A CART-AND-CARRIAGE-CHASE, NEAR NEWTON ST. CYRES, 1841.

 The Exeter Flying Post of June 24th, 1841" reported:

"On the evening of the 12th inst as the Hon. Newton Fellowes was on his return to the city to his seat at Eggesford; when near Newton St. Cyres, he met a farmer's boy driving an empty cart at a very furious rate.

"Although the hon. gentleman had ladies with him, he turned his carriage, gave chase to , and, after pursuing hem some distance, took the offender into custody; and bringing him to the Magistrates' Clerk, at Crediton, convicted him on his own view, and fined him £2.

"The most serious accidents are constantly occurring from the wild and furious manner in which empty vehicles of all descriptions are driven on our roads." 

*

One of the joys of reading stories in old newspapers is that one can label people as goodies ot baddies to one's own satisfaction without much thought and without further ado.   One can take sides.   In this case the Hon. Newton Fellowes, who was only a couple of weeks off his 69th birthday, is, for me, a vicious old aristocrat with no  sense of humour and I rate the farmer's boy as an unfortunate lad who must have suffered from being so strangely pursued and judged and fined.

I should have liked to have been an observer when this cart-and-carriage-chase took place. 

It seems to me that the Hon. Newton Fellowes sweating his horses, and with ladies aboard, in pursuit of a happy farmer's boy was the more irresponsible of the two speed-hogs.   And then for the old man to judge the case 'on his own view' seems to me to have been a travesty of justice.

It is no surprise, however, that The Flying Post found the actions of Newton Fellowes to be altogether in the public interest. 

Some twelve years after this incident the Hon, Newton Fellowes, politician and an 'energetic supporter of Liberal policies' succeeded to the peerage as the 4th Earl of Portsmouth  but had only a few weeks of life to enjoy being an earl.  

  

PLUMPERS AND HIRELINGS, EXETER, 1841.

Mr. Edward Divett was a Radical Member of Parliament for Exeter from 1832 until his death in 1864.  

The description below, from The Western Times of  June 1841, is of one of a great many meetings, often in poblic houses, that took place in the lead up to the Election of that year:

"On Tuesday evening, at eight o' clock, another large meeting took place at the Black Dog Inn, North Street, which was addressed by Mr. Divett, and Mr. Wilkinson, at great length.

"The meeting was disturbed by the presence of some of the drunken hirelings of the tories, who, having swilled of beer to repletion, came there for the purpose of indulging their swinish propensities with a few groans and grunts.

"Mr. Wilkinson happily told them to groan away, for theirs was a 'groaning cause.'  The insulting behaviour of these fellows was met with perfect good humour,  and their object being thus defeated, they soon after slunk away. 

"The meeting then proceeded with perfect harmony, and terminated amidst the enthusiastic cheering of the whole assemblage."

This was the same election in which Mr Jorrocks (R.S. Surtees,  Hillingdon Hall) was elected to Parliament.  In Exeter the run-up to the voting seems to have been carried on with the same vigour and with similar machinations to those that were practiced in Hillingdon.

The Liberals/Radicals looked for support to the many teetotalers and to those citizens who did not swill beer to repletion,  hence, perhaps the emphasis here on the swinish propensites of the tory hirelings who  disturbed the meeting at the Black Dog Inn.

At The Victory in St Sidwell's, it was reported in this same newspaper article, "a number of plumpers for Mr. Divett assembled."  Now there's a nice word for you!  A plumper was a voter who, in multiple elections - which this was -  gave his vote to only one candidate, thus increasing the chance of his election.

 

HUNTING IN HAPPY HEAVITREE, 1841

 "On Saturday last Mr. R. Cockburn's hounds met at Sandy Gate, at half past ten,, when many of the knowing ones who were let into the secret, were on the qui vive.  The dogs were soon in Mr Salter's brakes, and the music of the full-toned hounds gave notice of what we might expect if we looked sharp out - and so it was, for Reynard, after dodging about the furze, made a bolt through the fir plantation, up the quarry lane by Mr Tuckett's farm, in a line to Heavitree Church, as if he were about to take sanctuary, but finding his friends too close at his heels, he made towards Mr Yard's, and there we were at fault, we thought he was gone to the Tanner's to change his coat, but shortly, after he was discovered crossing the gardens, thence over to Mr. Eardley's chapel to Miss Blunt's gate - finding that shut he went away into the adjoining garden where the hounds fresh found him.  He seemed so  taken with the happy village of Heavitree, as to be determined to end his days therein for he scampered away across the church path to Mr.Swale's to the great amazement of the villagiers;  the dogs were close to his brush, ands he once again reached his brake, but with all the appearance of having had more to do than he had anticipated on his first set out from home, which he never again quitted, the dogs having mawled him at the end of the brake."

*

I find it odd that this report from The Western Times of 10th April, 1841 makes no mention of horses leaping over gates or horsemen falling off and breaking their bones or whatever.  Presumably there were  horses galloping in and out of the gardens of the happy village of Heavitree in 1841.  In any case the sporting citizens of Exeter, the 'knowing ones', our hunting fathers, did not have far to go to watch the unspeakable pursuing the uneatable.

What an amazing contrast can be sensed between the spirit of community that is here and the anonymity of our modern life.   Mr. Cockburn and the Salters,  Mr. Tuckett a farmer, Mr. Yard,  Tanner, a tailor?, Mr Eardley, a dissenting minister, dear Miss Blunt,  Mr. Swale, Uncle Tom Cobley and all:  all  (okay, except the last!) have their names casually dropped with the assumption, it seems, that much of the readership, in the city and in towns and villages other than Heavitree, might have some acquaintance with these neighbours.

Mauled, spelled above with a w, - a typo I imagine, as with villagiers, is the just word,  The dogs would have smashed the fox as with a mallet,  not, as the word tends to mean nowadays, leaving the job half finished.   

 

"CHUGGY," EXETER, 1841.

 The Exeter Flying Post for 8th April 1841 reported how, at the Guildhall in Exeter a master-butcher, Mr. Slocombe sought damages for assault from a butcher's assistant called Lang.  The assault had occured at the slaughter house.   Mr Slocombe was leading two calves to their doom and Lang, who was butchering a pig, was blocking his way.

Lang, "not removing  when requested to do so, Mr. Slocombe capsized chuggy and the whole concern.  Enraged at which Lang struck and abused him.  

"William Palmer, a witness, said, 'I saw Lang strike Mr. Slocombe twice.'  On which Lang rejoined, 'I'll bring a witness to prove you were out of sight when I did strike him.' - This admission, of course, put the assault out of all question; and Mr. George Manning, and Mr James Spark, who were called on the part of Lang, could only speak to mitigatory circumstances.   These, however, so operated  that Lang was fined 1s. only, and expenses, making  4s. in all."  

*

I am fascinated how scrupulously The Post, here and in general, finds the epiphet 'Mr.' for 'respectable' citizens like this master-butcher, and omits it for base mechanics like the not-very-bright butcher's assistant, Lang.

 Clearly the readers of the newspaper were expected to recognise this pig under the name 'chuggy'.   I have as yet found no other chuggies.

Chuggypig or chuffypig is a south--west dialect name for the wood-louse and wood-lice look uncannily like pigs if you look them in the snout.  Of the eighty or so 'country' names for woodlice many have a piggy connection.

A VIRAGO IN MINIATURE, EXETER, 1841

 "A dwarfish Amazon, named Eliza Marshall, who appears to be emulous of the fame of Lady Barrymore,  and whose visits to the Guildhall,  unlike  "angels' visits few and far between," are of continued recurrence,  was charged with being drunk and disorderly.

"She was fined `10s and costs , or in default of payment, a month's imprisonment.

"As Milford, the night watchman, was conducting this virago in miniature to the lock-up, she suddenly made a violent attack upon him, scratching his face and drawing the blood copiously from his nose.  For this second offence she was ordered to be brought up tomorrow."

*

This Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, (10th April 1841)  typically brutal, police-court report is perhaps of interest only in so far as it mentions Lady Barrymore.   

Until her miserable death in 1832 "Lady Barrymore", properly Mary Ann Pearce, had been, for one or two years only, the cosseted mistress of the obscenely wealthy and decadent aristocrat, Richard (Hellgate) Barry the seventh Earl of Barrymore, (hence Mary Pearce's "title", unto which she had no right), and subsequently she was famous only for drunkeness, appearances in court and assaults upon watchmen.

No doubt Eliza Marshall's sins were scarlet but it wasn't her fault that she was small!

The angels quotation is from  Thomas Campbell's poem The Pleasures of Hope.  

 "What though my winged hours of bliss have been / like angels' visits few and far between...."

Campbell was still alive when Eliza Marshall bloodied Watchman Milford's nose.  

Oh to have lived in an age when words like emulous and copiously were flung to the people that they might leap and catch them and when the words of poets were read and remembered and quoted in the Exeter newspapers!

Nowadays language becomes less  elegant by the day.  Only today I read in Devon Live:

"A train passenger has received praise after they refused to give up their seat to an elderly woman.  The female passenger defended her decision .... &co."  (my emphasis)

How daft can you get?

   

TRENCHER CAPS, EXETER, 1841.

 From the Western Times, March 13th, 1841:

"Every body in this city has seen the Diocesan school boys parade the streets in their trencher caps.   Bishop Phillpotts enforces this daily airing in the open streets by way of advertising the existence of the school.

"Some of the lads look lank and hungry,  We hope their trenchers are filled at home as well as their trencher caps are out. 

"But we neither publish, hint, nor insinuate aught that would imply a doubt of the fact."

*

The Western Times liked a pun as much as it disliked Bishop Phillpotts.  The insinuation is, however much we are assured that there is none, that the twenty-six or so schoolboy/choristers of the cathedral's school were being half starved by a penny pinching Bishop, Dean and Chapter.

A trencher cap is nowadays more usually called a mortar-board.    Both appellations attempt to be pleasant.  It is called a trencher cap, say some, because, upside down, it looks like a trencher coming to table with a bowl upon it but certainly it is so called because the flat hats look like trenchers (wooden plates or platters) at the dining table.  Hence the Times' somewhat heavy pun.   

I wonder whether these caps were worn by schoolboys elsewhere.   

The lank and hungry boys must have looked cute in their 'academic dress' as they passed through the streets of Exeter, just as do the somewhat plumper graduates of the Open University these days. 

A SINGULAR EPITAPH, TOPSHAM, 1840

 "A correspondent has sent us the following epitaph found among the papers of the late Mr, Coysh, schoolmaster, Topsham.  Mr, Coysh had been for many years in the navy.  He was author of a work on which he much prided himself - 'The British Pronouncing and Self-instructing Spelling-book.'  The date of his death is supplied by the Executors: 

"TOPSHAM -

By the Grace of God,

Here lies moored in peace the hulk of
GEORGE COYSH,

who was launched into this ocean of misery on the 18th September, 1781, and who, after sustaining a variety of damage during a boisterous voyage through life, became at last so much impaired as to be rendered unfit for further service, and in consequence of his rotten and infirm state, was in pursuance of orders from aloft, brought to his moorings in this port on the 12th of November, 1840, in sure and certain hope of a thorough refit through him who hath said 'Because I live ye shall live also.""

*

It is no doubt a fact somewhat overlooked that George Coysh's British Pronouncing and Self-Instructing Spelling -book  was written in Topsham.   This somewhat crazy work can be found online.  It was well received by the educationalists of Exeter and at his death he had another such work in hand.  The quaint epitaph which he composed for himself reveals him to be have been a character who deserves to be remembered.  

Source: The Western Times, 6th February 1841.