Fragments of Two Centuries Part 10

Inoculation has already been referred to, but I may here state that the first account I have seen of professional inoculation for the smallpox in Royston is the announcement in the year 1773 of--"George Hatton, surgeon, apothecary and man-mid-wife in Royston, who, with the advice of his friends and the many patients whom he has inoculated, begs leave to acquaint the public that he will wait upon any person or family within 6 or 7 miles from Royston, and inoculate them for half-a-guinea each person, medicines and attendances included, and, that the poor may have the benefit of his practice, a proper allowance will be made them and diligent attendance given."

Bills of the same period show that the charge for this species of inoculation "when a quant.i.ty was taken," as in the parish bills, was 2s. or 2s. 6d. each person. The advantage claimed for spreading the disease of small-pox out of the rates by means of inoculation was that if you had it as the result of inoculation only one person in 300 died, but if you had small-pox by infection, eight out of every hundred died.

It may be of interest to add as a general fact upon health and diseases, that in 1792, out of 20,000 burials the following were the proportions of deaths from the leading diseases:--Consumption 5,255, convulsions {81} 4,646, dropsy 3,018, fevers 2,203, small-pox 1,568, measles 450, "teeth" 419. The deaths under two years of age were 6,542, or one-third of the whole! The cla.s.sification was not so exact in those days as it would be now, but the race has improved a little in regard to infantile mortality and consumption.

In coupling the doctor and the body-s.n.a.t.c.her, at the head of this chapter, I did not really mean to convey more than the general a.s.sociation of human experience in the periods of sickness and the close of life. If there was a closer a.s.sociation of these two characters in the later Georgian era, it is, at least, a satisfaction to be able to write of such things entirely in the past tense. At a time when even to maintain the decencies and comforts of domestic life was often a struggle with untoward surroundings, it may seem to show a desire to load the past times with more than their share of trials and misfortunes, to suggest that the most painful of all experiences of the times was reserved for the end of life; that the ordeal of the separation from friends by death was embittered, and intensified, beyond anything in more modern experience, yet it is certain that the revolting business of the "body-s.n.a.t.c.her" did, for some years, between 1815 and 1830, brood over many a village in this district like a cruel night-mare!

The reception of bodies, or "subjects," from country or town burying grounds for the dissecting rooms of London and other hospitals, became almost a trade, not altogether beyond the commercial principle of supply and demand. Generally about two guineas was the price, and students would club together their five shillings each for a "subject."

In the face of such facts it would be idle to suggest that the tradition of that mysterious cart, moving silently through the darkness of night on m.u.f.fled wheels towards our village churchyards, was merely a creature of the imagination. The tradition of that phantom cart which lingered for years had a substantial origin as certain as the memory of many persons still living can make it! In many of the villages around Royston, as indeed in other districts, the terror of it became such that not a burial took place in the parish graveyards, but the grave had to be watched night after night till the state of the corpse was supposed to make it unlikely that it would then be disturbed! The watch was generally kept by two or three men taking it in turns, generally sitting in the church porch, through the silent hours of the night armed with a gun! The well-to-do were able to secure this protection by paying for it, but many a poor family had to trust to the human sympathy and help of neighbours. Under a stress of this kind probably some brave Antigone watched over the remains of a dead brother, and certainly it was not uncommon for husband and wife to face the ordeal of sitting out the night till the grey light of morning, in some lone church porch, or the vestry of some small meeting-house--watching lest the robbers of {82} the dead should come for a lost son or daughter! Over the grave of some poor widow's son, or of that of a fellow workman, volunteers were generally forthcoming to perform this painful office.

Though the law was seldom invoked, there must have been numberless cases in which bodies were stolen, cases in which the modest mound of earth placed over the dead had mysteriously dropped in, and the outraged parents or relatives, not unnaturally perhaps, turned with bitter revengeful thoughts to the London and other hospitals of that day--whether justly or unjustly G.o.d knows! Around the parish churchyards of Ba.s.singbourn, Melbourn, and especially Therfield and Kelshall, the memory of unpleasant a.s.sociations lingered for many years after the supposed transactions had pa.s.sed away; nor was it merely an experience peculiar to isolated village churchyards. On the contrary it was customary, even in the Royston church-yard, surrounded as it is and was then by houses--with the Vicarage house then actually in the church-yard, in fact--it was customary for relatives to sit in the Church porch at night and watch the graves of departed friends!

Of actual occurrences of robbing the graves there is the story of a woman living in one of the villages on the hills not far from Royston, when on her way home, accepting a ride with a neighbour, only to find to her horror that the driver had a dead body in his cart! As to the allegations that stolen bodies did find their way to hospitals for dissecting purposes, there is a well authenticated story of a case in which a Roystonian was recognised in the dissecting room of a London hospital! A doctor, whose name would, I daresay, be remembered by some if mentioned, and who was in the habit of visiting a family in Royston, and knew many Royston people, upon entering the dissecting room of one of the London hospitals, at once recognised a "subject" about to be operated upon, as a person he had frequently seen in Royston, a peculiar deformity leaving no possible doubt as to her ident.i.ty!

Excepting when the natural dread of it came home to bereaved families, there was no very strong public opinion on the subject; the law, which came down with a fell swoop upon many cla.s.ses of small offenders, was too big an affair for dealing with questions of sentiment, and as there were no little laws of local application readily available, the practice was too often connived at where examples might have been made.

In some things our grandfathers may have had the advantage over this hurrying age, but the reverent regard for the dead, and the outward aspect of their resting place, is a.s.suredly not one of them.

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CHAPTER VIII.

OLD PAINS AND PENALTIES--FROM THE STOCKS TO THE GALLOWS.

All the old punishments, from the Ducking Stool to the Stocks, proceeded upon the appeal to the moral sense of the community, and up to the middle, or probably nearer to the end of last century, the summary punishment of offenders took place, both in village and town, in the most public manner possible. Near the Old Prison House, standing a little eastward of the summit of the Cave, in Melbourn Street, which did duty for both civil parishes of Herts. and Cambs., stood the Royston pillory and also the stocks, but towards the end of the century the pillory disappeared, and stocks had to be set up in each parish. I can find no record of any actual punishments by the Melbourn Street pillory, but one of the last cases of punishment by pillory took place at Hertford, and was witnessed by Mr. Henry Fordham.

Closely connected with, and as a part of the stocks was the whipping post, and this was very freely used until about 1800. In 1804 a prisoner was sentenced at Ely to be publicly whipped, besides imprisonment. In 1786, I find that George Rose was brought from Cambridge to Royston and whipped at the stocks. What his offence was is not stated, but that whipping was no trifle may be inferred from the following laconic entry in the Royston parish books:---

"Relieved William C----, his back being sore after whipping him."

The offender had his wrists put through the rings on the upright posts of the stocks, which formed the whipping posts, and in this position he was flogged on his naked back "till his body was b.l.o.o.d.y." Vagrants had no small share of this kind of punishment. The following entry occurs in the Barkway parish papers:--

Hertfordshire to Witt.

To the Keeper of the House of correction at Buntingford.

This is to require you to Whip Elizabeth Matthewson upon her naked Body, and for so doing this shall be your warrant.

G. Jennings.

In 1798 an item in the accounts for the same parish is charged for "the new iron for the whipping post."

{84} The stocks for Royston, Cambs., stood in the middle of the broad part of Kneesworth Street, nearly opposite the yard entrance of King James' Palace, and just in front of some dilapidated cottages then occupying the site of Mr. J. R. Farrow's shop. Here they remained as a warning to evil doers till about 1830 or 1840. In Royston, Herts., after the abolition of the central prison-house in Melbourn Street, a cage was erected with stocks attached on the Market Hill, on the east side nearly opposite the Green Man, but they were removed at a later date to the Fish-hill, when an addition was made to the west side of the Parish-room, for the purpose, where the fire engines are now placed. An estimate in the parish books for the erection of a cage and stocks in Royston, Herts., at a cost of L10, in the year 1793, may perhaps fix the date at which each parish provided its own means of punishment of wrong-doers.

Though drunkenness was a vice infinitely more prevalent than it is to-day, it was not because local authorities did not at least show the form of their authority, but simply because they had no very efficient police system to back it up. It was customary for instance for the publican to have a table of penalties against "tippling" actually posted up in his licensed house, so that both he and his customers might see what might be the consequences, but as they often could not read they were probably not much the wiser, except for a common idea that the Parish Stocks stood outside on the village green, or in the town street. The common penalty for tipplers continuing to drink in an alehouse, was that such persons should forfeit 3s. 4d. for the use of the Poor, and if not paid to be committed to the stocks for the s.p.a.ce of four hours; for being found drunk 5s., or six hours in the stocks.

As to swearing, a labourer was liable to be fined 1s. for every oath, a person under the degree of a gentleman 2s., and for a gentleman 5s.

In times of disturbance, as at village feasts, it was no uncommon thing to see the stocks full of disorderly persons--that is, with two or three at once--and occasionally the constable's zeal in the use of this simple remedy outran his discretion. At the Herts. a.s.sizes in 1779, before Sir Wm. Blackstone, a Baldock shoemaker, named Daniel Dunton, obtained a verdict and L10 damages against the chief and petty constable of Baldock for illegally putting him in the stocks.

There was, of course, an odd and comic side about the stocks as an instrument of punishment, which cannot belong to modern methods. An instance of this was brought home to the writer in the necessary efforts at ransacking old men's memories for the purpose of some parts of these Glimpses of the past. I was, for instance, inquiring of an old resident of one of our villages as to what he remembered, and ventured to ask him, in the presence of one or two other inhabitants, the innocent question--"I suppose you have seen men put in the stocks in your {85} time!" but before the old man could well answer, a younger man present interposed, with a merry twinkle of the eye--"Yes, I'll be bound he has, he's been in hi'self!" I am bound to say that, from the frank manner in which my informant proceeded to speak of persons who had been in the stocks, the younger man's interruption was only a joke, but it taught me to be cautious in framing questions about the past to be addressed to the living, lest I should tread upon some old corns!

There was this virtue about the Parish Stocks, that it was a wholesome correction always ready. It was not necessary to caution a man as to what he might say, before clapping him in the stocks. Nor was much formality needed--he was drunk, quarrelling, fighting, or brawling, it was enough; and the man who could not stand was provided with a seat at the expense of the parish. Indeed, I am told that in one parish, near Royston, a farmer, who was himself generally in the same condition, finding one of his men drunk, would remark that one drunken man was enough on a farm, and would bundle the other drunkard off to the stocks without the least respect for, or care about, informing a magistrate thereof!

The Parish Stocks were, as may be supposed, sometimes tampered with, and became the medium of practical jokes, of which, perhaps, the best story on record is that of a Chief Justice in the stocks. The story is as follows:--

Lord Camden, when Chief Justice, was on a visit to Lord Dacre, his brother-in-law, at Alely in Ess.e.x, and had walked out with a gentleman to the hill where, on the summit by the roadside, were the Parish Stocks. He sat down upon them, and asked his companion to open them, as he had an inclination to know what the punishment was. This being done the gentleman took a book from his pocket and sauntered on until he forgot the Judge and his situation, and returned to Lord Dacre. The learned Judge was soon tired of his situation, but found himself unequal to open the stocks! He asked a countryman pa.s.sing by to a.s.sist him in obtaining his liberty, who said "No, old gentleman, you were not placed there for nothing"--and left him until he was released by some of the servants who were accidentally going that way! Not long after he presided at a trial in which a charge was brought against a magistrate for false imprisonment and setting the plaintiff in the stocks. The counsel for the defendant made light of the charge and particularly of setting in the stocks, which, he said, everybody knew, was no punishment at all! The Lord Chief Justice rose, and, leaning over the Bench, said, in a half whisper--"Brother, were you ever in the stocks?" The Barrister replied, "Really, my Lord, never."--"Then, I have been," rejoined his Lordship, "and I do a.s.sure you, brother, it is not such a trifle as you represent!"

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One cannot refrain from expressing a lingering sense of regret over the last of its kind, whether of the last of the Mohicans, or the last minstrel. The parish of Meldreth, I relieve, stands alone in the Cambridgeshire side of the Royston district as still possessing the visible framework of its old Parish Stocks, thanks to the commendable interest taken in the preservation of old time memorials by Mr. George Sandys, of Royston, by whom the Meldreth Stocks were some time ago "restored," or, rather, the original pieces were brought more securely together into one visible whole. The parish of Meldreth, too, affords, I believe, one of the latest, if not the latest, instances of placing a person in the stocks, when, some forty or fifty years ago, a man was "stocked" for brawling in Church or some such misbehaviour. These stocks, when they were renovated by Mr. Sandys, had lost the upper part which completed the process of fastening an offender in them, but such as they then were will be seen in the ill.u.s.tration on the opposite page, which is reproduced from an excellent photograph taken by Mr. F.

R. Hinkins, of Royston. The original upper part has since been found and placed in position by Mr. A. Jarman, of Meldreth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD PARISH STOCKS AT MELDRETH.]

Some other things deserve to be mentioned as old penalties besides actual punishment for crimes. One of these was the penalty for _felo de se_, so well described by Hood in his punning verses on Faithless Nelly Gray and Ben Battle, the soldier bold, who hung himself, and--

A dozen men sat on his corpse, To find out how he died; And they buried Ben at four cross-roads, With a stake in his inside.

In 1779, John Stanford, who hung himself at the Red Lion, Kneesworth, was found to be a _felo de se_, and was "ordered to be buried in a cross-road."

In 1765, the coroner's inquest who sat upon the body of one, Howard, a schoolmaster of Litlington, who, "after shooting Mr. Whedd, of Fowlmere, cut his own throat," found a verdict of _felo de se_, upon which he was ordered to be buried in the high cross-way, but whether a stake was placed through the body, either in this or the Kneesworth case, is not stated. The custom of burying a _felo de se_ at four cross-roads continued long after the barbarous and senseless indignity of driving a stake through the body was discontinued, and persons still living remember burials at such spots as the entrance to Melbourn, and at similar spots in other villages. Another penal order was for the body to be "anatomised" after execution, as in the case of a man named Stickwood for murdering Andrew Nunn, at Fowlmere, in 1775.

Sometimes as an alternative penalty for crimes was the system of enlistment for the Army and Navy, with which may be coupled the high-handed proceedings of the "Press-gang." The Press-gang {88} was practically a recognised part of the machinery of the State. The law, as to recruiting, sanctioned what would now be considered most tyrannical proceedings; justices of the peace were directed to make "a speedy and effectual levy of such able-bodied men as are not younger than seventeen nor more than forty-five, nor Papists." The means for enforcing this, not only along river-sides, but often in inland country villages, was often brutal, and led to determined resistance and sometimes loss of life. There is a story in Cornwall of a bevy of girls dressing themselves up as sailors, and acting the part of the Press-gang so well that they actually put their own sweethearts to flight from the quarries in which they were working!

The dread of compulsory service was so great that the lot might fall upon men to whom the name of war was a terror. One case of this kind occurred in a village near Royston in which two men were drawn to proceed to Ireland for service, and one of them actually died of the shock and fright and sudden wrench from old a.s.sociations, after reaching Liverpool on his way to Ireland!

On the subject of pressing for the services, the following characteristic entry occurs in the Royston parish books for the year 1790:--

"Ordered that the Wife of March Brown be permitted to leave the House as she says her husband is Pressed and gone to sea, and that she came to the parish for a few clothes only, as she can get her living in London by earning two shillings a Day by making Breeches for Rag fair."

Though the stocks and the gallows may seem a long way apart, yet they were really very near in the degrees of crime which linked them, and what now would appear a minor offence, had inevitably linked with it the "awful sentence of the law."

At the Bury St. Edmunds a.s.sizes, in 1790, 14 persons received sentence of death. The extraordinary number of persons who were hung as the a.s.sizes came round will be best understood by some figures of death sentences for the March a.s.sizes, 1792:--Hertford 2, Cambs. 4, Bedford 4, Northampton 5, Chelmsford 4, Oxford 2, Thetford 2, Bury 6, York 17, Exeter 16, East Grinstead 3, Derby 2, Nottingham 2, Leicester 2, Gloucester 6, Taunton 3, Kingston 12. At one only of the above a.s.sizes the number of prisoners of all kinds for trial was 85. In June, 1785, twenty-five persons were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, and 15 of them were hung together the next week. In 1788 there were 81 capital convicts awaiting execution in Newgate, and in 1792 thirteen prisoners were sentenced to death for horse-stealing and lesser offences at a single sessions in London!

At the Herts. a.s.sizes in 1802, John Wood, a carpenter, of Royston, was ordered to be transported for fourteen years for having some forged bank notes concealed in his workshop. In the same year, {89} at the Cambs. a.s.sizes, William Wright, a native of Foxton, was sentenced to death and executed at Cambridge, for uttering forged Bank of England notes. At the Hertford a.s.sizes, in 1801, William c.o.x, for getting fire to a hovel of wheat at Walkern, was sentenced to death. Among other oddly sounding capital offences, I find that a man named Horn was sentenced to death at the Hertfordshire a.s.sizes in 1791 for stealing some money from the breeches pocket of a man with whom he had slept.

At the Cambs. a.s.sizes, in 1812, Daniel Dawson was tried for an offence of poisoning a mare the property of William Adams, of Royston, and was sentenced to death, and executed at Cambridge about a fortnight afterwards.

Sheep-stealing, horse-stealing and highway robberies, were the chief offences with which capital punishment was connected, and a.s.sociations were formed to prosecute offenders. The parishes of North Herts. were especially notable for sheep-stealing cases. In 1825, at the Herts.

Spring a.s.sizes, a man named Hollingsworth was indicted for stealing 55 sheep and 17 lambs, the property of William Lilley, at Therfield. The jury found the prisoner guilty and "the awful sentence of the law was p.r.o.nounced upon him," so says the Chronicle--and at the July a.s.sizes in the same year, Francis Anderson, for stealing one ewe lamb, the properly of Edward Logsden, at Therfield, was found guilty and "sentence of death was recorded." At the Cambs. a.s.sizes in 1827, George Parry was indicted for sheep-stealing at Hauxton, and the judge "pa.s.sed the awful sentence of death," remarking that the crime of sheep-stealing had so increased that it was necessary to make a severe example.

One of the most remarkable adventures of the pursuit of horse-stealers in this district occurred in 1822, and actually formed the subject of a small book [now before me] bearing the following curious t.i.tle:--

"The Narrative of the persevering labours and exertions of the late Mr.

Owen Cambridge, of Ba.s.singbourn, Cambs., during his search for two horses, stolen from his stable in October and November, 1822; during which search he very unexpectedly found a pony which had been stolen from the stable of his neighbour, Mr. Elbourne; Printed by particular request. The Royston Press: Printed, published, and sold by J. Warren."

If the reader is inclined to smile at a book with the strangest t.i.tle that perhaps was ever put upon a t.i.tle page, it should be said that the adventure recorded in this little book of thirty-two pages is really a most remarkable one, than which no "Bow Street Runner" of those days, to say nothing of the modern police officer with the advantages of railways and telegraphs, had a stiffer task of detective work, or ever more distinguished himself for perseverance, energy and resource, than did Mr. Owen Cambridge in this memorable affair with its innumerable {90} journeys by coach to London, and to almost all the fairs in the home counties, at a cost of upwards of L200. The result was that many other crimes were brought to light, and a gang of horse-stealers was broken up; two of them were sentenced to death at the Beds. a.s.sizes, and the one who stole Mr. Cambridge's horses was sentenced to death at Cambridge, but, upon Mr. Cambridge's plea for mercy for the prisoner, sentence was commuted. It is perhaps worth placing on record that after the extraordinary searches, covering several weeks in London and elsewhere, Mr. Cambridge found the thief at home in his garden in Oxfordshire, pa.s.sing as a respectable horse-dealer.