CHASTE AND TASTEFUL CHALKING, EXETER, 1828.

 At New Year, 1828, Lady Rolle patronised a Charity Ball for the benefit of Exeter' Deaf and Dumb Institution.  More than five hundred people of rank and fashion from the four counties were expected at Congdon's Devon and Exeter Royal Public Rooms.

The floor was chalked.  By a happy touch this was done by a a  deaf and dumb painter.   The Exeter Flying Post of 3rd January gives this account of  Mr. Bond's chalking:

"The floor was chastely and tastefully chalked by Mr. Bond, herald painter, of Verney-place. in this city, who is deaf and dumb; the front of the Orchestra being emblazoned  with the arms of R. W. Newman, Esq. High-Sheriff of Devon. In the centre of the floor at the upper end of the Room was the King's Arms, and in scrolls at the right and left, the crests of Sir R. H. Vivian and Sir T. Lethbridge;  further down the centre was the crest of the Portman family.   In the centre of the room were the arms of  the Rolle and the Clinton family's (sic) combined;  on the right of which was the Acland crest, and on the left that of the Bastard family. Still descending the room, in the centre equi-distant with that of  Portman, was the crest of the Banks' family, and on the left and right, still lower, the crests of Dickinson and Pendarves - terminating at the bottom with the City Arms, the intervals at the side containing in scrolls, the Rose, Thistle, Shamrock, and Acorn, the whole being inclosed  in a border, forming fifteen scrolls for as many sets of Quadrilles."

Chalking the dance-floor served the double purpose of  brightening the place up and stopping the dancers from falling over.  This report is a rare description of a lost art.  There is enough detail for someone with a lot of time on his hands to re-construct Mr. Bond's tour-de-force.

Herald-painting must have been a satisfying occupation.  I imagine Mr. Bond working peacefully, painting coats-of-arms on coach panels and elsewhere.  For the Ball, however, he must have spent hours shuffling about on his knees producing a work of art that was to be obliterated overnight by the feet of the five hundred dancers of rank and fashion there assembled.  I just hope he had a fair deal and went home to Verney Street in funds and happy.  

Perhaps of particular interest to experts in the field of Regency dancing might be the rare reference here to areas marked out in chalk where the quadrilles were to be danced.

Why was the Acorn chalked alongside the Shamrock, Rose and Thistle?   - Was it there to commemorate the Restoration?

The only chalking these days seems to be at Princesshay and outside the Central Station where Extinction Rebellion chalk their gloomy fears.

COARSE AND ILL-LOOKING FEMALES, EXETER, 1849.

On Easter Monday, 1849, James Landick was famously, publicly executed for highway robbery.  He was hung high on the scaffold at Exeter Gaol and an estimated forty thousand people turned up to watch. 

A correspondent, a respectable person, joined the crowd and wrote at length his impressions to The Western Times, (14th April, 1849).  He was particularly struck by the number of women who turned out for what was essentially a public holiday.  This is what he wrote:

"I looked in vain for a serious or thoughtful expression: the people were out to enjoy a holiday and a sight.

"Near to the gallows tree there were but a few females, but in Queen-street, straw bonnets were the principal covering:  the women were chiefly coarse and ill-looking, but I did see some faces in which I should have recognised in another place, the charms of respectable female loveliness; but in that place, a young, gentle, beautiful woman was, of all others, the most digusting object;  one could think of her only as the most successful and accursed bait of the tempter "a lovely apple rotten at the core."

"The poor prostitutes were, of course, out in grand state in their best attire, and fresh paint, loud in their laughter, and bold in their address, painful were they to look at, for sad is their fate;  let us in pity suppose that they were there in the way of business, and not from choice.

"I did not see any respectable people, although I had the honour of conversing with a clergyman of the Established Church, who had come 'to see the fellow scragged.' "

This correspondent, who called himself SUM ULTOR  (I am the Avenger (?),) might well, I feel, in our time, have ended up in a psychiatric secure unit, certainly on a psychiatrist's couch.   But in 1849 his view of women would have been standard. 

The word 'scrag', here meaning to hang, was a precise, if vulgar, usage.  Charles Dickens thus uses the word. 

A FUNERARY BONFIRE, EXMOUTH, 1849.

The Plymouth and Exeter Gazette" of 3rd March 1849 briefly reported a gypsy burial at Littleham Church:

"A woman named Kitty Cooper, belonging to a large band of gipsies that have for some time encamped near this town, died a short time since and on Thursday last week, the day appointed for her burial, upward of 60 gipsies, belonging to different tribes, met at the camp, and, after removing the body from the tent, it was immediately set on fire, together with all the clothes and property belonging to the deceased.  

"The body was then taken by eight of her relations, and conveyed to Littleham, where she was interred by the Rev. T. R. Rocke.

"The father and child of the deceased were deeply affected, and at the grave upwards of 300 persons were assembled to witness the ceremony."

There must have been some cultural significance to this gypsy burning of Kitty Cooper's tent and personal property.  Perhaps the Exmouth gypsies would also have wanted, as in India, to make a bonfire of her remains but felt inhibited by their residence on Exmouth common!

Another worthy Anglican parson buried Kitty and upwards of three hundred empathetic(?), local(?) people witnessed the ceremony..    

  

A DISCONSOLATE DUCK, EXETER, 1848.

 "Fowl Murder!"  Sarah Skiven's black hen had been poisoned and the reporter for The Western Times of 5th February 1848 did not resist the pun:

"RICHARD GARDNER was charged by Sarah Skiven with killing her poultry.  The complainant stated that on the 26th December she saw the defendant driving her fowls through his garden, which adjoined her's, in Paul-street, and requested him not to ill use them.

"She heard him say to his wife "I'll poison the ---- lot of them."  On the next day she saw him throwing something like crumbs of bread, which were picked up by a black fowl: - 

"'Murder most fowl, as in the best it is -/ But this most fowl, strange and unnatural' 

"The animal shivered, sickened and died.... hence this summons.

"She had also seen the defendant give one of her ducks some soaked bread, and a kick, the united effects of which had reduced the poor bird to a most disconsolate condition. - she was produced in a basket, presenting her long bill like a despairing suitor, hopeless of redress."

The Mayor of Exeter, unlike, it would seem, The Times'  reporter, took Sarah Skiven's loss seriously.  he had asked Mr. Charles Henry Kingdon, surgeon, to perform a post mortem examination on her hen and the court was satisfied that acetate of lead had been administered with malice and Richard Gardner was fined 5s and costs.    

Paul Street, Exeter, where once Sarah Skiven's fowl trepassed, now exemplifies some of the most barbarous architecture in the United Kingdom!  Bring back the chickens!

Glory to the newspaperman who gives the duck her proper pronoun and who can quote (misquote) from Hamlet!!

"NO GOOD TO SAY 'CANNOT' HERE!", EXETER, 1847.

 The Church of England liked to claim to be 'The Poor Man's Church'.  The radical Western Times, (23rd January 1847) used these four words with heavy irony to head a short column reporting the efforts of two magistrates and a clergyman at the Castle of Exeter  to extract money from poor 'dissenters' and others from Heavitree who saw no justice in being invited to pay a rate they could not afford to a church they did not respect.  Below are some excerpts from that report:

"Mary Stevenson, a Quakeress, had been summoned; but would neither pay nor answer the summons.  The Chairman said - 'Oh, she's a Quaker - they won't pay' and a warrant was granted for 12s 6d and expences."

"The wife of a labourer called Russell, said  'She would try to do it - but she had five little children and did not know how'  She was threatened with increased costs and a warrant."

"Richard Taylor, - His wife said she could not pay it. Mr Gordon told her that a warrant would be issued and the witnesses sworn and goods taken, which expenses, with auctioneer, &c. would come to 7s or 8s. .... at length she promised to pay it in three instalments."

"Thomas Manning was not able.  His wife died the other day, in child bed, leaving three infant children - and he owed a twelve months rate,  and had not 5s worth of goods in his house....He was ordered to pay 7s 10d but said he could as soon pay £7, and could not see his children starve."

"Thomas Wilson, - His wife said 'I cannot pay.'  Mr. Pitman said - 'It's no good to say cannot here' -  'Be I to starve my children?' said she.  'They have not a shoe to their foot.'"

The unsavoury trio trying these cases was fighting a losing battle.  It was issuing warrants, distraining goods, threatening poor men with prison and saddling people with punitively high 'costs', all in the name of The Church.  The injustice of the Church Rate would not go away.  It divided the country. 

Twenty-one years later the Church Rate was abolished by statute.

(The letters I keep getting from the BBC TV 'Enforcement Officer' pale to insignificance.  

But be I to starve my children?)

.

 , 

WARFARE IN QUEEN STREET, EXETER, 1846.

"JOHN SOPER and a boy named ENDACOTT were charged with a disturbance at the end of Queen-street last night.

"There is an old custom among our Exeter boys, which prescribes inveterate warfare between the youths of the different parishes,  'Young Trinity' has earned not bloodless laurels in a hundred conflicts with 'the Mary-Major', boys,'who have often been driven from their strong position on Bell-hill, and have strongly resisted the tide of advancing war, combating pro aris et focus (sic)  in the narrow defiles of Sun-lane, rallying in Market-street, but borne by superior numbers even to the Bartholomew-yard on the other side.

"It is sufficient to say that this fight was most furious;  and it took the Inspector and Milman, and four other policemen, to capture two boys.  

"They were cautioned and dismissed."

This newspaper report from The Western Times of 7th March, 1846, of street battles between gangs of  boys in Exeter is written with such detached irony that it is hard to imagine the reality. 

Did six policemen really chase around at night trying to catch warring boys who were disturbing the peace by fighting to defend 'their altars and their homes' here in Exeter?, and was there really 'inveterate warfare between the youths of the different parishes?'  How old were these youths?  How 'not bloodless' were these battles?  How many were in these 'armies'?

It seems to me that 'gangs' are back in fashion in Exeter.  I don't remember in former years having seen such large groupings of young people in the city as I now see nightly, some even 'in uniform'. (courtesy of  the Internet and Amazon?) .  On the whole though they seem to behave themselves and, as far as I can tell, they don't make any territorial claims.

 (I suspect that The Times' typesetters were not quite as familiar with Latin tags as were the  reporters!) .

A GYPSY FUNERAL, BROADCLYST, 1846.

 From  The Exeter and Devon Gazette, 24th October, 1846:

"Last week the quiet village of  Broadclist was the scene of one of those unusual occurances, - a gipsey funeral. One of the deceased was John Stanley, aged 27, a fine young man and a member of the celebrated gipsey family of that name;  the other was a girl aged 11 years.  

"The remains were followed to their final resting-place in Broadclist church-yard, by the whole tribe of gipsies in the neighbourhood, in their characteristic costume;  and a concourse of several hundred persons assembled from the surrounding country to witness the singular festival.  The funeral service of the Church was read by the Rev. P. L. Acland, incumbent of the parish."

1846 was the year George Borrow finished writing Lavengro.  It was published in 1848.

I think there must be several quiet country churches in Devon where the gipsies buried their dead.  Salcombe Regis churchyard, I happen to know, had gipsy funerals.  Where else?

It is perhaps curious that the Romany found their way to Anglican churches for a funeral service.  I think they mostly managed to marry &c. without bothering 'the Church'.  They perhaps knew which were the best parsons to approach for a good funeral.  The incumbent of Broadclyst, being an Acland, was probably liberal in all things.   It is warming to think so.

....and several hundred persons turned out to see the funeral of this fine young man and the little girl and to wonder at the tribe of gipsies in their 'romantic' attire and the Gazette thought it worth recording.

Maybe I am being romantic but this report seems to me to bear witness to a spacious, gentle and tolerant English countryside which, alas, as have the gipsies, has changed beyond recognition.