HENRY EXETER, EXETER, 1840

Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, in accordance with custom, signed his many letters 'Henry Exeter'. 

 When, in October 1840 a poor man called Henry Exeter was brought to the  Exeter County Assizes  and sentenced to fourteen years transportation for stealing fifty-odd pounds from a widow in Culmstock, The Western Times, delighting in the coincidence, headed it's report on the case ' HENRY EXETER IN TROUBLE'.

The next week it was able to publish the following: 

"HENRY EXETER. - The sentence of this CONVICT, whose trial we reported in our last, seems  to have called into requisition the various faculties of pun and quip which our merry contemporaries indulge in on all occasions.  Our friend the Chronicle takes pains to let his readers know that the convict, Henry Exeter, is not the eminent prelate, whose official signature, is the same.  We are surprized that our friend should have thought such a notice necessary to quiet the apprehensions of the diocese."

Phillpotts was,  The Western Times would agree,  the most worldly of men and one quite unsuited to be a bishop, - hence the fun! 

I don't suppose Henry Exeter, the convict, waiting to be shipped off to Van Diemen's Land, would have been much amused.

Then as now, newspapermen seem to have a love of bad puns and silly quips and  misleading coincidences.  

Sources The Western News, 24th and 31st October, 1840.   

THE GREEN ORES, THE EXE ESTUARY, 1837

H. J Holt Esq. of Exmouth, was keen on wildfowling.  The Western Times  of 14th January 1837 tells the story how, the week before, he went up the river in his shooting boat:

"On a sand-bank, near the Green Ores, he saw what he at first took for a heap of snow; but by the help of his glass discovered to be nine wild swans, squat and pluming themselves."

His customary boatman, Old Jack, was not with him,  'only a boy, whose strength at skulling could hardly stem the strong ebbing tide'.   Nevertheless H. J. Holt managed to kill one of the swans with his swivel gun loaded with duck-shot:   

...down he tumbled from a great height.  What a flapping, splashing and dashing, the wing being only broken - but with a smart whack from the small gun he sung out and died.  Oh! it was a snow-white beauteous bird, and such a one as Leda loved.  It is now in the hands of a famous bird-stuffer in Exeter." 

I remember seeing what was possibly the last of the Exe duck punts, but this was a one-man version built like a kayak, complete with an ancient , dangerous-looking swivel gun, buoyed in the Lympstone moorings in the sixties.    The owner, I thought, was a bad-tempered, little man.  He would disappear before sunrise.  I don't know if he ever killed anything.  Today to shoot at a swan, even a wild one, seems barbaric but Mr. Holt was clearly proud of his kill.  He probably wrote the piece!

'The Green Ores' sound wonderfully exotic - pure poetry!  Ores here means weed.  It is, I think, a  local, that is  to say a West-Country, dialect word.  The swans were probably up-river near what is now called Greenland.

H. J Holt , Esq is now long dead and buried but his beauteous swan might still be floating around somewhere.  Ars longa, via brevis!

MRS PETERSWOLD, NEWTON ABBOT, 1836

 Mrs. Peterswold died on  the last day of the year 1836.  Notice of her death in The Western Times of 7th January 1837 informs us that she died aged 94 and that:

"This lady had her coffin made 21 years since, and kept it under her bed,  her headstone was kept at the bottom of the stairs,  and her shroud was knitted and frequently given away to some poor person, and a new one provided."

The legal requirement to be buried in woollen was still in force when Mrs. Peterswold's first shroud was knitted.   I like the idea of various poor persons scurrying  around Newton wrapped in this lady's old shrouds but perhaps she only gave them to paupers who had someone to bury. 

Mrs. P's provision for her departure from this world made me think of the many leaflets that the postman has been  bringing me for the last 13 years  (ever since I reached three score and ten!) asking me to consider my funeral arrangements and pay in advance.  I shall continue to ignore them - after all,  I might live another 21 years.

That headstone at the foot of the stairs must have proved a nuisance.

A PUBLIC PENANCE, EXETER, 1836.

 I was under the impression that public penance in Anglican churches had long gone out of fashion by 1836 but in Exeter, in the parish of Saint Olave, a hellier (roofer) by the name of Henry Turpin was 'adjudged to do penance' for calling his sister-in-law, Mrs Charlotte Heath, several names impugning her chastity, &c. &c.

I suppose Henry could have opted out of the Anglican Church but that clearly was not for him an alternative.

There was a ceremony at the church.  A large crowd  assembled to see the fun.  Henry was "dressed in a white fustian coatee, breeches and gaiters to match, but was not arrayed in a white sheet, according to the popular notion."

The clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Birch, read the warrant:

"By authority of the Venerable John Moore Stevens, Clerk, Master of Arts, Archdeacon of the Archdeaconry of Exeter, lawfully constituted, it is ordered that Henry Turpin, of the parish of St. Olave in the City of Exeter, and within our Archdeaconry, hellier, shall, upon some day,...come before the minister, and churchwardens of the parish... and repeat the following words."

The Reverend Birch then read, and Henry Turpin repeated:

"I, Henry Turpin, do hereby acknowledge and confess that I have abused and defamed the said Charlotte, wife of  Robert Heath, by saying that she is a black bastard  ------&c. &c. &c., for which I beg her pardon, and promise no more for the future to defame and abuse her again in the like manner."

The Western Times  (24th September, 1836.)  commented that:

"the 'congregation' ...seemed to think that Mr. Turpin's slander and Mrs. Heath's reputation were not the most solemn subjects to be settled at Church, and joined in the ceremony with much fun and merriment."

It is to be noted that in 2022 Henry's choice of insults, the one that The Times though fit to print,  would  have got him into trouble with the criminal law of England, never mind the Church!

EVERY TOWN HAS NOT ITS NORNEY, EXETER, before 1814.

In the diaries of Samuel Curwen, an American loyalist taking refuge in England at the time of the War of Independence, (1775 to 1783) we learn that, during his stay in Exeter, he enjoyed taking walks on Norney.  

Norney, of course, is Northernhay.  It is a fine example of Devon elision.   Just as Exeter is Exter, Topsham is Topsam, Lympstone is Limson  so Northernhay is Norney .  

 In The Derby Mercury of 1st December, 1785 and in most of the papers nationwide. was this remarkable report:

"There is now living at Norney, near the city of Exeter, one John Follart, a Woolcomber, who is now in the 121st Year of his Age; this Prodigy of old Age works at his Business, retains all his Faculties, and was in good Health on Wednesday last."

I doubt that the remarkable John Follart  was quite that old,  In some of the papers he was not 121 but 124.  Just like today, the newspapers did not necessarily let the truth rob them of a good story.

It seems clear that the contracted name was not just a familiar nickname;  Norney, was used on formal occasions:  In The Morning Chronicle 12th December, 1803, was this wedding notice:

"MARRIED: On Saturday,  H.T. Cooper, Esq. to Miss Eliabeth Anne Bailey, niece to James Bailey, Esq. of Norney House, near Exeter."

When, in 1802,  Robert Southey, not yet the poet-laureate, came to Exeter, he was much impressed by the Gardens:

"Close to our inn is the entrance of the Norney or public walk.  The trees are elms, and have attained their full growth; indeed I have never seen a finer walk; but every town has not its Norney... I was shown a garden, unique in its kind, which has been made in the old castle ditch.  The banks rise steeply on each side; one of the finest poplars in the country grows in the bottom and scarcely overtops the ruined wall.  Jackson, one of the most accomplished men of his age, directed these improvements; and never was accident more happily improved."   (my emphasis)

(Source: Robert Southey (under the sobriquet, Espriella),  Letters from England , Longman 1814. 3rd edition - the letter dated,  Sunday, April 24, 1802.)

Southey had clearly passed from Northernhay into Rougemont Gardens, something which nowadays it is impossible to do. This is because a philistine City Council, which does not value Exeter's unique inheritance, Northernhay Gardens , as a public walk, has blocked the way.  It is a council which is happier locking up,  blocking up, fencing off, closing down and generally neglecting the Gardens while at the same time renting them out to short-term, incoming, polluting, destructive and vulgar events, the organising of which has  involved long periods when the elegant neglected, ironwork gates have quite simply been locked against the people.  

It is shameful that old Norney has not been freely available to the citizens of Exeter and to visitors for more than a quarter of the past year. 

One can only hope that the time will come when a wiser city council will realise that the Gardens properly cared for, controlled and imaginatively improved, perhaps by someone to sort them out like that accomplished Jackson of the eighteenth century, would attract  visitors from all over the country and beyond and add to the prosperity and reputation of this once dignified and proud city. 

 

THE NEW LONDON INN, EXETER, before 1814.

Robert Southey,  soon to be poet-laureate  came to Exeter in April in one of the early years of the nineteenth century.  He was writing a book, Letters from England, ( under the sobriquet Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella,  - he would have us suppose him a Spanish visitor  -, published by Longman, 1814, 3rd Edition,)  He stayed at the New London Inn and gives us a rare glimpse of the place although we know what it looked like from the Square - viz. magnicent! - from early engravings :

"At length we crossed the river Exe by a respectable bridge, and immediately entered the city of Exeter, and drove up a long street to an inn as large as a large convent.  Is it possible, I asked, that this immense house can ever be filled by travellers?  He (his travelling companion) told me in reply that there were two other inns in the city nearly as large beside many smaller ones; and yet, that the last time he passed through Exeter, they were obliged to procure a bed for him in a private dwelling, not having one unoccupied in the house....

"If the outside of this New London Inn, as it is called, surprised me, I was far more surprised at the interior.  Excellent as the houses appeared at which we had already halted, they were mean and insignificant compared with this.  There was a sofa in our apartment,  and the sideboard was set forth with china and plate.  Surely, however, these articles of luxury are misplaced, as they are not in the slightest degree necessary to the accommodation of a traveller, and must be considered in his bill."

The New London Inn stood where  Longbrook Street meets the New North Road meets the High Street.  It is  the area now covered by Waterstones bookshop and by the student accommodation behind.

From grand hotel to grand cinema to chain-bookshop - is that progress or regression? 

NOT PROSELYTES, LYMPSTONE, 1811

This somewhat niche blog  is for the record.  After all, this well may have been the first time Lympstone affairs hit the national press! 

"The Salisbuty and Winchester Journal 21st October 1811.   On Sunday the 13th inst. three persons, advanced in years, proselytes from the principles of Joanna Southcott, were publicly baptised by the Rev. Mr Gidoin in the parish church of Limpston, Devon."

What was going on in Lympstone that The Salisbury Journal and The Bristol Mirror and no doubt other early newspapers should publish this report?  As far as I can see the only local paper, The Exeter Flying Post, did not print this story.

In any case the report was mistaken.  It was written as though these baptisms were triumphant conversions to the Church of England.  In fact the three candidates were not proselytes,  that is to say they had not abandoned Southcott.  They, and presumably the rector, simply did not find Joanna's principles to be at odds with the Anglican Church, within which were some who tolerated Dissenters and others who did not.  From what we know of him, John Prestwood Gidoin, the much loved and respected Rector of Lympstone from 1792 until 1820 would have been for toleration every time.

We know all this because of a letter to the editor of The Bristol Mirror from the Reverend Samuel Eyre, a Bristolian advocate of the 'divine mission' of Joanna Southcott.   He had read the report of baptisms in Lympstone and at once wrote to John Prestwood Gidoin, the rector, to ascertain the real facts.  Eyre received a reply from Gidoin superscribed the Lympston Rectory  and dated  Oct. 25 which The Mirror published  (23rd November 1811):

"REV SIR, - The circumstances you allude to , were misrepresented; they should have been as follows:- Three persons of riper years, Dissenters, and believers in Joanna Southcott, were baptised in the Parish Church of Lympston.  The followers of Joanna Southcott are in union with the Established Church."

It would be easy enough to learn the names of the three  persons of riper age from the Parish Registers.   I'm assuming they were JPG's parishioners.  I wonder how many believers in Joanna Southcott there were in the village at that time.  .Joanna Southcott had a huge following across the nation.  She made rather a mess of things three years later by not fulfilling her promise that she would give birth to the Messiah - but at least she tried!   She was an overweight, Devonshire dumpling, of riper age, from Gittisham, and, in my opinion, as mad as a hatter yet able to carve out a lucrative career as an influencer on a mission from God.  Well, that sort of thing still happens!

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OAKWEBS, EXETER, 1837

 At the Exeter Guildhall on June 3rd, 1837,  before the Mayor and the Magistrates:

"Mr. Charles Hubbard complained of a young urchin who had been found in his garden, destroying the shrubs &c. at half-past five the preceding morning. 

"Richard Reynolds stated that he saw the boy throwing stones at the shrubs.  The defence of the youngster was that he went in to take an oakweb, or cockchafer and threw a stone at one in the tree.

"Mr. Hubbard said that he wanted only to have him admonished by the bench;  his mother was an industrious woman, with a very large family, and he was a very naughty boy, and had been there before for breaking glass.

"The Mayor - There is no doubt that you are one of those idle mischievous boys that go about the town doing mischief.

"The Boy - No, sir, I goes to work.

"The Mayor - We rather leave it in the hands of your father to give you a sound flogging;  but if ever you come here again you will be sent to prison and well whipped.  (To the father)  I hope you do not encourage him.

"The Father, - No, sir, the boy has got more beating than all my other children; and I consider I beats him too much;  he goes to work, and I keeps him at it early and late, and I can't help when he's out of my sight."

It seems to me unlikely that a little boy could do much destruction to a bush by heaving a stone at a cockchafer but then I suppose respectable people don't like an urchin to be  hanging round their garden at half-past-five in the morning. 

This is an all too familiar case of a boy escaping prison and a whipping and being sent home to be flogged by his father.  How times have changed in respect of sparing the rod!.  We don't learn the name of The Boy' but he certainly knew how to speak up for himself.

I chiefly, however, blog this, on account of the beautiful, dialect word, oakweb,  used here to mean a cockchafer or maybug.   (Thomas Hardy, inter allios, called it a dumbledore, a name known to all Harry Potter fans,  most of whom will never experience the big beetle that once fascinated children - we have more or less chemicalled it out! of existence!  But oakweb is a word not in my dictionaries and one which I have not seen hitherto.   

Source: The Western Times, 10th June 1837.

A NERVOUS NEIGHBOURHOOD, EXETER, 1837.

 From:  The Western Times, 3rd June, 1837:

"HART and JARMAN, two little boys, aged about eight years, were summoned for disturbing the peace of the quiet neighbourhood of Garden-square, by firing cannon therein, on the day of the coming of age of our most gracious Princess Victoria, to the great injury of the nerves of several elderly ladies, and against the peace of our lord the king.

"The facts were fully proved, and the artillery regularly put in in evidence - it consisted of two 2d. brass cannons, the shortest one an inch and a half long and the other a regular bomb of two inches in length, and a bore of one eighth of an inch diameter.

"They were fined one shilling; the guns were seized, and the urchins were admonished - the bench evidently addressing the mothers through their  hopeful progeny, they having encouraged the youngsters to annoy the nervous neighbourhood."

The whole kingdom, (with, allegedly,  the exception of Exmouth, - see this same source,) was celebrating the birthday of the Princess who, though nobody knew it, a couple of weeks later would be proclaimed Queen and Empress.  

In Garden-square, Exeter, however, several elderly ladies were so much disturbed by young Masters Hart and Jarman joining in the fun and firing off their tuppenny firecracker cannons that the boys were brought before the Mayor and Magistrates and fined.  It's a wonder they could keep their faces straight!  What a travesty of justice!

I ask myself:  what happened to those tiny brass(?) cannon seized by the Bench and how much money one could ask for them now on Ebay?

Garden Square must have been a very precious neighbourhood indeed.  I haven't yet found it.

ACCESS TO NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 1872.

 From The Western Times of 3rd August 1872:

"Sir, - Would you kindly inform me who it is that holds the right to place persons at the entrance of a public thoroughfare at Northernhay to stop people from passing through in the usual course of business on the occasion of the Horticultural Flower Show on Northernhay today as I approached the entrance to the pubic path I was stopped by two men and informed I could not pass through as they had orders from the Council men not to let anyone pass. - Yours truly,  RATEPAYER."

Poor old RATEPAYER, I can see him umbrella in hand,  (this Flower Show was, like all Devon Shows, plagued by rain!,)  being turned away from Northernhay. 

As I write, families and others are still climbing up from the streets to be turned back by the dismal, yellow, prohibitory notices cable-tied to the proud ironwork gates to the Gardens.  This has been happening since 24th October, throughout the half-term holiday and three sunny, more or less, week-ends.

I'd like to think RATEPAYER had a point.   Northernhay, as well as everything else, is a public thoroughfare.   It does seem absurd that the Council men , women too these days, claim the right to give away the keys to third parties for more than three months in the year.  Is there really no legal case to be made on the citizens' behalf?     

TWO TO A BED, BILLETING, EXETER, 1855

 Sergeant Austin, of the Royal Artillery, had a billet made out in due form upon a new recruit and tried to billet him on The Plume of Feathers. Henry Petheridge, the landlord, was charged with refusing to accommodate the recruit.   In his defence it was affirmed that Henry was already billeted with five militia men who occupied three beds.  He told the court that he had offered the recruit the spare half-bed:

"THE MAYOR - Do two militia men sleep in one bed, then?

"The Defendant - Yes, they do.

"THE MAYOR - Then you had better take care not to be brought up here on that matter,  for you are bound to provide a bed for each man.  It seemed hard at first sight for a man to provide so many beds, but he took the house with these things in view, and where there were 800 men to be billetted in a city like this, it necessarily caused some inconvenience."

It was, no doubt, common enough in Victorian times for landlords to expect a guest to sleep in the same  bed, sometimes a narrow one, with someone to whom he had not been introduced. (In Moby Dick, [1851]  Ishmael famously had all the fun of being bedded with Queequeg!) but Exeter clearly had higher standards than New Bedford.  

800 servicemen were billeted on the city!  (We were at war with Russia and sending troops to the Crimea)  Billeting on this scale was deeply unpopular. 

Sergeant Austin and/or his recruit seem to have refused this shared bed. The sergeant had ended up paying a shilling to accommodate his recruit at The Elephant.

Henry Petheridge was let off lightly, thanks to the mayor and the good sergeant, and only paid the expenses.   He promised to find extra beds at The Plume of Feathers.

Source: The Western Times,  6th January 1855.

 

PROTECTING NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 1854.

Northernhay Gardens are special.  If properly gardened and cared for,   if all the crumbling walls were made safe,  if all the unnecessary blocks and barriers were removed, they could be a credit to Exeter, the envy of other English cities and famous at home and abroad.

Llewellyn Garrett Talmidge Harvey, a chimney-sweep and a Methodist preacher of a sort,  was convicted of the rape and attempted murder of Mary Richards.  His assault on Mary in Buckland Brewer, near Bideford,was particularly vicious and unpleasant and made solacious reading in The London Times of 27th May 1874.  The rape and attempted murder, fortunately, are not our concern but on Friday 4th August LGTH. was publicly hanged at Exeter Gaol.

Ten thousand or so people turned up to see LGTH. turned off.  There is an account in The Western Times (5th August 1854) of the execution from which this is an extract:

"The gaol, as our Exeter readers know, stands on a hill opposite the Northernhay, whose beautiful slopes are kept sacred on these occasions from the feet of the death-seers.....The crowd spread from the City Gaol, along the Queen-street-road, the New North-road, from the County Gaol to Castle-terrace."

"NORTHERNHAY:  WHOSE BEAUTIFUL SLOPES ARE KEPT SACRED ON THESE OCCASIONS FROM THE FEET OF THE DEATH-SEERS"

Switch, dear Exeter readers, from 1854 to 2022,  when the City Council seems to be doing everything in its power to make Northernhay ever more shabby.  We wait to see what  Winter Wonderlanders &c. will do to the sacred slopes in this precarious weather!   Then, no doubt,  ECC will commit some further outrage.  

True, in 1854 the Gardens were, necessarily, closed to the public for a day.  In 2022 they will have been, unnecessarily, closed to the public for THREE MONTHS.

 

                                                                             

 

"BURNING THEM OUT", EXETER, 1835.

 "It is now become a practice in this city, in cases where new houses have been built, as well as elsewhere, when lodgings have been taken,and occupation gained by ladies of a questionable character, who are in general very difficult of ejectment, to proceed to "burn them out"  which has been found a much more speedy and effectual process than the adoption of legal means, to get rid of such nuisances.  

"This plan of  "burning out" is effected by employing 3 or 4 men with flambeaus and large placards, with the inscription of "Beware," on each side of the house."

This  brief report of a cunning plan, (Baldrick-style?) as described in The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 7th  March 1835, is one of the most puzzling that I have met.   Who, in Exeter, was hiring  thugs ( it would seem), to be sandwich-board-men holding olympic-style flaming flambeaux,  the implied threat being that they would burn sex-workers out of their lodgings?    Can we believe that this had 'become a practice' in the city?

The Gazette seems to have seen this as a jolly good idea.  Apart from anything else I can't imagine it could succeed,  not unless the men were doing a lot more than just standing about like so many street-lamps. Ladies very difficult of ejectment would, I guess, have been well ahead of the game. 

"Bizarre!" says my granddaughter.

   

SKIMMINGTON, EXETER, 1834

From The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette," 1st February 1834:

John Hawkes - a young gentleman of somewhat frightful appearance, having his physiognomy variegated with stripes of blue, red and white, tastefully painted in oil colours. - John Pulman , and Samuel Lamb, were brought up, charged with disorderly conduct in West-Street, on Friday last.

"It appeared that the wife of a certain butcher in the West quarter of the city, had been supposed to be guilty of impropriety, and the gallant gentry of that neighbourhood determined to give it publicity by adopting the ancient but riotous practice of skimmington; accordingly, nearly 500 persons assembled (after receiving a caution from the police) with two donkeys, a tri-coloured flag fastened to a long pole, decorated on the top with rams' horns gilded in a superior style: the painted man, in gaudy attire, being placed on one of the animals; various pranks and much noise ensued, which greatly disturbed the peace;  the officers soon interfered and took some of the delinquents into custody.  Pulman was very much intoxicated, and when apprehended chose rather to ride to the Guildhall than to walk quietly.  Lamb was requested to help the police, instead of which he knocked off an officer's hat.

"The Bench fined Pulman and Lamb 5s. each and liberated Hawkes, a pauper of St Thomas, as he was of unsound mind, after cautioning him not to become the tool of such parties in future."

Thank the Fates there are no skimmintons these days!  This 1834 skimmington in Exeter seems to have been organised to humiliate a cuckolded butcher and his wife but such riotous processions had for centuries been used by the mob to take what they saw as corrective measures against all kinds of perceived misdemeanours.   As in Hardy's skimmity-ride in the Mayor of Casterbridge, the cruelty of such mindless attempts at rough-justice seems today to be shocking, dangerous and despicable.   But, wait a minute!  Isn't there a parallel here with the modern thinking that political incorrectitude can be rooted out by those who are 'woke' enough to raise a mob online?  The potential of social media for skimmingtons is frightening!

This skimmington in the West-quarter of Exeter is a classic:  a pole, a tricolour (of revolutionary France presumably), gilded rams' horns, two donkeys and John Hawkes, a pauper of unsound mind, face-painted  and sitting on one of them and thereto five hundred unwashed citizens.

'Skimmington', ( the word is not nearly as old as the rough-ride - first recorded 1666 )  is of obscure origin but might have to do with the wooden spoons with which nagging wives traditionally beat their subordinate husbands.  (cf. Punch and his Judy?)   My own guess though would be a  Mr. or Ms. Skimmington  long, long ago deemed to be 'guilty of impropiety'    

NORTHERNHAY GARDENS AGAIN CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC, EXETER, OCTOBER 2022.

 I am publishing these two posts again because the gates to Northernhay Gardens are once again locked against the people of Exeter for whose recreation the gardens have existed for four hundred years.  

The Council of our glorious city have already given the keys to the same people who damaged the park last Christmas.   It will be locked until 18th November.  (25 days!)  What incredible arrogance!

Remembrance Sunday will again be celebrated by Semper Fidelis, if permitted by the key-holders, on a building site.

After 18th November until the New Year, it will be open to the public only as and when the Fairground Providers wish.   It will not again be the Gardens as they should be until after the New Year.

Even then it will be closed to the public for many more days while the Fairground people seek to restore the damage that will inevitably be done. 

O EXETER!

1.  THE RAPE OF NORTHERNHAY.  26th SEPTEMBER 2022.

So, rumour has it, there is to be a repeat of 'Winter Wonderland' in Exeter's unique Northernhay Gardens.   I would not be surprised!  The city-council appears not to have a ha'porth of imagination. The scars of the last 'wonderland' have not yet healed.  

Last year the park was turned into a construction site.  It was closed, effectively, to the people who

appreciate it as a public park for seventy-two days and later closed again in favour of the great lizards.  

Last year Exeter's Remembrance Sunday was, somewhat farcically, observed, by kind permission of the winter wonderlanders, at the edge of a half-constructed funfair.  (The county's remembrance  in the cathedral-close was not much more dignified.  It was tainted by the booths of the sons of Mammon,  - but that's a separate issue!)

The governors of Devon's county-town seems to have a hankering for the lowest-common-denominator.  Exeter, the city, not the suburbs where the councillors live, has many advantages.  A castle famed in story, pleasing city walls, a most ancient guildhall,  where now the homeless lay their weary heads, a grand Victorian museum (ditto),  catacombs with neglected potential, underground passages, a brilliant riverside - more potential there! though the Quay is one thing that has been well done,  a green belt where funfairs and circuses could hold sway and do no harm,  (although some attraction less short-term would make more sense .)  and the one glorious valley-park,  miraculously preserved to the people, which is Northernhay, and which for at least three months of the year is being consistently denied to the people whose free inheritance it is and to visitors to our city.  

The Gardens are becoming shabbier and shabbier because of lack of intelligent management and common-sense policing.  (They no longer have a dedicated manager nor a dedicated team of gardeners. - and dedication is what is sorely needed!)  

Their future calls for some deep-thought and the Council's new games of neglecting them as gardens, using them as a site for vulgar amusement, limiting access wherever possible, wiring off footpaths and installing, very costly no doubt, close-circuit television cameras are not going to help.

2. PLASTIC DINOSAURS,   26th MAY 2022.   

The time-honoured Northernhay Gardens, as I write, are full of plastic dinosaurs.  Until June 16th the Gardens will be closed to the public except for those times the Amusement Company from Essex which has brought the plastic dinosaurs to Exeter, chooses to open them and no member of the public will be permitted to walk in the Gardens without paying.

These Gardens are exceptional.  They are a remarkable inheritance, a remarkable survival.  We are so lucky to have them!  They are not just any park.  They could make the city of Exeter celebrated far and wide.  Together with Rougemont they offer the most wonderful 'castle walk'.  Properly gardened and cared for they would attract visitors from all over the country and beyond.  They are also the place, the 'Valhalla', where Exeter remembers those Exonians who died in war and those men whose philanthropy benefitted the city.  They are simply much too precious to be closed to the public and farmed out to 'Amusement Companies'. 

A similar constraint of the traditional liberties of the people took place at Christmas/New Year 2021/2022, when the park was for seventy-two days transformed from it's traditional ideal, viz. a charming walk for weary citizens and a playground for the young, to become an unprepossessing  funfair.  The shocking fact is that for a quarter of the last twelvemonth the Gardens qua gardens will have been inaccessible to the public.

It used to be accepted that the Gardens were one of the city's glories.  Visitors, including monarchs, were invited to admire the wonderful 'Grove' which thoughtful, famous gardeners and responsible city government maintained and improved.    

Both these new, undignified, commercial initiatives, the dinosaurs and the funfair, break new ground.  For more than four centuries, with negligible and largely benign exceptions, the Gardens have been freely accessible to citizens of, and visitors to, Exeter.  Once they were described as perhaps being : "the most romantic walk in Europe."   Alas, no more!       

The Exeter City Council, which cable-ties its notices to the Gardens' proud Victorian ironwork gates but which never gets around to giving them a lick of paint,  appears to have the right to close the Gardens to the public whenever it chooses for whatever purpose.   This would seem to be the law and, in this, the law would seem to be an ass!  

The Council's responsibilities to the Gardens; on the other hand, are not being met.  The reputed 'danger' from the 'unsafe' castle walls has not been tackled in three years,  ugly steel fencing is everywhere, the statues need repairs and cleaning, the plants and trees are sadly neglected, nothing is planted, the bandstand is unpainted and unused, the noticeboards carry ludicrously out-of-date notices, the 'maps' have been vandalised, access to Rougemont Gardens is blocked, the park is crying out for good designers, for good gardeners, for good management.  

The distressing  anti-social behaviour in the Gardens is not controlled:  litter lies for days on the lawns,  grafitti regularly appear on the monuments, including the castle walls, radios are played at high volume and unsocial hours, the homeless sleep beneath the trees, 'disturbed' citizens 'act out' and do unchecked damage, there are nefarious (often criminal) midnight practices, of which the City Council is well aware.  Nothing of this is being controlled or dealt with.  The Gardens are not policed.  The regulations that exist are simply not enforced.

The 'events' will, of course, be hailed as a success.  Nearly everybody loves a funfair  (as do I)  and there is no harm in a few plastic dinosaurs fom Essex.  Little children with happy faces will jump all over the Gardens and the Amusers and the Council will make money.  But why Northernhay?  What a short-term betrayal of the generous traditions of four hundred years of a glorious and free (but controlled) public space!  What a betrayal of the philanthropic ideals of our ancestors!  What a dumbing-down by a once great and dignified city of a unique inheritance!

This abuse of the Gardens is likely to continue, so too the neglect.  The failure, as so often with Exeter councils, lies in lack of imagination.  Can this council really find no way to improve the Gardens?  Must they become shabbier and shabbier?  Can the Council conjure up no better way to entertain children and to put a few ducats in the coffers than in the locking-up and degradation of Northernhay?   Must we really reconcile ourselves to witnessing a whittling away of the traditional liberties of the people and a neglect of the potential of an exceptionally beautiful site of considerable historic interest? 

 

  

   

THE WRONG COW, EXETER, 1833.

From The Western Times of 20th July 1833:

"ELIZABETH WILLEY and MARY SOPES, two girls apparently about 12, were charged with having milked the cow of a Mr. Searle, in a field near Hill's Court, on the preceding Sunday.  The case was fully proved against them, by witnesses who saw them in the act.

The defence set up, when caught, was that they had not intended to milk Mr. Searle's cow, but Mr. Alderman's Sanders's.

The case being proved, Mr Searle stated that he did not wish to press the charge, but merely to caution delinquents of this character, that they were committting a robbery.  The court said that it was a felony, liable to the punishment of transportation; and Mr. Warren, who was in court, stated that a man had been tried and conviceted of this offence at the County Sessions. 

-   Mr. Alderman Sanders cautioned them against milking his cows, as he had been a frequent sufferer from this kind of petty theft, and declared, upon his honour,  if ever any of them were caught with his cow, to go the full extent of the Law with them.

The girls were fined a shilling each and discharged.

Caught white-handed, Elizabeth and Mary pleaded that it was all a mistake .  It was the alderman's cow they meant to milk, not Mr. Searle's.  

If the magistrates and the grown-ups seem not to have been amused, this was because this was clearly becoming a prevalent offence in the fields of St. Sidwell's.  The magistrates were hoping to make their point to all the light-fingered, little milkmaids and milklads of greater Exeter. 

 It seems an odd sort of 'felony' to pop into a field on a quiet Sunday morning and to milk a cow.  I don't think these days that you could find a twelve-year-old in Exeter capable of it!  Nevertheless I'm sure the magistrates were right when they said this was an offence that could send you to Botany Bay, or wherever, and the poor in St Sidwell's were very hungry.

Hill's Court was an ancient mansion in the parish of St. Sidwell's of which nothing remained by 1822.  By 1833 there were already new town-houses on the site.

THE BACK-GRATE, EXETER, 1831.

Mr. H. Lloyd Parry in his book The History of the Exeter Guildlhall, (published in Exeter by James Townsend, 1936)  describes the Back Grate of the Guildhall at just this time:   "Complaints had been frequent that the cells in the Back Grate were damp and cold, and there appears to have been leakage from the large water cistern above the cells.  To such a complaint made in 1829 the Mayor replied that a place of punishment should not be made too comfortable, cooling was desirable, which elicited the the retort that the cells were used asa place of detention for prisoners till found guilty and not as a place for punishment."

Matters were not put right until in 1838 when there was an inquest on a prisoner who had died from illness aggravated by the Back Grate and the jury denounced the place as being unfit for humans.

Nevertheless, The ExeterFlying Post , 16th July, 1831, reported how the ailing widow of a  fallen soldier,  these day he would no doubt have been a war-hero', had made her way back from the isle of France (Mauritius) with her two children and, after being  kicked out of Bodmin,  had ended up  in the Back Grate, presumably with her children, for the offense of being a 'vagrant',  for which read 'sick and poor'.  

" A family of Scotch paupers consisting of a mother and two children, were brought before his worship, from the back-grate, having commited an act of vagrancy.

"The mother evidently appeared to be suffering acutely from disease; she stated that her husband had been a soldier of the 29th and had died in the isle of  France, whither she had been with him, but had returned at his death, and settled in Bodmin, maintaining herself by making caps and bonnets.  But, falling sick, and likely to bercome chargeable, she had been sent on from Bodmin to the next town in a cart, and so on up the road which had given her a cold in the bones, so that she felt it impossible to proceed any further.

"She had applied to the Mendicity Society of Exeter, but they refused to do anything for her; she then went to the Mayor who sent her to some individual, who had put her in the back-grate all night.

"The Court immediately directed the officers of the poor to relieve the unfortunate woman."

According to Mr. Lloyd Parry, the word grate, in this context, was first recorded here as early as 1493. Interestingly my OED  gives: 'grate - A barred place of confinement, a prison or cage (first recorded usage - 1774)

Somebody should tell them, Exeter was regularly recording the word thus, 281 years earlier!

A YOUNG CIRCUMCISED RASCAL, EXETER, 1830

The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette had writers who clearly enjoyed insulting everyone equally,  not too often the rich and the powerful but often enough them too.

I am old enought to share their enjoyment. The most lively writing comes about when the writer is amusing himself and there is, perhaps, nothing more enjoyable than making odious comparisons.  The sense of freedom with which The Gazette's  court reporter hurled personal and no doubt hurtful comments on  all and sundry does not so much shock and anger as amuse me and I find it curious that writers nowadays have to, by the law of the land, avoid unkind words and phrases for fear of the knock on the door.    All the fun of the world has its dark side.  

I see, with amusement, the paradox of young (mostly) people on the qui vive for writers &c. who are not 'kind' and 'thoughtful' and 'correct' so that they can exercise their freedom of speech to pick a fight with them.  That's all fair enough,  -  but legislation?  

Freedom of speech, however, it seems to me, is an absolute and is the bedrock of a free society .  In any case, it is a freedom that will not let itself be banned.   

This was a court report for the 5th June 1830:

"On Saturday last, a Hebrew lad was summoned before the Mayor for attempting to emancipate himself from the thraldom of his father.

"The father stated that his son had formed various bad habits, which could only tend to utter ruin and in proof of the assertion handed in a written document purporting to be a charge for three pints of beer, two glasses of gin and two ditto of rum and water.

"When this Jew bill was brought into the house for the anxious parent to pay he was surprised to find that his son had been having such a jubilee and remonstrated.

"The young circumcised rascal pursued the same course and pleaded now before their worships excited  feelings as the cause of his drinking, his father and his mother having had a quarrel.

"Their worships rebuked him in a proper manner, and the lad promised to amend -  but at first he wished his father to set him up with 'a pound's worth of goods' and he'd never trouble him more.

"The court over-ruled the proposition and he went home to his mother."'`

I can forgive the racist undertones but I'm not sure I can so easily forgive the bad puns.

AN EXHILARATING SIGHT, ON THE ROAD TO EXETER, 1818.

  According to The Exeter Flying Post of 25th June 1818,  Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, the grand Tory who for 17 years was a  Member of Parliament for the County of Devon, rode from Killerton to Exeter at the head of a cavalcade (the mot juste) of respectable yeomen and other respectables, respectably mounted. 

"....at least a thousand of the most respectable Yeomanry in this part of the County, accompanied by many Gentlemen and Clergy voluntarily joined and met him on his road to Exeter.

"A more exhilarating sight, and a more decisive testimony to character, we never recollect to have witnessed, than this orderly cavalcade, extending nearly a mile in length, respectably mounted, bearing in their hats the oak leaf, the antient designation of the Acland Family, and evidently appearing to be inspired with a high, but well regulated enthusiasm, for the cause of the worthy Baronet, who by their own request rode at their head."

It  seems remarkable, this cavalcade, how it assembled on the road, arriving from all quarters, organised somehow by Acland's agents.  There is no mention, I note, of Yeowomen,or Ladies trotting along!  1818 was election year and feelings were running high.   In Exeter the mob was waiting for him and he was to be heckled in public to the point where he could not speak and, indeed he lost this election and was out of office for two years.

The antient ,in 1818, association of  the oak-leaf with, the Acland family (this must surely be a reference to some heraldic  device but I have not traced it) and,also, it would seem, with local Toryism generally,  was well established at this time.  It probably faded away with the Acland descendants becoming Whigs, Liberals, and even, like the one who taught me at St. Luke's, of the Labour Party.

There was an oak-leaf ballad in this same number of the Flying Post:

Come, ye Lads, who wish to share/ In your County's glory,/Wave the Oak-leaf high in air,/ and carry all before ye.  &c.

Now, that is a sweet image:  Georgian Devonshire Tory Lads waving their oak-leaves high in the air!!!

 

HIGHWAY ROBBERY, EXETER, 1800.

"On Monday morning last, about half past four o'clock, a most daring robbery was committed in the lane leading from the London Road to Pin Pound Turnpike Gate, about three miles from this city, on a young man named John Symons, a butcher of Topsham.

"He was going to fetch some sheep for his master, when he was attacked by two tall men, one of them armed with a pistol, the other with a sabre:  on his endeavouring to get off, one of them made a cut at him, which penetrated through his thick great coat, breeches, and made a slight wound in his thigh;  the other villain then knocked him off his horse, when they picked his pocket of upwards of twenty-six pounds in cash and bank notes. -

"Handbills have been published, offering a reward of ten guineas for the apprehending either of the above villains; - one of them is described to have a dark complexion, dark curled hair and both wore waggoner's frocks and round hats."

This is an all too typical account of a Devonshire highway robbery. (The Exeter Flying Post, 20th March, 1800)    The victims seem mostly to have been farmers or their servants riding to market or on business  and the highwaymen mostly to have been armed footpads, rather than Dick Turpins high to horse. There was, of course, no other way to do business than by carrying cash or unsecured bank notes.

John Symons from Topsham did not get much farther than Pinhoe before, in daylight,  he was slashed in the thigh and knocked off his horse.

The footpads were wearing smock-frocks.   This was not much of a clue.  Waggoners they might have been but most Devon farm labourers wore similar 'frocks'.

KEGS OF WATER, EXETER, 1800

 The Exeter Flying Post, of 11th December 1800,  published as a caution to the public the following account:

"The public should be aware of a set of swindlers who have infested this city and neighbourhood;  they pretend to be dealers in smuggled spirituous liquors, and generally carry one or two kegs with them, which they sell at a very low rate, for ready money.

"The keg is broached in the purchaser's presence, and being found very good, is taken and immediately paid for..  After they are gone the purchaser finds he has bought a keg of water;  and that by means of a false head to the barrel, or such other contrivance, a small quantity of spirits has been so placed as effectively deceive the purchaser, who is thereby cheated of two or three guineas."

What could be more disappointing?, -  and with Christmas coming!  You thought your  sample of bootleg brandy very good' and at that price!,  but, alas!, you have been cheated.  Perhaps this will teach you not to buy hole-in-a-corner spirituous liquors!  

One gets the impression that none of the  tippling citizens of Exeter had qualms about cheating the taxman.   Might not this 'caution' have been  a cunning ploy, a rumour spread by the excisemen?   

SITTING IN A SITUATION! EXETER, 1800.

 In November 1800 the Exe flooded and most of the parish of St. Thomas,  the Exe Island, and the lands adjoining were inundated.    The Exeter Flying Post  (13th November) reported this truly disastrous event but devoted most of its column to the story of  the rescue of Mr. Holland and his companions from a waterly grave: 

"....two chaises, containing Mr. Holland, his wife, three daughters, his brother, and servants, attempted to enter the city from the Okehampton road.  

"They proceeded  on with some difficulty, until they reached that part of the road which opens onto the Exe;.... here the water was so high that it flowed over the backs of the horses, and reached nearly to the windows of the carriage.  One horse having dropped dead, it was necessary immediately to cut the traces, so as to extricate the others from the carriage, and prevent, if possible, the whole from being carried off by the violence of the current.

"As the water continued rising, it was judged impossible to preserve the lives of  the persons in the carriage, unless a boat could be procured from the quay,  by which alone they could be relieved from their dangerous situation.

"On this occasion, we cannot speak too highly of the conduct of Mr. Phillips at the Hotel, by whose particular exertions the lives of Mr. Holland and his family were preserved  -  he ran to the quay, which was universally overflown, and after the greatest difficulty, procured a boat from Capt Thompson, the master of a merchant ship from Leith, this he hoisted on a slide, and, by the offer of liberal rewards procured three horse to draw it, with the greatest expedition, to the spot where the carriage remained; to attain which, they were obliged to make a long circuitous route,  the other avenues being impassable from the height of the water.  The boat, however, arrived just in time, for the persons were still sitting in the carriage, immersed above their middles, and so rapid did the water rise that they had scarcely been extracted from their situation....when the stream flowed over the roof.

"We are happy to add, that the ladies, &c. experienced no injury other than a universal wetting, and the horror which they must have experienced in being obliged to sit for so long in a situation, expecting every moment would put an end to their existence."

It's the way they tell 'em!

One chaise , a bit like Sancho Panza's donkey, has been lost,  unnoticed by the narrator.  

 Mr. Holland, his wife, his three daughters, his brother and his servants seem to have shown remarkably little initiative.  One imagines them all just sitting there getting a universal wetting and waiting to be drowned.

Why and how should one hoist a boat on a slide and pull it with horses?

Which brings us to Mr. Phillips at the Hotel, running, procuring boats and horses, and that slide and arriving like Dick Barton, in the nick of time!   

Well, they don't make heroes like him these days!

Overflown and proceeding on are quaint but wrong. 

Pity about that horse! 

SHOCKS TO THE EYE, EXETER, 1800.

 "We have great pleasure in observing that the Right Worshipful the Mayor and Chamber, have enacted a Bye Law, to oblige the inhabitants of this city to sweep the pavement in front of their houses, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning, before nine o'clock in the winter and eight o'clock in summer, under the penalty of twenty shillings for every omission.

"Scavengers are also appointed to attend regularly with carts, for the purpose of carrying away the dirt thus swept together.

"We hope this will prevent the many nuisances, which constantly shock the eye and nose of every passenger who walks through the streets of this city."

Two hundred and twenty two, (222) years have flown away since the passing of this bye-law was reported in The Exeter Flying Post (25th September 1800). 

True,  Exeter these days smells more salubrious than in the time of Farmer George but there is still plenty of rubbish  to shock the eye.  We continue to have, but we don't call them scavengers, council workers with carts to carry rubbish away but no sooner have they passed by than the plastic &c. flows again, like lava from Vesuvius, onto our High Street, Queen Street and where not?   Some rule that would constrain shopkeepers and citizens to keep their 'fronts' free from rubbish might be a good idea.  I seem to think they have laws like that in Germany.   But there has long been something curious about Exeter bye-laws!  They are like snowball-hitches, - they are no sooner made than they begin to melt in the sun.  

A scavenger (scaveger) used to be a kind of tax-collector but  for centuries meant someone who keeps a place clean.   Today, for some reason, it sounds very negative.  It is a pity that so many grand old English words lose their dignity.   

THE RAPE OF NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 2022.

So, rumour has it, there is to be a repeat of 'Winter Wonderland' in Exeter's unique Northernhay Gardens.   I would not be surprised!  The city-council appears not to have a ha'porth of imagination. The scars of the last 'wonderland' have not yet healed.  

Last year the park was turned into a construction site.  It was closed, effectively, to the people who appreciate it as a public park for seventy-two days and later closed again in favour of the great lizards.  

Last year Exeter's Remembrance Sunday was, somewhat farcically, observed, by kind permission of the winter wonderlanders, at the edge of a half-constructed funfair.  (The county's remembrance  in the cathedral-close was not much more dignified.  It was tainted by the booths of the sons of Mammon,  - but that's a separate issue!)

The governors of Devon's county-town seems to have a hankering for the lowest-common-denominator.  Exeter, the city, not the suburbs where the councillors live, has many advantages.  A castle famed in story, pleasing city walls, a most ancient guildhall,  where now the homeless lay their weary heads, a grand Victorian museum (ditto),  catacombs with neglected potential, underground passages, a brilliant riverside - more potential there! though the Quay is one thing that has been well done,  a green belt where funfairs and circuses could hold sway and do no harm,  (although some attraction less short-term would make more sense .)  and the one glorious valley-park,  miraculously preserved to the people, which is Northernhay, and which for at least three months of the year is being consistently denied to the people whose free inheritance it is and to visitors to our city.  

The Gardens are becoming shabbier and shabbier because of lack of intelligent management and common-sense policing.  (They no longer have a dedicated manager nor a dedicated team of gardeners. - and dedication is what is sorely needed!)  

Their future calls for some deep-thought and the Council's new games of neglecting them as gardens, using them as a site for vulgar amusement, limiting access wherever possible, wiring off footpaths and installing, very costly no doubt, close-circuit television cameras are not going to help.  

A GANDY STREET ACADEMY, EXETER, 1808.

In January 1808,  the war with France was the first concern of the British government.  The Exeter Flying Post of 6th January reported how the Mayor of Plymouth had been required to remove the French 'aliens' from that city:  Monsieur Lelong,  a valued French teacher,  was told he must leave.  He came to Exeter and lost no time setting up shop in Gandy Street: 

"An order was last week received from the Alien-office, directing the removal of all aliens from this place. (Plymouth) In consequence of which, the Abbé Grizellé and Monsieur Lelong, two French teachers, were obliged to leave the town on a very short notice, to the great regret of their numerous friends.  The latter gentleman has resided in Plymouth nearly 7 years, during which time he has instructed upwards of 500 scholars with the highest advantage to them, and credit to himself.  Mr. Lelong has removed to Exeter."

In the same issue of the paper, Monsieur Lelong advertised the contribution he felt he could make to Exeter society: 

"MONSIEUR LELONG, late of Plymouth, has the honor to acquaint the nobility and gentry of Exeter and its neighbourhood, that he teaches the FRENCH LANGUAGE grammatically, and hopes by his zeal and unremitted attention, to meet with encouragement, similar to what he received in the place which he has just quitted.  The terms for private tuition are three guineas per quarter.

"Mr. Lelong has also opened an Academy at his apartments at Mr. Hooper's, in gandy's-street, for the instruction of YOUNG LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, at four guineas per year, and half a guinea entrance...."

"Mr. Lelong is happy in embracing the present opportunity to return his sincere acknowledgements to his many friends at Plymouth, for the friendship and patronage he uniformly experienced during his long residence in that place, and respectfully assures them that he shall ever retain the most lively sense of gratitude for their kindness and liberality."

There must have been many French refugees in Exeter and Devon but perhaps not many able and willing to teach the language.  It seems that a good French teacher was hard to find and that Plymouth's loss was to be Exeter's gain.  I hope the guineas poured in.  M. Lelong sounds a decent, hardworking, deserving kind of  alien.

The Alien Office, set up to counter foreign influence harmful to British interests, was able to demand that the Mayor of Devon's great naval port should ferret out aliens (Frenchmen) and send them packing.  This would have been tough on M. Leland (and his family?) but no doubt he would have benefitted from being clearly a 'respectable' person.  One wonders how the authorities dealt with the under-class.

The French lessons were not to be co-educational.  M. Leland made it clear that his young gentlemen would never, on his watch, cross the paths of his young ladies.       

THE REVIEW, WOODBURY COMMON, 1800.

The grand county review of our local military defenders, 1800, took place on Woodbury Common and a reporter of The Exeter Flying Post of  3rd July was there to observe it:

"Thursday last the Queen's or 2d Dragoon Guards, the Wilts and Dorset regiments of militia, the Devonshire yeomanry and Volunteer corps, together with some troops of the Somerset yeomanry and cavalry, the whole consisting of nearly 4000 men, under the command of Major General Simcoe, were reviewed, on Woodbury Common, by Lieut. General Grenville, commanding the Western District, in the presence of a very numerous concourse of the gentry and inhabitants of the county."

It was a day out for the citizens of Exeter and for county folk who came to the common to see the troops put through their paces.  The gallant 4,000 fought a mock battle and 'the activity, skill and ardour' of the combatants impressed the reporter from The Post.  The best, however, was yet to come:

"On the summit of this ground stands a Roman encampment, around which the spectators were assembled; to which the troops retired, and fired a feu de joy (sic) in commemoration of his Majesty's late happy escape, when the bands of the different corps assembled in the centre, played God save the King, and the line joined in singing that Loyal Song, in which the late additional verse was emphatically encored.

"The different corps passed in review, and saluted the General; after which a sumptuous collation was given by Gen. Simcoe, to the officers and a numerous assembly of the gentry of the county.

"The serene weather, the grandeur of the situation, commanding a prospect of the delightful vale of Exe, Torbay, and other interesting objects, seemed to give a particular zest to the generous banquet of the Donor; and the day concluded most agreebly by a dance on the green." 

So, in 1800, people thought it was the Romans who had constructed  Woodbury Castle.

Simcoe, still in his forties, had returned from his tour as the first governor-general of  Canada in 1796. 

A madman, one James Hadfield, had tried to shoot George III at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in May, 1800.

The 'additional verse' to God save the King, that was composed impromptu by Sheridan and sung in the theatre on the very night of the assassination attempt but was sung also by 4000 west-country soldiers on Woodbury Common, went like this:  

From ev'ry latent foe
From the assassin's blow
God save the King!
O'er him thine arm extend;
For Britain's sake defend
Our father, prince and friend:
God save the King!

TOO LITTLE HUMILIATION, EXETER, 1800.

  The Exeter Flying Post (17 April 1800) protested in its columns :

"Whilst the London and most of the country newspapers record the strict observance of Good Friday, we cannot but lament that in this city it receives very little attention, some few shops indeed are shut, and though the tolling bells remind us of our duty, the churches are very thinly attended.

"The serge-market, which is usually held on a Friday, is not even altered to the Thursday or Saturday, being, perhaps, considered to be of more importance than the attending to any Divine Ordinance;  added to this the numerous carts, market horses, and carriers, which fill the streets, give this day more the appearance of a high holiday or festival, than of fasting and humiliation." 

Good Friday, even in my childhood, was a day when levity and jollity were widely frowned upon.  It would seem that, in 1800, Exeter was leading the pack in not taking too much notice of the Church's decrees that people gloom, go to church and eat fish.  Nowadays, I suspect, not one in ten citizens within the city walls, can tell you the significance of  Good Friday for 'good' Christians.

There's no logic to it, at least I don't think so, but I really dislike the word 'whilst'!

A FOOTPAD, LYMPSTONE, 1800.

 From The Exeter Flying Post,  13th March 1800:

"Friday evening last, as Mr Ducarel, of Exmouth, and Captain Welch, of the Lympstone Volunteers, were returning from this city, in a post-chaise, they were stopped about the seven mile stone by a single footpad, who, presenting a pistol, demanded their money; -  "Capt. Welsh immediately grasped the pistol, when  scuffle ensued - and in the scuffle the footpad snapped the pistol several times, but it missed fire. --- After a short contest, we are sorry to add that the villain escaped, but without having effected his purpose."

By my reckoning at the seven mile stone would have been near Upper Lympstone.  No postillion is mentioned so I imagine this was a privately-owned post-chaise being driven by one of the gentlemen.

I wonder if the hero of this piece, Captain Welch/Welsh,  (The Flying Post backs both in this short passage) could have been that same Wakelyn Welch who made his fortune in London and died at Lympstone in 1818, leaving, according to the tablet in the church porch, £200 to the poor of the parish and whose wife Elisabeth, in 1820, left funds to build the primary school there.  Her name is still on the wall somewhere.

Footpads seem always to have had evil intent;  they were highwaymen on foot but the etymology of pad, a path, is innocent enough. 

 

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.

 

A GHOST STORY? EXETER, 1845.

The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of the first of November, 1845 reported this mystery:

"On Saturday night, Mr. Lang, a master mariner residing in this city, visited the Union Inn in Waterbeer-street, at about a quarter to eleven, and partook of a glass of gin and peppermint in a little parlour at the back, which looked out onto a small court. 

"Whilst in this situation his attention, he says, was attracted by something going on in the court; and on going out he saw - either in a dream or in reality - four men with a full-sized coffin, which they let down into a well.  The sturdy seaman was rather frightened, but did not address them; and on going home he told what he had seen..

"On Sunday evening a formal communication was made to the authorities, and a body of police marched from the station house, silent as the grave itself,  through Parliament- street to the Union Inn, the keeper of which, on being informed of their object, indignantly denied any participation in the foul deed imputed.  His visitors, however, proceeded to the search, piloted by Mr.Lang.

"When arrived at the well, the appearance of the boarding by which the mouth of it is covered, was a perfect poser,  as it had not apparently been removed for years. However, under the joint exertions of such a force the woodwork was raised in a twinkling, and all gazed in wonder and in silence into the abyss beneath.  To descend into it, even after a coffin, was testing the ardour and  devotedness of a policeman a little too severely,  - besides the officers were arrayed in their Sunday uniforms;  and under the exigencies of the occasion they deemed it prudent to send for Mr. John Rouse.   Mr. Rouse, jun., presently came, and found that there was 18 feet of water in the well, which has been disused so long that the water drawn up had anything other than an odiferous quality.

"The police were not satisfied, and the search was pursued.  To the end of a long line was fastened a heavy hammer, and the turbid water was disturbed by it being let down.  This was rattled about and a vapour was emitted such as might have formed a very reasonable excuse for men being driven from their post;  but the 'duty men'  who were here, endured the stench bravely.

"At length, however, the hammer struck against 'something' and 'this must be the coffin for sure.'  All were now on the qui vive.  A grapple was obtained; but instead of a coffin, up came an old and ponderous lintel, that probably for years had lain undisturbed at the bottom of the well!!!

"Those on duty of course, laughed not, - this would have been indecorous, - but others, who did not conceive themselves under an equal obligation, roared outright.  Mr. Lang looked all astonishment but still adhered to his statement, nor does anything appear capable of removing the strong impression from his mind, of the perfect reality of what he declares he saw."

Make of it what you will!

Did policemen really have Sunday uniforms?

Gin and peppermint sounds worth a try!

THE INCORRIGIBLES, EXETER, 1844.

 From The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 27th January 1844:

" 'Ah, Foweracres,' said the Mayor to an inspector of the night force in waiting of that name - 'I see you have a set of incorrigibles again.'

"The 'incorrigibles' to which his Worship alluded were produced by the officer, and consisted - not of impracticable fish-women or shameless female adults  of another class grown hoary in obscenity and degradation - but of four juveniles, who gave their names of  Lydia Worth, Harriet Peters, Edward Tucket, and  George Hetherington.

"The inspector stated that he was on duty in Guinea-street at a late hour on Saturday night,  when he perceived several boys in Mr. Pope's door-way.  He went to the spot, when they ran away.   On opening the door and going into the passage, he found two of the prisoners - a boy and girl - standing there.  They could give no satisfactory account of themselves, and he took them into custody.  On examining further he found the other two also together.

"Inspector Norcombe said that Peters was nearly drunk.

"The Mayor - How near should you suppose?

"Norcombe - So near, your Worship, that she was that howdacious, as when I axed her her name, she looked up into my face as brassy as could be, and said she didn't know she had one.

"After some consulation among the Bench, the Mayor stated that the prisoners, having been in custody since their apprehension, would be discharged; but told them their faces and characters were well known,  and cautioned them to take care how they appeared there again.

 "- We must confess that a slight infliction of corporal punishment, in the shape of a severe private whipping, would, on the boys especially, have had a judicious effect."

These four children had fallen foul of the police by committing what would seem to have been a pretty harmless trespass and little Harriet was 'nearly drunk'.  They had spent a week in police custody, been brought before the Police Court at Exeter Guildhall and reprimanded and made fun of by the 'Chief Magistrate'.   The Tory Gazette was of the opinion that they had got of lightly and that they ought to have been severely whipped.

The same newspaper clearly also enjoyed taking the mickey out of the police inspectors.  So that's all right!

I haven't heard 'brassy' used to mean impudent for a while and a while.

A SMUGGLERS' TRICK, BUDLEIGH SALTERTON, 1843.

From The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 4th March1843:

 "A report was circulated about half-past eight in the evening of the 23rd ult., that a man had fallen over the cliffs, and accordingly strict search was made by the light of lanterns, torches, &c., for the supposed mutilated remains of the unfortunate individual: but as none were found, it became suspected that it was a smuggler's trick, in order to decoy the Preventive Service men from their posts; these functionaries have consequently been on the qui vive during the past week.

"On Wednesday last, they succeeded in creeping up 58 4-gallon kegs of spirit,  and yesterday (Thursday), 46 more.  It is supposed that the crew who sunk the kegs, have met with a watery grave,  as their boat, and two hats, have been picked up, and they have not since been heard of    They consisted of three Frenchmen and two men named William Russell and Richard Mashell, both of Beer.  The boat was driven ashore at Paignton."

Was this decoying not a smugglers' trick worthy of Doctor Syn?  From their ship the smugglers must have smiled to see the flickering lights of the searchers for 'mutilated remains'.

The excisemen used a 'creeper' to creep up the sunken kegs of spirit.  A creeper was a grapnel used for dragging the bottom of the sea.  

It must have been a risky business in the mad March days, both sinking kegs down and creeping them up and it looks like the Beer smugglers (their names already known to the Gazette's corespondent!) and their three French colleagues ran out of luck in a lumpy sea. 

Come to think of it,  the smuggling business must have been a rare example of close Anglo-French co-operation.  Here they were, literally, in the same boat and presumably communicating in Franglais and, it would seem, dying together.

A HORRID MOLROW, EXETER, 1842

" '....All are asleep, snug and warm in their beds

For a horrid molrow to be heard on the leads....,'

".... is extremely inconvenient.   -   A sun-burnt Apollo was accordingly charged with a breach of the peace, in having 'sung to the listening moon' on the previous night.  It did not transpire whether the defendant was at the time engaged in serenading the charms of some fair inhabitant,  or whether he was under the influence of liquor; though it was the opinion of the watchman (no indifferent judge in such matters) that he was celebrating the praises of Bacchus.  And as the officer thought that 'it wasn't by no means proper' that the gen'l'man should select midnight and the public streets for his vocal exertions,  the unlucky songster was confined to the Station House. 

"He was however dismissed , with an intimation that another offence of a similar nature would prove injurious to his liberties as well as  suppressive of his nocturnal rites."

This, from The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette court report of 28th May 1842, leads one to believe that the Victorian watchman was rather more efficient in dealing with street-drinkers than his modern counterpart, the Exeter policewoman, or man.  Every weekend midnight, and not only, the High Street rings with the sounds of drunken sojourners in a passion (or out of one) and such behaviour, in my opinion, is not by no means proper!

We tolerate the intolerable!

A 'molrow' is here a misquotation within a somewhat inept misquotation from contemporary bad verses by one 'Davus'.(Bentley's Miscellany Volume 9)  'Davus' has a 'molrowing'.   I can't find either of these wonderful words in my dictionaries but it looks to me like it should rather mean a row inflicted on us by women. -   Well, we get plenty of that too on the streets of Exeter!

I wonder if 'sun-burnt Apollo' might be a 'racial slur'.  I sincerely hope not!

POTTED EELS AND DUCKINGS, EXETER, 1841.

The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 22nd May, 1841, gave a brief, routine report of the feasting enjoyed by the Bluecoat boys at the 'perambulation of the bounds' of the city of Exeter, an annual event which has been well documented in the local histories:

"On Tuesday morning last, the Right Worshipful the Mayor, with the High Sheriff, Aldermen and Council and officers of the Corporation, accompanied by the Blue Coat boys, made their annual perambulation of the bounds of the city, observing the customary forms.

"The party, after the fresh air and exercise, enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast at Bowden's Cowley Bridge Inn, the far-famed potted eels of this suburban resting place, with other etceteras, forming part of the handsome and substantial repast.  

"After the close of the perambulation, the boys - some few of whom had undergone the refreshing process of 'ducking' - were, with the 'Captain,' provided with a sumptuous dinner, and a moderate quantity of wholesome ale, -when 'the cloth being removed,' the healths of the Queen, the Mayor, the Trustees of St. John's Hospital, the worthy master of the school (Mr. Gould,) &c. were drunk and duly honoured."

For the charity boys, some of whom would have been very little boys, there was a 'sumptuous' breakfast and a 'sumptuous' dinner with wholesome ale, - and all in one day! There's glory for you!

The duckings, (in the rivers Exe and Creedy?) would, I guess, in the distant past have served the same purpose as the beatings elsewhere, that is, to make sure the city's bounds were accurately remembered by the next generation

The famous Cowley Bridge Inn eels would have been caught (with worm-clots?) in the two rivers and potted at the inn.

   

  

THE NAUGHTY PLACE, EXETER, 1840.

Mary Radford, ten, and her eight year-old sister, Elizabeth, were returning home from Sunday school when John Carpenter, 'a full grown man', spoiled their bonnets by throwing dirt on them

The Radfords brought John Carpenter before the Exeter Police Court.  Little Mary Radford had to give evidence.  The Mayor of Exeter and Mr Blackall, a magistrate, examined Mary in the serious matter of the nature of an oath: The newspaper reported the exchange:

"Mr. Blackall. -You are going to take an oath to speak the truth.  Who will punish you if what you say is false? 

The Child looked point blank at the Hon. Magistrate and made no reply.

Mr. Blackall. - Will any body punish you if you say what is false?

The Child. -  Yes Sir.

Mr. Blackall. -  Who?

The Child.  -  The Devil.

Mr. Blackall. - No, not the Devil - God Almighty will punish you.

The Mayor. - What book is that?

The Child turned it over, as if prepared to hazard a conjecture from its shape.

The Mayor. - You must not look at it.  What book is it?

The Child - Common Prayer Book.

The Mayor. No it is not a Common Prayer Book. - You believe it is a religious book? - Yes.

The Mayor. - And by kissing it, you bind yourself to speak the truth? - Yes.

The Mayor.. -  And if you do not speak the truth where do you expect to go?

The Child. - To the Naughty Place."

Thus satisfied, the Magistrates  proceeded to hear Mary's evidence and to try the case.  John Carpenter said he was ' innocent as a babby' but he was fined one shilling for the assault and half-a-crown damages together with expenses which he refused to pay.  He went to prison for a week.

The oath, as a guarantee that people will tell the truth, is seen here, in my opinion, for what it is - altogether  ridiculous.   Nowadays it is still taken but, of course, atheists &c. are provided for and kissing the Bible has gone out of fashion and no one, I hope, gives witnesses more or less credence because they fear neither Almighty God nor the Devil.

Source: The Western Times, 5th  December 1840.