by Clay, Jeremy
At this time the man presented a most wretched aspect, his feet and legs being torn and lacerated by walking amongst the briars in the plantation.
Whilst he was asleep, Davies sent word to his friends, who despatched a cab to convey him home, but he would not consent to leave the house, unless the old woman who had generously supplied him with bread and milk accompanied him.
After reaching the afflicted family, medical assistance was promptly secured, and although he had since suffered much from illness, he is now in a fair way of recovery.
The Kendal Mercury, January 17, 1852
A London Mystery
Mr Lushington, the Bow Street magistrate, has received a letter from Captain Lewsey, of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, which tells a very strange story. He states that last Wednesday evening his wife took the 6.30pm train from Newport to London, taking with her her little boy Harold, aged four years.
She arrived at Paddington at 11.40pm, and drove to an hotel. She left the child there, and went out to make some small purchase. She then tried to return to the hotel, but failed to find it.
Though every endeavour has been made to discover the hotel, nothing can be heard of it, and the Scotland Yard authorities, in whose hands the matter has been placed, have been unable to trace the whereabouts of the child.
As a last resource, Capt Lewsey communicated with Mr Lushington, asking that the matter might be mentioned by the Press.
The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, September 5, 1896
A Real Romance in Humble Life
Seven years ago, an old Scotchman, named, we believe, Allison, arrived in the township of Underskiddaw, near Keswick, and located himself in Milbeck, at the foot of the majestic Skiddaw.
He obtained work as a labourer from a farmer, and after some time contrived to leave some little money from his earnings in the hands of his employer. One day the old man asked for his cash, saying, ‘I have a son in Scotland who could assist me in my work, and I want to bring him here.’ The amount was paid and Allison departed, and in a short time returned with his son ‘Tom.’
Tom apparently, was an awkward sort of a lad; still he worked with his father in draining and all other kinds of labourers’ employment. Some two years ago he worked with a great number of labourers, in deepening Bassenthwaite beck.
Tom, now and then, was apt to show the white feather, and his father would call out, ‘Tom, Tom, what ev’r ye aboot? Git on wi’ yer work.’ The youth’s general reply was, ‘Mind yer oon.’
The father and son lived together in a cabin quite cosily. Tom was also a frolicsome sort of a fellow; he went in company with the ‘lads of the village,’ and played off all kinds of nocturnal pranks, sweethearting the girls, drinking his glass, singing his song, and smoking his pipe; nothing came amiss to Tom. He courted, it is said, a young woman for 18 months. Our hero was quite a ‘character.’
Tom’s career as a young man was not, however, doomed to last for ever, for in the early part of last week ‘Tom’ unexpectedly gave birth to a fine child, to the astonishment of the whole neighbourhood.
Tom’s sex having never once been suspected, his female neighbours would scarcely believe their organs of vision after being called in, even when they found this extraordinary mother suckling the child, from the shortness of the crop of hair and appearing in unmentionables. The old man, we are informed, owns to the paternity of the offspring which has thus brought to light the sex of this rural celebrity. It has been said that since this auspicious event some of those who have occasionally employed Tom are overwhelmed with vexation at the notion of their having paid him from 2s to 3s per day, in place of 1s 6d, a woman’s ordinary wage.
The Huddersfield Chronicle, September 13, 1856
FOOD and DRINK
Preface
A recipe for lark pie. Tips on the preparation of eel stew. A comprehensive list of the duties of a footman. Advice for treating someone struck by lightning.
For anyone who required these things in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was one place to turn: Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, a domestic version of Google, painstakingly compiled over the course of four years by the wife of a prominent publisher.
Within its 2,751 numbered paragraphs, the book dispensed pithy wisdom on the art of dressing a bullock’s heart, the practicalities of cleaning plate and whether or not a drowned man should be hung up by his heels. (Not, was the conclusion. Far better to stick him in a bath, then tickle his nose with a feather.)
If you had half a calf’s head handy and a partially drained bottle of sherry, Isabella Beeton was there to explain how to fashion them into mock turtle soup. If you needed to brush up on the origin of the onion, she was ready with the answer. And if you’d forgotten how long to boil carrots, a quick flick to the right section would put you right. Ah yes, two and a quarter hours.
To her devoted readership, she represented an ideal of British motherhood, a lighthouse beam to guide them through the rocky waters of etiquette and the expectations of the age.
But though the book is rightly cherished for offering a glimpse of day-to-day home life in the Victorian era, it isn’t, of course, anything like the full picture.
To the slum-dwellers of the great cities of Britain, Mrs Beeton’s rarefied world was as foreign as the French names of the dishes she recommended for her dinner parties.
Thirty years after the Book of Household Management first appeared on bookshelves, Friedrich Engels’ The Condition of The Working Class in England was finally published in English. Flicking from one to the other is like flipping a flan to find the underside teeming with maggots.
‘Among ill-paid workers, even if they have no large families, hunger prevails in spite of full and regular work; and the number of the ill-paid is very large’, wrote Engels. ‘In these cases all sorts of devices are used; potato parings, vegetable refuse, and rotten vegetables are eaten for want of other food, and everything greedily gathered up which may possibly contain an atom of nourishment.’
Even if they could scrape together the money for some of the more modestly-priced ingredients in Mrs Beeton’s recipes, it didn’t necessarily follow that the poor had anywhere to cook them. Nor did it mean they knew how to cook. In that, at least, they shared some common ground with the aristocracy. When the Marchioness of Londonderry announced that she knew how to grill a chop, it made the Illustrated London News.
There was another sector of society that fell beyond the scope of Mrs Beeton’s culinary advice: the unscrupulous. This was a time of wholesale adulteration of food and drink, when milk was diluted with water or thickened with starch, when beer was crafted with strychnine and when red lead lent an appealing hue to cheese.
There must have been quite a surreptitious demand for such sly recipes, but the virtuous Mrs Beeton certainly didn’t oblige. Nor, come to think of it, did she explain how to kill and cook a dog for an impromptu victory feast after an election. So the Liberals of West Bromwich, as we shall see, were forced to improvise.
Whisky Corsets – A Singular Fraud
A Canadian correspondent tells a story which reminds one of James Russell Lowell’s famous despatch on petroleum smugglers ‘with the pectoral proportions of a Juno.’
A novel method of avoiding the Sunday liquor law, he says, was discovered in Montreal about a fortnight ago.
The proprietor of a candy-store was arraigned in the Recorder’s Court, charged with ‘selling liquor on Sunday out of whisky corsets’. The latter part of the charge astounded the clerk of the court, until the chief of police explained that after some months of effort to detect how liquor was sold on Sunday in the French quarter of the city, one of his men while in a candy-store saw a man pass the proprietor five cents. The proprietor produced a small rubber tube from under his vest, one end of which the man put to his mouth and sucked.
The officer pounced on the proprietor and a search revealed that the man wore a pair of tin corsets, with doubled space between the
inner and outer partitions, holding over a gallon of liquor. To this the tube was attached by a stop-cock.
The customers leaned over the counter, took the tube in their mouth, and sucked until the proprietor thought they had the worth of their money, when the supply was turned off and the tube put back underneath the vest. The police discovered that many a buxom candy-store woman wore similar tank-corsets and did a rushing business with rubber tubes on Sundays.
Warrants are out for several of the ingenious violators of the law.
The Worcestershire Chronicle, February 20, 1892
Extraordinary Poisoning Near Rugby
A most melancholy occurrence has just taken place in a farm house at Ashby St Ledgers, a village on the borders of Northamptonshire.
It appears that Mr William Payne Cowley, a farmer living in that village with his mother (who is a widow) and his brothers, had his sheep dipped, or washed, last week. The object of this dipping or washing is the extermination of vermin, and for this purpose a strong mixture of arsenic and soft soap diluted with water, is used.
On Tuesday morning last, Mr W.P. Cowley sent his brother, Mr Edwin Cowley, to the adjoining town of Daventry, where he purchased 6lb of white arsenic and a barrel of soft soap weighing 30lb.
On the following morning, Mr W.P. Cowley and his mother prepared the sheep dipping mixture, in which some lambs were washed. In this operation Mr Cowley and several of his labourers were employed.
After assisting her son in the preparation of the soap and arsenic, Mrs Cowley proceeded to make a batter pudding for the dinner of her family and the labourers and servants. By some means as yet unaccounted for, it appears that some arsenic must have become mixed with the pudding, for the whole of the persons who partook of it, ten in number, became violently sick just after dinner, and exhibited all the symptoms of being poisoned.
The best medical assistance in the neighbourhood was procured, but one man has already died, and another is not expected to survive; the others are all more or less affected.
The Leeds Mercury, July 16, 1862
Hilarious Burglars
A remarkable siege has just been sustained by a villa at Passy, the owner of which is away in the country.
Three burglarious youths entered the place, and pillaged the house from ground floor to garret. They might have got off with their booty, but the attractions of the larder and the wine cellar were too much for them.
They feasted on the good things which had been left behind by the family, and finished up with Burgundy, champagne, and prime cognac.
Then they lit the gas, danced, became maudlin, and sang songs, the strains of which floated on the night wind and awoke some neighbours, who sent for the police.
Twenty ‘agents’ of the law surrounded the villa with revolvers cocked. Nevertheless they seemed afraid to move, as the drunken burglars threatened them from the windows, and they were loath to act without the instructions of their Inspector.
That respectable functionary was in bed, and instead of getting up he told the policeman who had called him to keep the house well surrounded until morning.
At an early hour the Inspector rose, and with the aid of his own men, of the milk-distributors, and of the early risers of the locality generally, went into the house and handcuffed the youthful miscreants, who were helplessly intoxicated. They had kept the policemen at bay during the night by exhibiting two rusty swords and a flintlock pistol.
The Dundee Courier and Argus, August 30, 1888
A Drunken Child
On Wednesday morning a child about seven years old was admitted into the East Dispensary, Liverpool, insensible. The boy was the son of an organ grinder, and had gone into a public house for the purpose of making a collection, when several drinks of whiskey were given to him by the customers, and he fell to the ground.
He was attended to by the doctor, remained in the institution a considerable time, and afterwards was taken home by his parents, still suffering from the effects of the spirits he had consumed.
The Citizen, Gloucester, December 18, 1890
A Priest’s Ruse
A clever trick was practised on Wednesday night by Father Nugent, a well-known Catholic priest, in Liverpool. An entertainment was given in the League Hall, Liverpool, in celebration of St Patrick’s Day, to about 3,000 persons.
When all had assembled Father Nugent gave orders to close and lock all the doors, and all means of exit were accordingly kept shut until after eleven o’clock, the time at which the public-houses close. Father Nugent is a great promoter of temperance organisations in the town.
The North and South Shields Gazette and Daily Telegraph, March 20, 1875
‘Real Italian’ Ice Cream
Some time ago the Lancet published certain startling revelations concerning the loathsome conditions under which ice creams are prepared by Italian vendors in London.
Now, an exhaustive inquiry into the same subject has just been completed by Dr Macfadyen, of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine, and by Mr Colwell, F.I.C. Their report states among other things that microscopical examination revealed the following delectables: Bed bugs, bugs’ legs, fleas, straw, human hair, cats’ and dogs’ hairs, coal dust, woollen and linen fibre, tobacco, scales of epithelium, and muscular tissue.
The Evening Telegraph, Dundee, November 12, 1895
Poisoned Lozenges
Two boys suddenly died at Bradford on Sunday morning. Several others also were taken ill, and it was then ascertained that it was caused by eating peppermint lozenges bought in the market place on the Saturday from a person named Hardaker.
The lozenges had been made by Mr Joseph Neale, of Stone Street, Bradford, wholesale dealer, who had used 40lbs of sugar, and 12lbs of plaster of Paris, as he thought, but which turned out to be 12lbs of arsenic.
Mr Neale had gone to the shop of Mr Hodgson, druggist, of Shipley, near Bradford, and asked for 12lbs of ‘daft’ or ‘alibi’, which meant plaster of Paris, used for adulterating lozenges.
Mr Hodgson was ill in bed, and directed the youth to a cask in the cellar, he went and there being two of a similar description, served his customer with arsenic instead of plaster of Paris. By this mode of adulteration, lozenges can be sold at half price.
On Monday afternoon it was ascertained that 12 persons were dead, and that 50 adults and 28 children were ill. A great number of deaths are reported as having taken place in the country towns and villages around Bradford, in some instances three or four persons are dead in one family.
The West Middlesex Advertiser, November 6, 1858
Death in the Pot
A brewer named Hare, residing in the Old Kent Road, was last week fined £200 by the magistrates of Union Hall, for having mixed copperas, opium, and other poisonous ingredients with his beer. By a singular coincidence, the beer in question had been expressly prepared for a beer-shop keeper named Death.
The Leamington Spa Courier, February 16, 1839
Horrible Proceedings at West Bromwich
An instance of most revolting cruelty, with subsequent details equally horrible, has, it is reported, occurred at West Bromwich. It will be remembered that the School Board contest took place on the 27th ult.
The result was made known the following Saturday night, when it transpired that the six nominees of the West Bromwich Liberal Association were elected, with one independent candidate and four out of five Churchmen, thus giving the former a majority of one, which, it may be added, was secured by five votes only. It is stated on reliable authority that a number of men, who denominate themselves Liberals, assembled at a public-house in Spon Lane, West Bromwich, and discussed the means they should adopt to celebrate the ‘victory.’ Report states that some of the party became intoxicated, and suggested that a dog should be laid upon the table ‘for supper.’
Incredible as this may appear the proposal was carried out. A man went to the door of the public-house, and after a few minutes’ watching, enticed a dog – a half-bred retriever. This w
as taken into the house and killed with a sang froid air by some of the party.
The next proceeding was to cook the carcase of the unfortunate dog. No difficulties appear to have been considered insurmountable, and it was decided that the animal should be roasted. Accordingly the process of ‘drawing’ the carcase, as would be done in the case of a hare, was carried out, a portion of the inside being carefully dressed for cooking. Provision for roasting the carcase was obtained, and the cooking was proceeded with, a number of the men watching it with the coolness of cannibals. The dog’s liver was fried.
The cooking occupied about an hour, after which the carcase was placed upon a dish and removed to a room prepared to receive the company. The dish was put upon a table before some half-dozen persons, who ate the greater part of the dog’s remains, including the liver, all of which appeared to be disposed of with considerable relish. During this time commonplace conversation was indulged in, and the party left the house only when they could remain no longer, and went to their homes. Some of the men have since been too ill to work.
Further Particulars
It appears, from facts which are reported, that the circumstances in connection with the case of dog-eating at West Bromwich are of a more disgusting nature than previously stated.
As already mentioned, the dog was a half-bred retriever. It weighed 36lb. It was removed to the yard at the back of the public-house at which the proceedings are alleged to have taken place; and the means to be adopted for killing the dog having been previously discussed, a thin rope was put round its neck, after which it was suspended from a hook at some distance from the ground.