, the New Police of the Metropolis), and  "much interest was excited in "Cousin Jackey" to see the man whose fame had flown so far before him." (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 31st July 1830)   When used as a singular Cousin Jackey was for the Exonians the very idea of a rustic simpleton.

As I write this the Cornish are filling in their 2021 Census forms and Cousin Jackee is being encouraged to write down Cornish as his nationality.    It pleases me therefore to add here that when, in 1848, an unfortunate vagrant, Richard Gillard, his wife and two children  were up before the magistrates at the Guildhall in Exeter, charged, believe it or not, with singing in the Black Boy (sic) Road.   Dr, Miller, the magistrate, asked  Gillard,  "Are  you a Cornishman?"  and Gillard stood tall,  pulled back his puny shoulders, puffed out his insignificant chest and replied, "No yer honour, I'm an Englishman."  (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 18 March 1848) 

THE LITTLE LAD FROM FROG LANE, EXETER 1913

Some short news-items from the past seem to me to be charged with irony., such as this from the Western Times of 26th June 1913: 

 "Last evening, a little boy named Jack Hannaford, living in Frog Lane, was playing at the Basin in Exeter when he fell into the water.  The mate of the ship "Rothersand", a German named M Coobs, who saw the accident, at once plunged in after the lad and quickly rescued him.  Hannaford thus escaping with a ducking."

Well,  I'm pretty sure the mate of the Rothersand was not called Coobs,  Kurtz perhaps!  His ship was a cargo-ship from Bremerhaven.  He carried out his heroic rescue of the boy, Jack Hannaford, and sailed away.  He almost certainly saved Jack from a watery grave.  

The irony?  Almost exactly twelve months later (28th June 1914)  the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo and the next month we were at war with Germany.   After some forty-million deaths,  casualties of the Great War, I dare say Jack Hannaford was still going strong.   I wonder how his rescuer, "M Coobs," fared. 

A RHYMING INNKEEPER, LYMPSTONE 1845

In February 1845 an absent-minded visitor to  The Swan Inn at Lympstone forgot to take away his water-spaniel.  Mr Coombe, the landlord of The Swan, advertised the dog in The Flying Post  (11th February)  and, such his panache, he composed for the occasion a verse in rhyming-couplets:

"LYMPSTONE

A WATER SPANIEL DOG left at the SWAN INN  

Should this meet the Owner's eye it's there to be seen.    

His marks are liver colour, mixed with white. 

The owner might have't again by paying what's right 

- shaggy hair is his coat, and a stump for a tail,  

If not owned in three weeks he'll be put up for sale,   

So let his master look out and be wide awake, 

He'll be sold for the expences and no mistake."

There is, I sense, an admirable,  Miller-of-the-Dee spirit of self-confdence and independence about Mr Coombe, the rhyming Victorian innkeeper.   He was clearly a no-nonsense, free man, with an eye to business and no doubt a man who rejoiced in his liberties as a true Briton.

A VIRTUOUS PIG: EXETER, 1859

In January 1859 at Exeter Crown Court, John Staddon,  a farmer  of Colaton Raleigh, was sued for compensation by a cheese-dealer who had been wounded in the thigh by Staddon's boar-pig when he, the pig , was being shown at Newton  Poppleford Fair.  The judgment of the court turned on the character  of the pig; indeed The Exeter Flying Post (27th January 1859) called the case PIG "TEAR-EM v. THE VIRTUOUS PIG.   The  plaintiff gave the court much amusement for which I have not found room  but the  defence was formidable and the merriment in the court-room seems to have been unconfined. The Staddon family and friends had come to town in force to uphold the character of their pig:

" - Mr Staddon the elder, was then called and said he had known the boar in question "from a zooker."  (laughter)  - "had druv it to Newton for shaw; nivver zeed the peg bite, zeed the plaintiff in the vair who zed to ma, 'your peg bite ma.'   Bite you, zed I, why he nivver bite a living Christian in es life." -  (Laughter,)

Mr FLOUD,  (the defending counsel) Did you ever know him bite a converted Jew?

Witness,  Naw, zir.

Mr FLOUD,  or an orthodox Christian Jew?

- Witness,  Naw. [It is due to the witness to state that he did not seem thoroughly to understand this question.....]

To show the lamb-like character of the animal, witness produced two youngsters who, he said, had driven the boar to the fair.  One was his grandchild and some merriment was caused in Court by the grandmother bringing in the boy in her arms.

Henry Staddon, the younger, stated that the plaintiff whipped the pig and that was the reason for his biting.  The pig never did it before.

Ann Staddon, senr, said that when the pig returned from fair "he failed at his meat" and the boy (last witness) had told her that a man had "at en about the head".  There were marks on the animal.

Herman Staddon, jun,  said  "the peg was quiet and honest."  (Laughter)

Samuel Crook, Elizabeth Sanders and a man called Pengelly also gave the pig a good character for docility.

Mr Carter,  another witness, said,  "I niver heerd any harm of the pig in my life."   (Laughter)

Fulford,  under bailiff of this Court, said,  "When I went to serve the summons on the defendant, he implored me to look at the pig.   I did so and the animal did not appear to be a savage pig but looked fat and happy."  (Laughter)

This was the defendant's case.

HIS HONOUR said that under all the circumstances he must non-suit the plaintiff.  A verdict for defendant was then entered.  but an application for costs, by Mr Floud, was refused."

THE ROBIN WHO SUNG IN EXETER CATHEDRAL, 1788.

 In 1788 King George lll went mad.   He was a popular king and the loyal and the devout of the nation were conscientiously praying for his recovery.   Indeed, congregations were offering up prayers all across Europe.  Up, of course, because that's where Heaven is.

The citizens of Semper Fideles prayed as sincerely as any and on Sunday 23rd November a small miracle occurred in Exeter cathedral which was briefly reported throughout the kingdom.   This from The Ipswich Journal of 29th November 1788:

"In Exeter cathedral while the congregation were praying for the King , a robin perched on the altar and sung through the whole prayer,"

Ring/rung, sting/stung, cling/clung, swing/swung, so why not sing/sung?

It was touch-and-go with the monarch's mental health but soon enough after this he was his old self again, just in time to give a clear mind to the consequences of The French Revolution.  Our good King George more or less stayed sane for a further twenty years or so.

I may be wrong but I think it was this famous Exeter robin who perched on the altar and sung who made all the difference.

EXETER AND SLAVERY, 1846.

It is, of course, altogether ridiculous to apologise for events that happened and circumstances that pertained two centuries ago at a time when the world was chock-full of primitive cruelties.  The overwhelming impression made on me by a reading of Frazer's Golden Bough  {1900}  is how incredibly cruel all human societies were only one hundred and twenty years ago and we should never forget the cruelty of events in Russia, say, or in Germanys' Third Reich in the lifetime of us 'seniors'.  Nor, I have noticed, have cruelties and enslavements yet disappeared from the world.  Even if such apologies were not wholly ridiculous the citizens of Exeter would have no reason today to apologise for the slave trade.   Since the early nineteenth century Exeter has consistently carried a torch for the abolition of slavery.  First to support  the Acts of 1807  and 1833,  then to protest at the loopholes in the Acts exploited by British planters in the colonies and then to protest against the evil of slave-owning in the antebellum United States.    

Successive crowded public meetings were held in Exeter, often chaired  by one or anothert of our Mayors, to address the subject of slavery and to lobby Parliament for action.   Notably, in 1846  William Lloyd Garrison came across the ocean to  Exeter to speak and with him came Frederick Douglass.   Their names ought to be known to every American schoolchild, though I doubt if many of the history-starved, Black Lives Matter, young people who recently marched for they-knew-not-what, had ever heard of them.  The  next day after the 1846 meeting The Western Times  reported it in its leading article.  The meeting was, the editor wrote,  "one of the most important, unanimous and decided public meetings that this city ever witnessed".  It was held on Friday September 4th 1846 and Garrison and Douglass and others spoke to good effect to a crowded hall.

Rather quaintly, the writer of the Western Times article adds:  "We hope any Americans into whose hands this paper may fall....will not think that the people of Exeter are intermeddling improperly in their affairs but that they are animated by a spirit of pure benevolence and enlightened philanthropy."

And so I'm sure they were - purely benevolent and enlightendly philanthropic; and so they are still.    Good!  No need for apologies!  No need to take the knee!  Not that my rheumatism would allow it!

A SIDMOUTH LOVE STORY

Sometimes the inscription on a tombstone seems to want to tell a story, the composer of the text being, as it were, an author pushed for space.  On a  horizontal slab of granite in Salcombe Regis churchyard  can, with difficulty, the inscription will soon be illegible, be read the following:

Sacred to the memory of

CHARLES SATTERTHWAITE

of Lancaster

who departed this life

at Sidmouth

?  ?  1815

Aged 26 (?) Years

and of Frances Nannette Sheridan

the daughter of

Charles Francis Sheridan

The Secretary of War in Ireland

14(?)  October  1816

Aged 27 years

Surviving her Husband 

Only one Year 

She returned to Sidmouth

for the purpose of being laid

in the same Ground.

They were married in Cheltenham on 14th December 1809.    They were young and wealthy.  He was of Rigmaiden Hall in Westmorland.  His father was John Satterthwaite , a prosperous West India merchant, 

of Castle Park, Lancaster.  She was the eldest daughter of Charles Francis Sheridan, a colourful character with a distinguished literary wife.  Frances Nanette was, moreover , a niece of  the great and famous Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright and politician.  I think I have read somewhere that she too was devoted to the stage.  There was a boy born  to them in 1810 and another in 1812.  Charles and Frances must have seemed an enviable couple but they were both to die tragically young.    

The story that their churchyard tomb tells is surely a love story.   They came to Sidmouth in 1815, probably for the sake of Charles' health.  I like to think that they loved the place.   Salcombe Regis must have held some special significance for them;  Charles was buried there.  A year later Frances Nanette, knowing that she was dying, made the journey to Sidmouth  to see the town again and to lie at her husband's side.