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Newspapers in 1738-39

It may not be uninteresting to describe some of the oldest surviving fragments of Lancashire newspapers which were formerly in the collection of Sir Thomas Baker, and are now, with many others, in the Manchester Free Library. After a fragment of one leaf we have “The Lancashire Journal: with the history of the Holy Bible.” Monday, October 16th, 1738. Num. xvi. The printer and publishers are thus set forth: – “Manchester: printed and sold by John Berry at the Dial near the Cross, and Sold by Mr. Ozly at the White-Lyon in Warrington, Mr. Sears at the White-Lyon in Liverpool, Mr. Gough at the Spread Eagle in Chester, Mr. Maddock, Bookseller in Namptwich, Mr. Kirkpatrick in Middlewich, Mr. Davis, Bookseller in Preston, Mr. Sidebottom at the Sun and Griffin in Stockport, Mrs. Lord in Rochdale, Mr. Hodgson, Bookseller in Halifax, Mr. Rockett, Bookseller in Bradford, Mr. Bradley, Peruke-maker in Wakefield; at which places also are taken in all sorts of advertisements to be inserted in this Paper at Two Shillings and Sixpence Each.” There is, after the fashion of the time, very little local news, the object of these early journals being to tell the people what was going on at a distance. We hear (October 16th) of the offence given by the “French strollers” in attempting to perform a play in their own language at the Haymarket. The “patriots” were so riotous in their resentment that “the encouragers of these French Vagabonds, durst not in any Coffee-House or Place where the most Polite resort, either Publickly avow their Sentiments, or declare their Resentment.” From Bristol there is news of rioting by the colliers of Kingswood, as a practical objection to a reduction of wages, from sixteen to twelve pence per day.

The next relic is The Lancashire Journal, published by John Berry, at the Dial, in Manchester, Monday, July 30th, 1739. No. 57. The first or leading article sets forth the intention of the managers to “introduce” the journals “with a short Essay, Letter, or Discourse, on some useful Subject, Art or Science,” if they can do it without leaving out any “material Paragraph of News.” After a column of foreign affairs, we have an account from “Exon” of one William Wood, who was in the County Ward for £700 at the suit of the King. After having made his chamber-mates drunk, he fastened a rope to the window, lowered himself down near thirty feet, and then by the aid of a scaling-ladder got into a field and so away. “Last Wednesday a Gentlewoman, aged 87, who lives in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, was married at St. George’s Chapel, near Hyde Park Corner, to a young Gentleman of 23. The Bride was with difficulty led into the Chapel, and was so much fatigued with standing till the ceremony was over, that the Minute they were out of the Chapel they were obliged to go into a Tavern to get something to revive her exhausted spirits.” Then we learn that at the Old Bailey twenty-seven prisoners were tried, of whom two were sentenced to be hanged, and thirteen to be transported, whilst twelve were acquitted. Some more paragraphs of the same nature show how ineffectual were the sanguinary laws which condemned men to death for slight offences. In one of these figures “Francis Trumbles the Quaker, who was to be hung for robbing Mr. Brow on the highway.” “Last week died in Water Lane, Fleet Street, one Anne Deacon, an elderly woman, who used to ask Alms at Church Doors and elsewhere, in whose rooms after her death were found 100 guineas, £35 in silver, and a bond of £150 on a considerable tradesman.” There is a good deal more of foreign news, and the number terminates with two advertisements, one only being local, which offers an apothecary’s shop, near the Exchange, “to be Sold or Lett. * * Enquire, for further particulars of Mrs. Margaret Dickenson, at the Turk’s Head, in Manchester.” No. 61, August 27th, 1739, opens with a dissertation on the figure of the earth, followed by an account of one of the Dublin Incorporated Society’s English Protestant Working Schools, then some foreign news, of which our forefathers would appear to have been very fond. This number is almost entirely filled with paragraphs relating to our differences with Spain, diplomatic and martial. We have also news of the siege of Belgrade, and “that the Grand Vizer has ordered a vast quantity of scaling-ladders to be made, which looks as if he intended to take Belgrade by storm.” From Cork we have the news that Matthew Buckinger died there August 24th. Buckinger was born without hands or feet, and his performances in penmanship were certainly wonderful under the circumstances. “The King has ordered the two Hazard tables at Kensington to be suppressed.” Two advertisements conclude this number – one of a horse stolen or strayed from Cross Hall Park, near Ormskirk; the other of Miller’s “Gardeners’ Dictionary” and Chambers’s “Cyclopædia,” books on sale by Mr. Newton and Mr. Hodges, booksellers in Manchester. The journal ends, “Manchester: Printed by John Berry, at the Dial, near the Cross, and sold by Mr. Nichison, at the White Lyon, in Warrington; Mr. Sears, at the White Lyon, in Liverpool; Mrs. Gough, at the Spread Eagle, in Chester; Mr. Maddock, bookseller, in Namptwich; Mr. Kirkpatrick, in Middlewich; Mr. Davis, in Preston; Mr. Sidebotham, in Stockport; Mr. Rathbone, in Macclesfield; Mr. Foster, in Bolton; Mrs. Lord, in Rochdale; Mr. Hodgson, bookseller, in Halifax; Mr. Rockett, bookseller, in Bradford; Mr. Bradley, peruke maker, in Wakefield; at which places also are taken in all sorts of advertisements to be inserted in this paper, at two shillings and sixpence each.”

Sir Thomas Baker was also the possessor of three numbers of another early Manchester paper. Whitworth’s “Manchester Magazine, with the History of the Holy Bible.” Tuesday, January 16th, 1738-9. No. 107 is a small, dingy folio of four pages. Its opening paragraphs are devoted to Muley Abdalah, who, in his abdicating the throne of Morocco, expressed “a great regret that he had cut off but 2,000 heads at most.” We have then a dreadful thunderstorm at Bristol, and a quantity of Court and personal gossip. From “Hawick, in Northumberland, December 14th. This day, died here (aged 105), Mr. William Baxter. He taught school in his youth, afterwards followed malting very closely for above sixty years, and though he lived very freely all that while he was never known to have any disorder but one only, occasioned by a over-discharge of bad liquor, which was carried off by a vomit.” The old gentleman was hearty to the last, and knocked under to “a common fever, which as an Argument of his great vigour terminated in a Phrenzy, and in a week’s Time despatch’d him.” We hear of a wolf breaking loose, which was kept by a gentleman who lives near the vineyard in St. James’s Park, and of the mischief it wrought upon – two milk pails; of an attempted escape from Newgate; and of sundry highway robberies. We have then

“A New Receipt

 
Take Homer’s Invention, with Pinder’s high strain,
Theocritus’ pure Nature, Anacreon’s soft vein;
To Virgil’s sound judgment join Ovid’s free air,
And Juvenal’s keen Satyr to Horace’s sneer;
To Spencer’s Description add Milton’s Locution,
And Dryden’s close sentence to Boileau’s conclusion;
Of Antients and Monderns [Moderns] take the Flower I hope,
All these put together make our English Pope.”
 

Next we have a letter relating a sharp trick of some American-Spaniards, followed by the sage reflection that “its greatly to be lamented that the Isle of Cuba, and some other rich and fertile places of their Empire in this part of the world, is not possest by some more industrious People, who would find a much more laudable, as well as profitable, Imployment than pilfering from their Neighbours.” No. 108, January 23rd, 1738-9: “We hear a Gentleman’s Corpse is in Arrest at an Undertaker’s in the Strand, upon a Judgment and Execution for Debt. It’s to be hop’d the Friends of the Deceased will let the Attorney move the Corpse, have it apprais’d by the Sheriff, and take it in Part of his Bill and Costs.” “On Saturday between Four and Five o’clock, a young Woman, servant at Walthamstow, coming to town, was robb’d near Temple Mill by a Footpad; and, whilst the villain was stripping her, being with his back towards the River, the young Woman push’d him into the River and he was drowned. She is since gone distracted. – On Thursday last the Rev. Dr. William Stukeley, Fellow of the College of Physicians and a great Antiquarian, was marry’d to Miss Gale, sister to Roger Gale, Esq.: a fortune of £10,000.” There is an account of a shock of earthquake felt in Halifax, Huddersfield, and other parts of the West Riding. “We hear from Banbury that a village within a mile of that town no less than eighteen people are gone to be dipped in the salt water for the bite of a mad dog, and that a few days past a young man of the said village, who was bit by a dog about Michaelmas last, died raving mad, though he had been at the salt water for a cure.” “Manchester, January 23rd. – We hear from Bury that the inhabitants of that place have agreed to prosecute at their joint expense any person that shall commit an act of felony there. This is worthy of imitation, for rogues often go unpunished lest the charge thereof should fall upon a single person, which is very unreasonable, because the publick reaps the benefit.” The number concludes with an advertisement of a sale by auction at the Angel, at Manchester. From No. 111, February 13th, 1738-9, excluding most of the foreign news, we glean the following items: – “London, February 6th. – Last week two persons were sent to prison by the Bench of Justices at Hick’s Hall for endeavouring to seduce some manufacturers in the glass trade, in order to send them to Holland, where a glass house is lately set up, and who very much underwork us by having English coals 25 per cent. cheaper than the manufacturers in and about London. But it is to be hoped that the Parliament will take these affairs into consideration. – Yesterday morning a gentleman going in a chair from a tavern in Pall Mall to his lodgings at Knightsbridge was robbed by the two chairmen between Hide Park Gate and Knightsbridge of his watch, money, &c.; then they pull’d him out of the chair and threw him into a ditch, after which they made off. – Last week Thomas Piercy, a blacksmith of Deptford, in Kent, about 25 years of age, was married to Mrs. Brookes, a gentlewoman of a considerable fortune in the same town, aged about 70. This gentlewoman has had four husbands before. – Prices of corn at Manchester: White wheat, per load, from 18s. to 20s.; red wheat, from 15s. to 17s.; barley, from 8s. to 11s.; beans, from 11s. to 12s.; meal, from 13s. to 14s.” There is plenty of talk about the convention with Spain, which need not be repeated. These citations may suffice. They are fair samples of what may be found in the local newspapers of the first half of the eighteenth century. The early Lancashire journalist was a man of many parts. Thus the Lancashire Journal, in December, 1740, is said to be “printed by John Berry, Watchmaker and Printer, at the Dial near the Cross, who makes and Mends all sorts of Pocket Watches, also makes and mends all sorts of Weather Glasses, makes all sorts of Wedding, Mourning, and other Gold Rings, and Earrings, etc., and sell all Sorts of New Fation’d Mettal, Buttons for Coats and Wastcoats, and hath Great Choice of New Fation’d Mettal, Buckles, for Men, Women, and Children, all sorts of Knives, fine Scissors, Razors, Lancits, Variety of Japan’d Snuff Boxes, Violins, Fluts, Flagelets and Musick Books, Box, Ivory, and Horn, Combs, Silk, Purses, Spectacles, Coffee and Chocolate Mills, Wash Balls, Sealing Wax, and Wax Balls for Pips, Correls, Tea Spoons, Fiddle Strings, Spinnet Wire, Naked and Drest Babys,⁵ Cards, Cain for Hooping, Bird Cages, etc., with several other sorts of London, Birmingham, and Sheffield, Cutler’s Wares, and variety of Dutch and English Toys. He also sells (notwithstanding what is, has, or may be advertised to the Contrary), the True Daffy’s Elixir, Doctor Anderson Sick Pills, Chymical Drops, being a speedy cure for coughs, colds, and Asthma’s, Doctor Godfreys Cordial for Children, Doctor Bateman’s Drops, Stoughtons Elixir, Hungry Water, Spirits of Scurvy Grass, Flower of Mustard in 3d. Bottles, Oyl of Mustard, and all sorts of Snuffs, at the Lowest Rates.” The variety of his wares has affected both his spelling and his punctuation.

We cannot estimate the feelings of our great-grandfathers as they turned over the leaves of their small paper; but the antiquary of the present day would gladly dispense with a good deal about bashaws and conventions for a little more about those who lived and moved and had their being in this county.

A Lancashire Naturalist: Thomas Garnett

A memorial volume of the late Mr. Thomas Garnett, of Low Moor, Clitheroe, was printed for private circulation, and some notice of it will be of interest to many outside the narrow circle for whom it was originally prepared. Mr. Thomas Garnett was one of three brothers. Mr. Richard Garnett distinguished himself as a philologist, and became an assistant-keeper in the British Museum; Mr. Jeremiah Garnett was for many years the editor of the Manchester Guardian, and Mr. Thomas Garnett settled at Clitheroe, where he passed an active life as a manufacturer, but instead of allowing business to absorb all his attention, he found pleasant and healthful recreation in agricultural and scientific observation. The results are now gathered in this volume – “Essays in Natural History and Agriculture, by the late Thomas Garnett, of Low Moor, Clitheroe. London: printed at the Chiswick Press, 1883.” Only 250 copies were printed. The editing has been the work of the author’s nephew, that accomplished scholar and friend of all students, Dr. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum. The first paper contains a number of facts and observations relating to the salmon, chiefly based on Mr. Garnett’s experience in Lancashire. Written as long ago as 1834, it contains a plea in favour of a wise and not vexatious measure for the protection of the salmon fisheries. He believed that the salmon enters and ascends rivers for other purposes than propagation. In support of this view he cites what in Lancashire is called “streaming.” Thus in winter the fish not engaged in spawning, trout, grayling, chub, dace, etc., leave the streams and go into deep water. Another reason is their impatience of heat, which leads the grayling, if the weather is unusually hot at the end of May or beginning of June, to ascend the mill-streams in the Wharfe, by hundreds, and to go up the mill-races as far as they can get. The “salmon” par he holds to be neither a hybrid, nor a distinct species, but a state of the common salmon. In 1851 he wrote some papers describing his own experiments in the artificial breeding of salmon. His interest in the fish is shown by the following quotation: – “I have had fish sent from two different gentlemen living on the banks of the reservoirs belonging to the Liverpool Waterworks: these were beautiful fish, three in number, more like the sea trout than the salmon, and the largest of them weighing two pounds. I had put them into the brooks running into the reservoirs three years before. I also learn that a beautiful specimen of the Ombre chevalier (French char) was taken out of Rivington reservoir. About a thousand had been put in by me two years before.”

It should be mentioned that Mr. Garnett’s experiments on the artificial impregnation of fish ova were made without any knowledge of previous attempts of the same kind. In answer to a suggestion made by Mr. Garnett, the late Sir G. C. Lewis observed: – “You might as well propose to shoot partridges only three days a week as to restrict the netting of salmon to only three days.” In 1859, Mr. Garnett wrote some papers on the possibility of introducing salmon into Australia, and addressed a communication to the authorities of Tasmania and New Zealand on the subject. He had some doubts as to success, but thought that the experiment should be made, and that New Zealand was the likeliest place for the experiment. In 1843, 1844, 1845, and 1848, he made experiments in the cultivation of wheat on the same land in successive years, and the results were communicated to the Manchester Guardian. He also advocated the growing of a short-strawed wheat as peculiarly suitable to the conditions of farming in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The gravelling of his clay soils elicited some amusing comments from his neighbours, one of whom remarked that he had seen land tilled (manured) in various ways, but had never before seen a field tilled with cobble-stones! The cultivation of cotton in India and in Peru was another project in which he took a warm interest.

Mr. Garnett was a keen observer of natural history. Some excellent authorities had asserted that the common wren never lined its nest with feathers, but he showed conclusively that this was a mistake. The nest in which eggs are laid is profusely lined with feathers, but during the period of incubation the male frequently constructs several nests in the vicinity of the first, none of which are lined. The existence of these “cock-nests,” as they are called by schoolboys, was doubted, but Mr. Garnett fully made out his case. The grey wagtail (Motacilla sulphurea) sometimes looks at its own image in a window, and attacks it with great vivacity. A superstitious neighbour was alarmed by this conduct in a “barley-bird” (Motacilla flava), and thought it a portent of evil. Her alarm was cured by the young naturalist, who secured the bird of evil omen. Having caught a colony of the long-tailed titmouse, Mr. Garnett and his brother attempted to rear the half-fledged young ones, but of the six old birds, five died in confinement. The survivor was allowed to escape in the hope that it would come back to rear the young ones. This it did, and by the most unwearied exertions supplied the whole brood, sometimes feeding them ten times in a minute. Mr. Garnett took some pains to establish the identity of the green with the wood-sandpiper. The courage of the stoat, and the pertinacious manner in which the marsh-titmouse for a time resisted attempts to drive her from her nest, are amongst his curious observations. The creeper, he noticed, associated with the titmouse in winter. The language of birds has not yet been mastered, either by philologists or ornithologists, but it appears that the alarm note of one is readily understood by those of other species. Mr. Garnett desired to make some young throstles leave a nest which was in danger of visitation from mischievous lads. He took one from the nest and made it cry out. Its brethren quickly disappeared, the old bird set up a shriek of alarm, and blackbird, chaffinch, robin, oxeye, blue titmouse, wren, and marsh-titmouse, and even the golden-crested wren, which usually appears to care for nothing; in fact all the birds in the wood, except the creeper, came to see what was the matter. Mr. Garnett did not share the prejudice felt by some farmers against the rook, which he held to be serviceable to man. He reckoned that one rookery in Wharfedale destroyed 209 tons of worms, insects and their larvæ. The rook also, he notes, relieves the farmers from the apprehension caused by a flight of locusts in Craven. Contrary to Waterton’s opinion, Mr. Garnett describes the process by which birds dress their feathers with oil from a gland. The sedge-warbler owes its local name of “mocking-bird” to its imitative powers in copying the notes of the swallow, the martin, the house-sparrow, spring-wagtail, whinchat, starling, chaffinch, white-throat, greenfinch, little redpole, whin-linnet, and other birds. Of the water-ouzel he says: – “A pair had built for forty years, according to tradition, in a wheel-race near to where I was born, and had never been molested by anybody, until a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who was a great ornithologist, employed his gamekeeper to shoot this pair. I think the natives of Calcutta were not more indignant when an unlucky Englishman got one of their sacred bulls into his compound, and baited him, than was our little community at what we considered so great an outrage. The gamekeeper narrowly escaped being stoned by myself and some more lads, any one of whom would have shot fifty blackbirds or fieldfares without any misgiving.” Mr. Garnett once shot what he afterwards believed to have been a Sabine’s snipe.

His interest in the river was not confined to the salmon, and he made some interesting observations on the propagation of lampreys, the spawning of minnows, and the breeding of eels. A short note on the last-named topic, by Mr. Jeremiah Garnett, is also printed. On the formation of ice at the bottom of rivers, there are two papers, one by Mr. Thomas Garnett, and the other by his brother, the Rev. Richard Garnett. A shower of gossamer, the thread produced by the aëronautic spider, is recorded as seen on the hills near Blackburn. One of Mr. Garnett’s friends was the unfortunate Mr. Joseph Ritchie, of Otley, who accompanied Captain Lyon’s expedition to Fezzan, and died there in 1819. To this there is an allusion in the following passage: – “In conclusion, allow me to say that the leisure hours which a somewhat busy life has enabled me to spend in these pursuits, have been some of the happiest of my existence, and have awakened and cherished such an admiration of nature, and such a love of the country and its scenes, as I think can never be appreciated by the inhabitants of large towns, and which I cannot describe so well as in the words of one of my friends, in a beautiful apostrophe to England, when leaving it, never to return: —

 
‘To thee
Whose fields first fed my childish fantasy;
Whose mountains were my boyhood’s wild delight,
Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents were to me
The food of my soul’s youthful appetite;
Were music to my ear – a blessing to my sight.’”
 

Why do not more of the dwellers in rural districts employ their often abundant leisure in natural history studies?