The final part of Street Criers of London, copied from the 1895 editions of the Hawes Parish magazine reproduced here with the kind permission of Hawes Parochial Church Council.

In the Hawes Parish Magazines there were no accreditations or dates provided. Within some of those below there is a bit of a guide to dates. The text is as printed in those magazines and I have added some dates.

Any Rosemary

The cry of ‘Rosemary and Lavender’ was a very common one in the streets and alleys of Old London. The leaves have a fragrant and pungent smell. It is said to relieve headache. In the country it is valued by many a villager and, with its companion lavender, is used to sweeten linen drawers and cupboards.

As late as Hogarth’s time it was common to use rosemary at funerals. It is ever green and so was regarded as an emblem of the immortality of the soul. In an obituary preserved among the Sloanian MSS in the British Museum there is the following entry:

‘Jan. 2.1671 – Mr Cornelius Bee, Bookseller, in Great Britain, died. Buried Jan. 4 at Great St Bartholomew’s without sermon, without wine or wafers; only gloves and rosemary.’ Mr Gay, when describing the funeral of a certain Blowsenda, records, ‘Sprigged rosemary the lads and lasses bore.’

In Cartwright’s Ordinary, an old play, we read: ‘If there be any so kind as to accompany my body to the earth, let them no want for entertainment: pray thee let them have a sprig of rosemary dipped in common water.’

Colly Molly Puffes

Addison, in the Spectator, nearly two hundred years ago, speaks of the ‘Colly Molly puff-man’, so that he is a sort of historical character. He has sold puffs and tarts, which were widely known, or Addison would not have spoken of them. The bakers’ shops have now taken the trade from the street vendors of pastry, though we sometimes in summer see a man treading the gutter of the crowded Strand with a tray of cakes balanced on his head, but he does not make any musical appeal for customers.

Any Work for John Cooper?

Beer was more used in the old days than even at present, for it was used at breakfast where we use tea and coffee. In those days barrels of beer and casks of wine were more common in the cellars of London citizens than they are now, and worn out and damaged casks must have made plenty of work for John Cooper.

His cry, as we read in old books, was ‘not without harmony’ and he used to ‘swell the last note with a hollow voice’. Sometimes he added to his cry:

‘Work for the cooper? Maids, give ear!
I’ll hoop your tubs and pails!’

In the Bridgewater Library, belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere, there is a series of thirty-two curious engravings on ‘The Manner of Crying Things in London’. The date is certainly before 1680 for the title is written by the second earl who died in that year. Amongst the thirty-two, one is ‘Worke for a Cooper’, so that this workman used to traverse the streets two hundred years ago.

It was almost the rule in the old times to hail a man by his trade, so that Will Baker and Tom Butcher were no surnames, but callings, and when the man called out ‘Any work of John Cooper?’ he meant as we should say, John the Cooper. It is thus that we have got many of our common surnames. Baker, Butcher, Cooper, Smith are only samples out of a list of names which it may amuse our readers to make for themselves.

Old Bellows

In the olden days the craftsman did not sit in his shop and wait for work to be brought to him. He went out and proclaimed along the streets his readiness for a job in a more or less musical cry. We have seen ‘John Cooper’ on his rounds; now we see the smith, with his hammer in hand and his pincers in his girdle, ready to mend any old bellows which had got worn out by puffing at the fire of wood or coal. The shape of bellows does not seem to have changed much in these hundred years. The bellows which our smith carries has about the same shape as the dainty little painted bellows which we sometimes see hanging beside the chimneypiece in a lady’s drawing room. The mechanism too is just the same as we see on a large scale in the forge of the village smithy. A poet says of the blacksmith:

‘The smith prepares his hammer for the stroke,
While the lunged bellows hissing fire provoke.’

The action of the bellows is not unlike that of our lungs: so we sometimes hear a man say, ‘I have fine bellows,’ meaning good lungs. What we call blowing in one case we call breathing in the other.

The bellows-mender in our picture looks as if he had a good pair of lungs and could sing out lustily the couple of his trade:

‘Old bellows to mend – old bellows to mend?
An honester workman none could send.’

Buy a Rabbit! –  Rabbit!

A hundred years ago the hawker of rabbits most likely had bought them from the man who had snared or shot them, if he had not killed them himself. A man might then have had some hours in Essex forests or on the Surrey commons, and then walked back to the streets to sell the rabbits he had bagged. Nowadays rabbits are still sold in the streets, though the hawker generally has a cart or a long barrow. His rabbits come up by rail from the country, where there are not only wild rabbits, but also rabbit warrens where thousands are reared.

It is said that, besides English rabbits, two hundred tons of rabbits are imported annual from Ostend. These are sent over without the skins, which are half as valuable as the flesh.

Old Cloaks! Suits of Clothes!

In old, as in modern times, there has always been opposition to the street vendor. As far back as Queen Elizabeth’s reign an effort was made to ‘keep hucksters, pedlars and hagglers out of the open streets’. In the time of Charles I they were described as unruly people. In 1694 stringent rules were enacted, threatening them with the terrors of the law then in force against ‘rogues and sturdy beggars’. The least penalty for breaking these laws was a severe whipping; the reason was honestly given, because citizens and shopkeepers wished it believing these poor folk injured their trade.

But in spite of opposition the street traders continued. Dr Johnson in the Adventurer says ‘the attention of a new-comer in  London is generally struck by the multiplicity of cries which meet him in the street’. Among these one of the oldest was that of ‘Old clowse’ and ‘Old clo’ ‘ – still familiar in our day.  The pictures of the ‘Old clo’ ‘ man in former days generally give him with three or more hats, one above the other, on his head.

One hundred years ago the ‘old clo’ ‘ man did not limit himself to buying, he also sold and exchanged; and so in our illustration, which is from an old book, the huckstar is also selling swords and rapiers!

Old Raree Show

The ‘raree showman’ made his living in old days chiefly out of the youngsters. When he had a good gang of boys at his heels he chose a likely spot, and put on the ground his box, which was really a cage. He would prop up the end on a stick so that the boys might better see his show. It would consist of such animals as rabbits, hedgehogs, white mice and perhaps a snake or two. These were taught to do some little tricks which interested the children. There were street shows of another kind – the puppet show which attracted older folk.

In the time of Queen Anne it was quite an institution frequented by persons of quality. One was set up in the piazza of Covent Garden and the ringers of St Paul’s Cathedral complained to the Spectator that, when the bell was rung for daily morning prayer, people seemed to think that it was invitation to the puppet show.

We have our puppet show of the present day which rarely fails to attract a crowd. When the light framework of Punch is set up with the squeaking performer and the meek dog Toby there is soon a crowd to enjoy the ferocious drama, which may be of Italian origin, but which certainly now belongs to the London streets and delights our youngsters as did the raree show of long ago.

The Watchman

The street watchman of hundred years ago looked dignified but he was of little use as a protector of the public. One of his chief duties was to compel citizens to contribute to the lighting of the streets by suspending horn lanterns outside their houses. Many tried to evade the law to save the cost.

In 1416 Sir Henry Barton, mayor, ordered lanterns and lights to be hung out on winter evenings between All Hallows and Candlemas. This gave rise to the watchman’s cry: ‘Lant-horns and a whole candle! Hang out your light!’ Some thrifty folk only put a small piece of candle in the lanterns, hence the cry, ‘A whole candle’. The watchman would sometimes cry his warning in verse:

‘A light here, maids; hang out your light,
And see your horn be clear and bright,
That so your candle clear may shine,
Continuing from six to nine,
That honest men that walk along
May see to pass safe without wrong.’

The horn to be ‘clear and bright’ referred to the lantern sides which were filled with horn, not glass.

A mayor in Queen Mary’s time [reigned 1553-1558], who manifestly had no thought for the weary citizen’s sleep after a hard day’s toil, provided the watchman with a bell and, with this dingdong accompaniment, he shouted his verses down to the time of the Commonwealth [1649-1660].

About this period we find the watchmen also called bill-men. This bill, like an axe on a pole was, in case of fire, to be used amongst the portions of wooden houses in danger of burning, and to chop a breach between the burning part and the endangered parts,  a needed precaution with the dangerous buildings of long ago.

The watchman by-and-by came to be called ‘Old Charley’ and was a venerable person, bearing in his hands the halberd and horn lantern. Many of these should have been in an almshouse. They were laughed at and derided. Their night cries were doleful, and the ringing bell and the cry, ‘Just gone twelve and a starry night’ or ‘Past four and a rainy morning’ drove away sleep from many a weary man and woman. To guard ‘Charley’ from rain and snow, he was provided with a sentry box. It was a favourite prank with the  young ‘bloods’, as they were called of the Regency [1811-1820], if they found Charley asleep in his box, to steadily overturn it and leave the old fellow a prisoner beneath it until some passer-by released him.

This system of protecting the citizens continued till 1829 when Sir Robert Peel’s Act brought in the present metropolitan police, known to us as ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’, so nicknamed from Sir Robert Peel. Certainly our modern guardian in his neat uniform, with his drill, strength and trained intelligence, is a great improvement on the infirm ‘Old Charley’ of bygone times.

I was searching for something else when monitoring the Research Room at the Dales Countryside Museum earlier this year. That search led me to the 1895 copies of the  Hawes Parish Magazines. And, as often happens, I became fascinated by something totally different having spotted the line drawings and short explanations about the Street Criers of London. I’m very grateful to Hawes Parochial Church Council for letting me reproduce them.

The text and pictures in the magazines were not accredited nor did the author provide a date for the artwork.  The text below is the same as in the magazines.  Where the text was incorrect I have provided updated explanations in brackets and in italics.

Street folk and cries of old London

It is curious to observe the changes which come over the manners and customs, the dress and speech, of civilised nations. These changes are so gradual that we do not notice them at the time, though those who are old sometimes are startled when they realise how different things are from what they were in their youth. The changes are still more marked when we go back to a former generation. It will interest our readers to see from an old book of illustrations, what some of the street folk of London were like long ago, and to learn some of the cries with which they plied their humble trades.

Almanac seller

Early almanacs were called ‘prognostications’ because they dealt with astrology, professing to learn from the stars what were favourable seasons. They foretold battles, pestilences, famines, and the like.  Almanacs have now grown to be such marvellous shilling volumes as Whitaker’s  – full of various information from all parts of the world. But the pamphlet which was hawked in the street a hundred years ago contained very little information, if we may accept a rhyme which was then in vogue: –

‘My almanacs aim at no learning at all,
But only to show when the holidays fall;
And tell, as by study we easily may,
How many eclipses the year will display.’

[The first edition of Old Moore’s Almanack was published in 1697 and published weather forecasts. From 1700 it contained astrological observations and became a best seller in the 18th and 19th centuries – Wikipedia.]

Aqua Vitae

Before the days of licensed houses, the travelling liquor-seller frequented the streets with his keg on his back, and his cry, Aqua Vitae (water of life), a sad misnomer for his fiery spirit. In our day the exciseman and the policeman would be soon on his track, and would silence his cry.

In the interests of sobriety we would be ready to have him back if we could get rid of the glaring gin-shops which have taken his trade from him; but if we must have these ruinous public-houses at every corner, we may be thankful that the street folk of today tempt the passer-by only with ice-creams and lemon-squash instead of with the beer and brandy of long ago.

Sweep, Ho!

In old times the trade of a chimney sweep was a harder one than it is now. Boys used to be sent up the chimneys with a short brush to knock the soot off the sides of the flue. These boys had to be small and thin, as the chimneys were often very narrow and crooked.

Boys used to be forced up by their cruel masters, and even fires lighted at their feet that they might make frantic efforts to push upwards.

Many stories were told of the sufferings of these boys. Sometimes they stuck fast, and could neither get up nor down, and the chimney had to be broken open to remove the body of a suffocated climbing-boy.

[A sweeping machine was invented in the early 19th century. The Act of Parliament in 1875 finally put a stop to using children to sweep chimneys.] 

Small Coal

We do not nowadays see the coalman with his sack on his back and his measure in his hand. When coals are hawked about the streets  it is in a wagon, and the law takes care that good measure is given.

In 1670 there used to be seen in the London streets a remarkable man like the dealer in the picture, who cried out as he went along, ‘Small coal for sale!’ in so musical a voice that he attracted all who passed by. His name was Thomas Britton and he had a coal shed with a small house beside it in Clerkenwell.

He was a lover of learning and a skilled musician. Here, when the day’s work was done, he used to assemble his friends, and by degrees his concerts in his little room became so famous that even such a celebrity as Handel was found there.

Buy a Fork or Fire Shovel?

The little gridiron and shovel in our picture do not need any remark, but the fork is not a household implement of our day.

It was probably used for lifting the rushes which were spread on the floor by our ancestors in place of carpets.

It is said that it was the custom to fork over these rushes and remove those which had become sodden, and to spread a layer of fresh ones on the top. If that were so, we cannot wonder at the plagues and sicknesses which were common in those times.

‘London Gazette’ here!

The origin of our English newspaper was in 1588 when the people were in alarm at hearing of the advance of the Spanish Armada, the great fleet which was to conquest the country, and the paper was published by the authority  to allay public fears.

The London Gazette [was first published in 1665] and belongs to the Government. A complete set of this newspaper consists of more than 400 volumes  and four volumes of index.

The sheet which the girl in the picture is offering for sale is much less bulky than the Gazette of the present day, but it contained more exciting reading. In those war-times her cry used sometimes to be:

‘In the Gazette great news to-day,
The enemy is beat, they say.’

Milk here

The sellers of water no longer tramp along London streets but the milkman or the milkmaid still are seen and heard. The old cry used to be ‘Any milk here’, and sometimes the words were added, ‘Fresh cheese and cream’. A little later the cry was, ‘Milk here, maids, below’, then ‘Milk below’, and thus by degrees the cry contracted into ‘Mee-on’ which is what we hear.

In the days when such milkmaids as our picture show traversed London streets, there were cows in the fields about St Martin’s Church and Hatton Garden. ‘Merrie Islington’ was then a village to which folk went for milk warm from the cow, and to enjoy cream and cakes under the pleasant trees.

Now the milk of London comes up from the distant country in tin churns. At the railway station hundreds of these great cans arrive by the ‘milk trains’. Men with vans and carts are waiting to carry them off to the dairies, from which the milk-lads and milk-maids go round to the customers.

New River Water

The way in which London of today is supplied with water would have surprised the folk of long ago as much as the way in which it is supplied with milk. The London of those days had only conduits, or wells, here and there. It is said that water first flowed from a conduit in West Cheap in [the late 13th century], bought thither from Tyburn through leaden pipes which took fifty years to lay down. Baynard’s Water, now Bayswater, had ten conduits. At these men filled their pails and then carried the water along the roads, selling it as much a quart, which they  measured with a tankard. Hence, in James the First’s time, the water-carrier was called a ‘tankard-bearer’. Ben Jonson, in 1568, in Every Man in  his Humour, makes Cof, the water-bearer say, ‘I dwell, sir, at the sign of the Water Tankard.’

[Sir Hugh Myddleton master-minded the ‘New River’ from Amwell  and Chadwell in Hertfordshire which was constructed between 1608 to 1613 to bring fresh water  to London. Water was also piped in, using wooden pipes, from  natural springs via Islington.] 

There was a great dislike at first to water conveyed in pipes, so that we find a water-carrier having for his cry, ‘Any fresh and fair spring water here? None of your pipe sludge’. But the New River water won its way to favour and in the ‘Islington Garland’ a rhyme of the period, we read:

‘Joy to thy spirit, aquatic Sir Hugh,
To the end of old time shall thy river be new.’

The bird-seller

Londoners are still fond of having singing birds in cages but we have not a street hawker of them like the man in the picture. In the working folk’s markets you may sometimes see a truck with an array of small wooden cages, each holding a bird, but the trade is done chiefly in shops.

The singing birds are some of the wild birds which have been caught, and some of the canaries which have never known freedom. We can look with pleasure on the canaries for they have always lived in cages and if they were set free they would die, either from not knowing how to find food, or from being pecked by sparrows and other wild birds.

Many working men are skilful in breeding canaries and there are various fancy kinds which are much valued. But wild birds, which should be the feathered songsters of the grove, but which have been caught and imprisoned in small cages, are a sad sight. It is not uncommon to see a lark in a tiny cage, with a bit of turf in the bottom, fastened outside a window and to  hear it pouring out its thrilling notes as if it were soaring up into the sky. One wonders how any one can find pleasure in listening to the poor little captive.

The bullfinch is a favourite cage-bird; but they are becoming scarce in England, and the noted ‘piping’ bullfinches come from Germany. The goldfinch, too, is a popular cage-bird and, it is said, that as many as 70,000 have been caught in one year in England.

Bird-catchers use decoy birds which are allowed to flutter up from the cage to which their leg is tied to attract wild birds to the net. They also use a small mouth instrument named a ‘bird-call’. This is referred to by Chaucer: ‘So the birde is begyled with the merry noise of the fowler’s whistle, when it is closed in the nette.’

Mr Mayhew tells of a famous old bird-catcher of about eighty years ago, and  he gives some of old Gilham’s experiences in his own words: ‘I’ve caught goldfinches in lots at Chalk Farm, and all along where there’s that railway smoke and noise by Primrose Hill. I’ve catched them where there’s all them big squares Pimlico way. I don’t know what the bird trade will come to. It’s hard for a poor man to have to go all the way to Finchley for birds that he could have catched at Holloway; but people never thinks about that. Ah, well! What’s it all coming to?’

Any Iron Pots to Mend?

‘Any brass pots or iron pots to men?’ was the cry of the tinker of a hundred years ago. Like most of the wandering traders, he did not hold with the proverb ‘Self praise is no commendation’ for he used to shout:

‘Your coppers, kettles, pots, and stew-pans,
Though old shall serve instead of new pans;
I’m very moderate in my charge
For mending small as well as large.’

The trade of the tinker is made interesting by the fact that John Bunyan, the famous author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, earned his living in this way, and paraded the streets of Bedford saying, as he want, ‘Mistress, have you work for the tinker? Pots, pans, kettles I mend; old brass, lead, or old copper I buy. Anything in my way today maids?’

In the picture, behind the tinker, we see those bugbears of unruly villagers, the parish stocks. Has the artist of the day put them there as a sly hint that they were old friends of ‘the jolly tinker’?  It certainly was held in those times that he often deserved to be put in them for his dishonest doings.

Ripe Strawberries

Our readers who have seen the great street in London called Holborn, with its pavements crowded with passengers and its roadway with omnibuses and waggons, would hardly think that there were every strawberry gardens there. Yet a few paces from Holborn there still is a street called Ely Place where, long ago, was the town house of the Bishops of Ely, and its garden was famous for strawberries.

Shakespeare, in his Richard III, makes the Duke of Gloucester say, ‘My Lord of Ely, when I was last at Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there. I do beseech you send me some of them.’

‘Ripe Strawberries’ is still a cry of the London streets, though it generally  comes from a man with a truck or wheelbarrow. The hawkers of our day sell their strawberries in little round baskets made of wood shavings. The girl in the picture has the shape of basket used till some twenty years ago, and was called a ‘pottle’. It often had fine berries at the top and poor ones at the bottom, the shape lending itself to cheating. This explains the following old cry – ‘hautboys’ was the name of the fine kind of strawberry: ‘Rare ripe strawberries. Hautboys sixpence a pottle; full to the bottom – hautboys.’ [from Hautbois – musk strawberries] Another specimen of an old cry in rhyme was this:

‘Ripe strawberries, a full pottle for a groat,
They are all ripe and fresh gathered, as you see;
No finer for money I believe can be bought,
So I pray  you come and deal fairly with me.’

In the March and April  1900 editions of the Church Monthly the Rev Theodore Wood wrote about some interesting parasitic  activity – such as that of oil beetles (see Editor’s note below) and stylops.

Rev Wood:

March is a month of which many hard things have been said; and certainly in some seasons it affords us little else than a second edition of winter in an aggravated form. Yet it seldom comes to an end without bringing us a few fine sunny days, when birds are singing and butterflies flitting to and fro, and the breath of spring is in the air.  It is  a pleasure merely to be alive. And everywhere Nature is as busy as she can possibly be, fresh with the vigour gained from her long winter sleep, and straining every nerve in preparation for the bright and active season that lies before her.

Do you see those small round holes in the trodden path, each with a tiny pile of crumbled mould around it? Watch one of them for a little while, and you will see a bee come out – a little grey-brown bee, with a round, hairy body and rather short wings. It is a solitary bee (right – from Church Monthly) which is usually engaged in sinking its burrow. It makes no comb; it secretes no wax; it stores up no honey. It just digs a perpendicular tunnel, some eight or ten inches in depth, and then hollows out a few small cells at the bottom. In each of these cells it lays an egg and places a store of provision. Sometimes this provision consists of pollen worked up into ‘bee bread’. For solitary bees do not tend their young as hive and humble bees do. They provide for them once and for all, before they hatch out from the egg-shell; and after that they never visit them again.

What is this great bluish-black beetle, with tiny wing-cases and a huge, clumsy body which its short little limbs can scarcely drag over the ground?

It is an oil beetle and we have only to pick it up to learn the reason for its title; for as we do so a yellow, evil-smelling, oil liquid oozes out from the joints of its legs. In some parts of the country, strange to say, this liquid is regarded as a specific for rheumatism.

The beetle is on its way to lay its eggs. There are many thousands of these, and it lays them in holes in the ground – four or five thousand, perhaps, in a single hole. In a few days’ time they hatch, and out of each comes a little tiny black grub with six very long legs. Led by some strange instinct, these grubs make their way at once to flowers which [solitary] bees are likely to visit. Then they climb the stems and hid in the blossoms till a bee appears, when they cling to its hairy body, and so are carried back by it, all unknowingly, to its nest. There they live out the rest of their lives, eating both the eggs and  the stores which have been supplied for the latter for food.

Notice the blind-worm gliding through the grass. It is not a snake, although it looks like one and behaves like one. It is not blind, in spite of its name, for it has pair of sharp little black eyes. Neither is it a worm. It is a legless lizard, perfectly harmless, which has been lying torpid throughout the winter, and is now engaged in searching for the tiny white slugs upon which it feeds. We will not handle it, for it is a timid creature, and is given to protect itself, in moments of danger, by snapping off its own tail! The severed member, the nerves of which are evidently highly irritated by this strange mutilation, instantly becomes endowed with singular vitality, and begins to leap and twist about as though possessed of independent existence. And meanwhile, as one’s attention is occupied in watching its antics, the blind-worm creeps away to a place of safety, and there proceeds to grow a new tail.

April

It is something to be thankful for that, even in these days of excursions and cheap trips, there are still spots of ideal beauty which are seldom trodden by the foot of man. Let us ramble through a lonely glen, hidden away among the hills, where Nature reigns unmolested, and beasts and birds and insects dwell  in utter security. Its sloping sides are brown with last year’s bracken and green with feathery moss. Here and there are patches of yellow, where primroses cluster together. Under the trees are anemones with their delicate pencilled blossoms and starworts with petals widely expanded.

Did you see that bird dart down the stream – a passing flash of black and white? It was a dipper, and there he is, sitting on a mossy stone in the midst of the water, not twenty yards away. Never was bird more aptly named for, as we watch, he “dips” now and again, and yet again as if he were a little country school-maid curtseying as she meets the parson. He is just  like a magnified wren with a white waistcoat. He has just the same jerky movements and just the same little upturned tail. Now he is searching amongst the moss for the little yellow-spotted beetles which hide there. The next moment he has plunged into the water and is hunting for snails and grubs at the bottom. Then, once more, the black-and-white streak flashes  past us. He has darted up stream again to join his mate, who is dipping and diving a hundred yards away.  (Photo taken at Aysgarth Falls copyright Pip Pointon)

The air is full of the  hum of bees. That is because a sallow bush is growing by the side of the water and every branch is laden with golden catkins. There are hive bees from the cottage garden at the foot of the glen, and red-hipped humble-bees from many a moss-covered hollow in the ground, and solitary bees. Most are intent on draining the honey-laden blossoms of their juices for the hungry little ones at  home.

But there is a tragedy. One of the bees is weak on the wing. It settles and we examine it and see the reason why. A little white object is projecting from between the segments of its abdomen. That white object is head of a stylops. It stays there and never comes out, and feeds incessantly on the juices of the bee’s body! The ways of parasites are strange. They cling to the lower surface of the beetle’s body; they live inside caterpillars and feed upon their fat; they cause great swellings on the backs of cattle; and they drive even the elephant himself half mad with the torment of their bites. But the ways of this parasite are quite the strangest of all.

The male is an evident beetle with large milk-white wings and odd little branched antennae. But the female, practically speaking, never becomes more than a grub. In the bee’s body she lives; and in the bee’s body she dies.

The glen is full of life – animal life, bird life, reptile life and insect life. It is a panorama of natural beauty as we ramble through it, and a cyclopaedia of natural wonders when we pause to search out its secrets. We might come daily for a week, a month, or a year and not exhaust them all.

Editor’s note:

I  like to check the latest reports concerning the creatures that the Rev Wood recorded. There is often more up-to-date information and this is especially true of his account about stylops. He believed the female stylops had its head inside a bee’s abdomen, whereas now it is now that the head is sticking out. So I have slightly edited his account.

It was also sad to learn that since he wrote about oil beetles it is likely that three of the UK’s native ones have become extinct. For more about that see:

https://cdn.buglife.org.uk/2019/08/Oil-Beetle-national-survey-leaflet-for-web_5-species.pdfhttps://www.coleoptera.org.uk/meloidae/home

The Rev Wood’s articles in the Church Monthly are reproduced with the kind permission of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council.

The long-tailed tits have started visiting the bird feeder at my home this year (left) – or long-tailed titmice as the Rev Theodore Wood called them. He returned as a contributor to The Church Monthly in 1900.  And the gnats are back too but from what he wrote maybe I shouldn’t so dislike them (see below).

When studying the hedgerows near his home in January Mr Wood asked: “What are these exquisite birds? Quite a little party of them have all flown up together, and now they are ceaselessly flitting from branch to branch, and chattering to one another as they do so.

“They are long-tailed titmice – father, mother, and  half a dozen children. Family affection is strong with these little creatures, and the party does not break up when the young are able to fly. Until the following spring they hold together, none ever parting from the others; flying, feeding, roosting together, all in utmost harmony. Then comes the imperious call of a stronger love still, and the little ones fly their different ways, each with the mate of its choosing.

“Now they are all occupied in seeking for prey – insects and their eggs, and such small atoms, which they find in the crannies of the bark. Some are on the branches, some are underneath them; for titmice can cling in every position, and no crack or crevice escapes their eager scrutiny. From many a plague of insect destroyers to they help to save us, and great is the debt of gratitude we owe to themselves and their fellow-workers.

“If we had but time to examine the hedge thoroughly we should find just as much life there as there will be in summer. Only most of it is wrapped in slumber. The bark, the moss, the dead leaves and rubbish, the surface layer of the ground below – they are full of living beings, only waiting the warm breath of spring to rouse them back into active life. And we might return again and again, and yet find plenty of strange creatures, every one affording material for the study of a life-time. For one never comes to the end of the wonders of even an insect’s body. There is something very like infinity in the structure and the history of the tiniest  living speck that crawls beneath our feet.”

His description of February fitted well with how the month began this year. He wrote: “February is not the pleasantest month in the year for a country ramble in England. The ground, as a rule, is still locked in the iron grip of the frost; the breeze is chill and biting; and when warmer weather follows it brings with it a downpour of ran, so that  ‘February fill-dyke’. has become a proverbial expression.

“Yet now and then one has a foretaste of brighter days to come, and as we stroll along this country lane, dank and decaying as may be the herbage with which its banks are clothed, there is yet many a sign to show that Nature is on the point of waking from her long winter sleep, and that even now she is beginning to bestir herself.

“For we meet a butterfly flitting along the road and making the most of a passing glimmer of sunshine. It is a Sulphur, which has been slumbering peacefully in some snug retreat for many a long month past, and has been roused for just an hour or two by the genial but unwonted warmth.

“A swarm of winter gnats are dancing in the sunshine. Theirs is a life of enjoyment surely and not a  life of work. Yet every one of those happy insects, before it became a gnat, laboured long and perseveringly as a scavenger. Its task was to help in removing the dead and decaying matter with which the face of the earth is teeming. Putrid fungus, rotting vegetation – in these it found its home. Side by side with ten thousand others it laboured steadily on, and by feeding on this foul garbage helped to keep the air pure just as the grubs of the summer gnats help to purify the water.

“It is the poetry of natural history this study of the life-history of the myriad beings which surround us. And a ramble on even a February day, when so few living creatures are stirring, may afford us with food for fruitful meditation for many a long day after.”

Reproduced from The Church Monthly with kind permission of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council.

In 1900 Aysgarth Parish Magazine continued to be published at the back of The Church Monthly  during a year when the Boer War (Second African War 1899-1902) was frequently mentioned in the latter.   The vicar of Aysgarth, the Rev Fenwick Stow, mirrored the “support the great British Empire” comments which would again be used between 1914 and 1918.

Mr Stow  wrote that January: “It is many years since our country has entered on a New Year in the midst of a serious war, which is likely to tax all the efforts which our military authorities can put forth.”

Rev Stow told his parishioners that “the war is the outcome of a deliberate conspiracy to overthrow British Rule in South Africa.” He added that it was a duty to pray for the success of the British arms “not as though we thought ourselves the favourites of heaven, but because we believe that justice, freedom, humanity and civilisation, for which we are contending, are things which God desires upon earth.” He did also call for prayer for the sufferers on both sides of that war.

Above: “News from Home!”  specially drawn for The Church Monthly by J Prater.

Much has changed since then and not least in Wensleydale.  When the Rev Stow was vicar there were regular services in five Mission Rooms in his parish (at Bishopdale, Cross Lanes, Thornton Rust, West Burton and Walden) in addition to those at Aysgarth church on Sundays and Holy Days. Today the only Mission Room is at Thornton Rust where services are held once a month when there is no pandemic.

The community spirit at Thornton Rust does not seem to have changed even with the influx in recent years of those with no family roots in Wensleydale.  In November 1900 the vicar noted following a harvest festival service at Thornton Rust: “The Mission Room has been recently re-coloured by E Lawson of Leyburn through the energy and liberality of the people of the village.” The community there continues to maintain it in very good condition.

Aysgarth church held a very successful Flower Festival in July 1900 when a large number of children brought bunches of beautiful flowers which, with gifts donated at the service, were sent once again to St Chad’s Home for Waifs and Strays. After the service in the church there was tea in the Vicarage garden (Stow House in Aysgarth) and then sports for the children.

In December the vicar and his family had their own waif to care for as he reported: “A stray dog has been kept at the Vicarage for some little time. The vicar will be glad if the owner will claim it.”

Also on his wish list was that he would be told quickly about weddings and funerals. He wrote: “The vicar wishes to be directly informed of the day on which it is desired that any marriage or burial should take place, in order that the hour may be fixed.” !

Life continued much as normal throughout the year for his parishioners. There were baptisms, marriages and deaths to be recorded, reports of the annual parish tea and Sunday School treat, admonitions to come forward for confirmation,  the choir outing by train  to Blackpool, missionary talks and how to sponsor a child at an orphanage in North India. The bicentenary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had a special mention.

One sudden death the vicar especially noted, in March 1900, was that of the Rev C T Hales, the founder of Aysgarth School. Mr Hales started the school at Aysgarth near the church and then moved it to Newbiggin near Bedale. The vicar said: “He was a man of remarkable energy and incessant watchfulness over his boys and his influence over them was altogether good. He will be very much missed by a large circle of friends.”

Below: Rev Fenwick William Stow, vicar of Aysgarth 1873-1905

Material from The Church Monthly reproduced with the kind permission of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council.

In 1900 there were short stories in The Church Monthly about churches with interesting features which included trees growing in odd places –  as at  Bicknoller St George church near Taunton and Kempsey church in the diocese of Worcester.

At St Swithin’s in Cannon Street, London, there was the “London Stone”, in a stone case with an iron grill said to date back to Roman times. There is now a new office block on the site of St Swithin’s where the London Stone is still  on display. I was also fascinated by the account of the carved Anglo-Saxon coffin lid and the oldest carving of a miner (also Anglo-Saxon) which can be seen at Wirksworth church in Derbyshire.

When it is possible to travel again I hope to go and have a  look. But I won’t be able see the following as those interesting trees are now gone.

Tree on a tower

The vicar at Bicknoller St George near Taunton in 1900, the Rev W B S Wood, wrote about the vigorous yew tree which had been growing on the top of the church tower (left) for over 100 years.

“In 1878 the tower of the church was restored and I was anxious to have the tree removed and planted in the churchyard, with a tablet giving its size and origin; the parishioners, however, wished it to remain, and although it was cemented all round, it still lives.

“There is a very large yew tree in the churchyard and birds eat the berries on the tower, leaving the kernels, and I imagine in olden days, when the tower mortar was soft, one of these kernels took root.”

It was stated in the magazine that the height of the tower was 60ft, and the height of the yew tree on it 2ft 8ins (81cm) with a girth of 12 ins (30.5cm).

Tree inside a church

It was recorded in The Church Monthly in 1900: “The church of Kempsey, in the diocese of Worcester, is remarkable for the chestnut tree growing out of the tomb of Sir Edmund Wylde in the chancel (right).

“Sir Edmund held a lease of the Rectory Manor under the Dean and Chapter of Worcester, and was lord of the manors of Glazeley and Endon Burnell (Co. Salop). He was Sheriff of Worcestershire in 1620, in which year he died, leaving a son, Edmund, the last of the Wyldes of Kempsey.

“The tree, which springs fro the recumbent effigy of the knight in full armour (with a real sword and helmet), was flouring in 1849. when Mr J Noake in his Rambler in Worcestershire speaks of it as follows: ‘I was led to enquire the cause, and found that some years ago the then sexton of the church, who was known among the  younger fry as a pertinacious stickler for propriety, observing a lad playing with a horse chestnut when he ought to have been digesting the sermon, gave him a fillip on the ear with one hand, and threw the chestnut away with the other; the chestnut alighted on the top of the monument where, in course of time, it formed mould to itself and gradually shot out.’”

The tree, which was carefully protected during the restoration of the church in 1865, died in 1895.

Material from The Church Monthly  reproduced with the kind permission of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council.

In 1894 the editor of The Church Monthly asked the Rev Theodore Wood FES to write about the horses (like the Suffolk Punch) which were a major feature of life at that time, pointing out the duty of treating them with thoughtfulness and consideration and how they repaid kindness. Wood included a fascinating story about the horses which then worked at Hitchin railway station.

Wood wrote: I will base what I have to say upon two old Arabian sayings.

The first of these refers to the horse in relation to man: ‘God made horses for man and shaped their bodies in accordance with his needs.’

I suppose that most of us have been struck with the marvellous suitability of the horse’s frame to the work which it called upon the perform. We want to ride the animal; and its back seems shaped purposely to receive the saddle. We require to direct its course; and its mouth seems specially formed to receive the bit. We expect it to draw heavy weights, often over rough ground; and we find that its strength is largely concentrated into its fore-quarters. We call upon it to gallop at speed and sometimes to leap over obstacles; and we discover that its feet are provided with strong stout hoofs which not only protect them from injury against the ground, but also serve to break the shock of its fall. For the hoofs are not mere sold blocks of horn but are made up of a vast number of springs which are very similar to those which we use in the framework of our carriages and fulfil exactly the same function. One can scarcely help feeling that the Arabs are right, and that the connections between horse and man did indeed enter into the scheme of the Creator.

But – perhaps by reason of these same natural advantages – we are rather apt to look upon the horse as a kind of live machine. We fail to credit it, for example, with the intelligence which it really possesses. We ‘break’ it to its work, often by a system of perfectly needless cruelty. When it is ‘broken’ we expect nothing more from it than a mere mechanical obedience to our commands. Yet the horse which is allowed and encouraged to work intelligently is by far the better servant; and, when it has thoroughly learned its duties, no animal is more trustworthy.

Take, for example, the huge cart horses which may be seen working any day at Hitchin railway station. The two last carriages of the early morning trains are ‘through coaches’ and have to be backed on to a siding in order that they may be attached to the London express which stops at the station shortly afterwards. This work is performed by horses.

As soon as the carriages are uncoupled the animals drag them away to the siding and there stand patiently for the express. The odd thing is, that they are perfectly aware that the main line expresses, which run  through the station, have nothing to do with them and pay no attention to them whatever. But the very moment that the fast train from the Cambridge branch passes they bend to their work, drag the carriages along until they are only half a dozen yards away from the rear of the train as it stands waiting at the platform, and then suddenly step sideways off the line, so that the impetus of the coaches may carry them to just the required spot.

A porter accompanies the animals but he never touches them with whip or rein. He seldom even speaks to them save to utter a word or two of encouragement. And the secret of it all is simply this – that the horses know their work and are trusted to perform it intelligently, as almost all horses will if they are treated kindly and the opportunity is afforded them.

It is scarcely too much, indeed, to say that there seems to be in the horse a natural willingness – almost a natural desire – to recognise man as its master and to serve him to the best of its ability.

The second of the two Arabian sayings refers not to the horse in relation to man, but to man in relation to the horse. ‘As many grains of barley as are contained in the food we give to a horse, so many blessings do we daily gain.’

There cannot be a doubt, on the whole, that animals are better treated than they were. We are gradually awakening to a sense of our responsibilities, although the cruelties which are still too often practised are sickening enough. Horses especially suffer from thoughtlessness and unintentional cruelty.

What else than cruelty is it to strap up their heads with tight bearing-reins and then expect the same amount of work from them as if their heads were free? A horse cannot put out its full strength unless it can lower its head; and to prevent it from doing so is simply to reduce its usefulness by at least one half, and at the same time condemn it to severe and unnecessary torture.

What else than cruelty is it to keep a horse in a stable in which it can obtain neither light nor fresh air? I have been greatly struck by noticing how often, in some of the Hertfordshire towns and villages, the horses of tradesmen and others are kept in ‘barns’ scarcely large enough to contain them, in perfect darkness and with no provision whatever for ventilation. I sincerely wish that a law could be passed to prevent such shameful ill-treatment of an animal which is often the true ‘bread-winner’ of the family. Thoughtless cruelty it is perhaps; but it is cruelty all the same.

Truly there are many ways in which the lot of animals may yet be improved, and a little more thought and a little more consideration will brighten the life of many a hard-working servant of man.

Reproduced with permission of Aysgarth PCC

‘A Ride on a Railway Engine’, by F M Holmes, published in The Church Monthly  1894

Above: ‘Flying Dutchman’ passing through Collumpton in the 1890s

‘Right away, Jem! There’s the whistle!’

Jem opens the throttle – that is, he turns on the steam – and the engine slowly to move.

Watch him, and you will see that he is lifting the handle of the ‘throttle’ gradually. If he turned on the full head of steam at once the probability is that, with the heavy weight of the train behind, the driving-wheels of the engine would fly round uselessly, and would not grip the rails at all.

Sometimes this does occur when the rails are greasy. Then the ever-ready hand of the driver closes the throttle for the moment and his equally ready fireman sends sand on to the rail through a pipe provided for the purpose.

But nothing happens like this today. And the engine gathering speed – as the steam is gradually increased and the heavy train acquires momentum – is soon flying along  through the suburbs of the great city. Then, with a burst, we are into the open country.

The air rushes past so furiously that it seems like enough – as people say – to cut your ears off; and there is a jerking, shaking motion that seems as though it might throw you off your feet. You clutch at a steel rail near by convulsively to steady yourself.

How warm you are on one side as you stand here on the footplate of the engine and perforce near the hot furnace; and how chilly by comparison you are on the other; and how difficult amid this noise and racket to hear what your companions are saying.

‘Signals up!’ A wild shriek startles your ears as the engine whistle rises above the rush and roar of the train, but still the signal does not move. Then off goes the steam. The driver, standing with is hand on the throttle and his face to the window in front, sees there is no alternative, and turns the handle; and his fireman applies the brake.

There is a crippled motion of the wheels and the tremendous speed begins sensibly to slacken. Then suddenly down falls the signal and the line is clear. The watchful driver opens the throttle again, the brake is off, and once more we fly on along the railway at fifty or sixty miles an hour, the passengers behind scarce noticing, perhaps, that a check has been made. A signal against an express is very unusual; and that signalman will probably have to make an explanatory report to the authorities tomorrow as to the reason why his signal was at ‘Danger’.

Then the fireman plies his shovel again. He is always doing it. The quantity of coal consumed by a railway engine would astonish the ordinary householder considerably. Perhaps the majority of people do not know that the waste steam, after doing its work, rushes up the chimney and thus creates an enormous draught, burning the fuel fast and raising the steam quickly. Yet this arrangement is, so to speak, the very life-blood of the locomotive, and is one of the most important principles utilised by Stephenson. The faster the engine tears along the more steam she raises – provided she have a sufficiency of coal and water. There is no need for a forced draught, as in some steamships.

The furnace filled up, the fireman seizes a moment for a drink of cold team. Then down comes smart shower of rain, and in a trice the thick pilot coats of the driver and his stoker are out and over their shoulders. But it does not last long; we soon drive through it and the sun is shining brightly again on the long lines of flashing metals that ever and ever stretch ahead.

You gain quite a different view when riding on an engine from when riding comfortably in a carriage. In the latter case you cannot look ahead. You gain views, more or less satisfactory, of the country beside you. But on an engine, through the windows of the ‘cab’ – as the screen and protection for the men is called on a locomotive – your eyes are drawn as by a spell to look forward. There is constantly before you the dry pathway cut by lines of gleaming steel and occasionally broken by a station. And indeed this is one of the most important parts of the driver’s duty, in order to watch the signals. With hand on the throttle handle and face to the window, he guides the flying engine over its iron road.

Then the gauges have to be watched – the steam gauge, which shows how much, or how little, is in the boiler. There seem to be handles all round you. This  is the large lever which works the reversing gear of the engine and causes it to travel backwards. This handle admits water to the boiler; and this one blows off steam when the pressure is too great. Another works the brake; and a powerful vacuum or Westinghouse brake [air brake named after George Westinghouse who invented it in New York State in 1869] can be applied all along the train from the engine itself.

The power of these brakes is enormous. Fast expresses can be drawn up in splendid time by their commanding means. At the end of a large station platform the train seems flying along at its normal speed. But almost within its own length it is brought to a stand.

This great brake power is sometimes not without a comical side – to an observer. On one occasion, an engine driver was endeavouring to take out a long line of empty coaches from a certain metropolitan station. For some reason, which he could not understand, his engine would scarcely move. The steam was all right, his brakes were all right, yet the big train to which he was attached only crept along. At last he jumped from his engine and hurried to the guard’s van. With a roar he proclaimed the secret – the brake was ‘on’ there crippling all his efforts! In a moment,  however, it was ‘off’ and he was soon down the line with his empty carriages.

The keen watchfulness of signals is one of the most important duties of enginemen. They pass hundreds in the course of the day and, according to the state of the signal, so have the men to act, or refrain from acting. That signal-arm we can see far along the line… that arm, growing larger as we quickly approach it, lowers to allow us to pass. We fly by at lightning speed and, in a second, it rises again to prohibit anything  else from following us till we are far ahead and beyond the next block-space of line.

How fast can a train travel? It is not an easy question to answer. Probably the average rate of most English fast trains is about 45 miles an hour. But it must be remembered that in order to attain this average speed, including all stoppages and ‘pantings’ up heavy gradients, the train must sometimes run much faster. A mile a minute is often accomplished. Mr W. M. Acworth tells us that a Worsdell ‘compound’ engine once ran from Grant’s House to Berwick at 76 miles an hour for some miles in succession as indicated by the speed register on the engine. And the 2 p.m. Great Northern from Manchester, one of the fastest regular trains in the world, was reported in the Engineer to have rushed over short distances at the rate of 78 miles and 76 miles per hour from Grantham to London.

It is competition, no doubt, that has something to do with this quick running. By the Great Northern route Manchester  is 203 miles from London, by the North Western 189 miles, and by the Midland 191 1/4 miles. In order, therefore, to compete successfully with the fast 4 1/4-hour expresses of the North Western, the Great Northern must run faster by about three miles an hour.

The kind of road over which the engine travels has a good deal to do with its speed. Up hill and down dale spoils the pace of engines as of horses; and a moderate average speed – on paper – over a hard road may be really better work than a sensationally high record along a flat valley. Then there is economical stoking to be considered.  The drivers engaged on certain classes of work are, on one line at least, formed into a party or, as it is called, a ‘link’. All the coal and oil supplies to each engine is put down and the amount added up weekly and divided by the number of miles the engine has run. A notice showing how much each man has used is then exhibited, the most economical, combined with punctuality, being of course placed at top. The good stoker should, at the end of the engine’s work for the day or night show a clear fire burnt to the bars, but with undiminished steam pressure.

Enginemen know their engines like their alphabet and their roads like their native town. As each locomotive contains something like 5,000 separate pieces, this knowledge is not acquired in a day. Drivers have long and arduous preparation to plod through before they are promoted to the foot-plate of an express, and they have onerous work when they get there. But it is worthy of a man – a man with a good head on his shoulders and steady courage in his heart.

[Today we can say man or woman…]

reproduced with the permission of Aysgarth PCC.

‘A Night in a Herring Boat’ by the Rev A M Fosbrooke, then curate of Stoke-on-Trent

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we started from Port Erin. There were eight of us on board, seven fishermen and myself. The dingy having been hauled up, and the sails hoisted, in a few moments the strong breeze blowing carried the Puffin out of the bay and westwards towards the Irish coast.

We had a mackerel-line out and, though the boat was going much too fast for satisfactory fishing, about half a dozen were caught before evening. The sky became dark and cloudy and, before long, the rain descended in torrents, so as to make one thankful for the oilskins, sea boots, and sou’-wester which a sailor had kindly lent. About 8pm the sky cleared and we were favoured with a beautiful sunset. The wind fell and practically no further progress could be made, so it was decided to ‘shoot’ the nets.

We were about mid-channel – the Manx coast on the one hand and the Mourne Mountains on the other being distinctly visible. A large number of puffins and other birds were flying about which made the men think they might have a successful night. The sails were lowered with the exception of a small jib; and as the boat slowly moved on by means of this one sail the net was cast out, it being connected at intervals to a strong rope called the ‘spring-back’, the same length as the net, the purpose of which will be explained in a moment. The two are connected together by one of the men as they are thrown out.

Let me try and explain the nature and position of the net as it lies in the water. On the surface there are large cock floats about every ten yards; from these  hang down thin ropes, called the ‘straps’, about nine feet long, which are fastened to the spring-back. From this, again, hang thin ropes called the ‘legs’, about 12 feet long. These are fastened to the rope along the top of the net which is called the ‘back’, and the net itself, weighted at the bottom to keep it perpendicular, is about 30 feet deep; so that from the surface of the water to the top of the net is about 21 feet, to the bottom of the net 51 feet. The length of the net is about one mile or sometimes longer than that.

The object of having the net so far below the surface is partly, of course, as being more favourable for catching the fish, but also to enable any ship which might happen to cross the net to do so without causing any damage. Even still, a ship drawing a great deal of water such as our ironclads, will sometimes carry away their nets to the great loss of the fishermen.

The whole of the net having been ‘shot’ out, the large mast is lowered in order that the boat may not roll so much in a rough sea and also to prevent the wind catching her so much. A small sail at the stern keeps her steady with her head to the wind. A light is put up as a danger signal, one man stays on deck to keep watch, the rest retired for the night. And there the boat lies tossing aobut on the rolling waves, looking very much like a wreck, with her mast lying down and her ropes hanging loosely about.

Before we lay down to rest in the small cabin … an evening hymn was sung and prayer offered by one of the men, commending themselves and their loved ones to the care of our Heavenly Father and asking Him to ‘preserve to them the produce of the seas.’ This is an old time-honoured custom among the fishermen; it is still kept up on many of the boats, though not on all. It was rather a remarkable fact that all  my seven companions that night were total abstainers. Nothing of an intoxicating nature is allowed on board the Puffin.

It was very hot and stuffy with seven of us in the small cabin, about three yards long by two yards wide, and a hot fire in the grate on an August evening! This heat and the rolling of the boat in a rough sea were very conducive to sea-sickness. I was not sorry when at 3am the day began to dawn and all hands were called on deck to haul in the net. This, of course, is the most interesting part of the proceedings.

The net is no drawn in from the two ends, enclosing the fish, as many of us might suppose, but just hauled in from the one end in the following manner: Two men work at the winch, hauling in the spring-back. The boat is thus gradually drawn along by the weight of the net. Another man unfastens the cords connecting the spring-back to the net; two others haul in the  net and set free the fish; one arranges the net in order in the hold as it comes in, another coils up the spring-back in another part of the hold; so that the seven men are really required for the work. The fish are caught by swimming into the net and getting fastened by their gills in its meshes. Then, as the net is hauled over the bulwarks, they are pulled off one by on or, if the catch is a large one, they are shaken off on to the deck by jerking the net.

Unfortunately, the fish seem to be leaving the Irish Sea; for the last four or five years only very few have been caught. Only 400 were taken on this occasion and many a night they do not take so many as that, whereas in the good days they could take as many as the boats could carry. They have sometimes been known to take as many as 100 ‘mease’ (a mease = five full hundreds of 120 each). One cannot help feeling great sympathy for the fishermen in the poverty and distress which seem to threaten them at present. The hauling of the net took over an hour. Then the mast of the boat was re-erected, the sails hoisted, and her bow turned towards home.We caught a few more mackerel with the trawling-line while returning.

Breakfast was prepared on board consisting of coffee, bread and butter, and a real fresh herring, which was most delicious. The sun rising over the Manx hills and lighting up the sky with very varied tints made a beautiful picture. A strong, favourable wind bore us on at a great speed and by 8am I was back again in Port Erin Bay after a very interesting and enjoyable experience.

transcribed from The Church Monthly annual 1894 with permission of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council.

From ‘Up in a Lighthouse’ by F M Holmes, published in The Church Monthly annual 1894

Above: The Inchcape Rock Lighthouse

‘Take care! Mind how you go! These steps were not built for unaccustomed visitors.’

‘All right, I can manage, I am used to strange places.’ And clinging tightly to the rail we mount the almost perpendicular stairs.

So solid is the masonry around, so firmly jointed together and so smooth for the raging sea to slip past without doing any damage, that the broad-based tower seems as thought it might live for ever.

Look below at the foundations. ‘Aye, they are cut deep into the solid rock,’ says the lighthouse keeper; ‘and then for 20 or 30 feet up the tower is built strong blocks of granite dovetailed together.’

At about that height the dwelling rooms commence, one above another, and are reached by ladders. Three men always live here, the full staff being four; but one is usually away  on shore, the men going off duty in rotation.

At the top of the tower rises the lantern – of strictly speaking, the lamp-room – about 10 feet high, whence the guiding light flashes forth over miles of sea.

The lantern is largely made of glass, like a hothouse; and splendid views you can gain through its glazed sides of miles of heaving seas. A blue expanse it appears this afternoon, flecked with white in the summer sunshine.

In the room itself glass and bright metal glint everywhere. It is domed with copper, and fitted with quarter-inch or half-inch plate glass ‘sides supported in diagonal astragals, or mouldings of gun-metal. These are so arranged that they do not intercept the light when it is required to beam forth.

In the centre rises the lighting apparatus and, at first sight, it seems something like a mound of prisms. What can be the reason for all these ribs of glass? The answer is that they  help to condense the rays of light into one strong beam.

‘Why, I suppose our light here,’ says the lighthouse keeper, ‘can be seen for nearly 20 miles – 17 at least, and perhaps more.’

‘But I can’t see how these curious triangular ribs can accomplish that.’

‘Well, you must know – nearly everybody knows – how much a shining reflector behind a lamp intensifies its light in one direction. And the mirror is usually concave to bend the rays that radiate above and below more decidedly into one line. That is what these reflectors accomplish; only far, far more effectually. A parabolic reflector 20 inches or so across will increase the light-giving power of the lamp about 400 times, or even more.’

‘Then these prisms are to bend down the rays of light that would rise too high, and to bend up the rays of light that would sink too low?’

‘Exactly; we do not want to try and illuminate the sky and the sea; we want to send strong beams as far as we can round the horizon. A lighthouse is a guide, rather than an illuminator, like a street lamp.’

‘And why have you several reflectors group round like this?’

‘In order to send several beams of equal power all round the horizon, where these is sea. That arrangement gives what we call a fixed light. For a revolving light, if the reflectors be grouped on a frame, with only two or more faces as required, and the frame be caused to revolve, light and dark intervals are, of course, produced – for the light only shines through the faces. In a similar manner, by a suitable arrangement of the reflectors, a group-flashing light is produced – that is, a light giving two or three flashes and then a brief period of darkness. Light of different colours can also be shown.’

‘Ah, just so. It is by such means as these that lights are given their characteristic and distinguishing features.’

‘And, by nothing their number of flashes or other peculiarities, a sailor can tell what light it is and consequently determine, more or less, his position.  Of course, we have a lens as well – even a policeman’s bull’s-eye lantern has a lens – and with the numerous wicks and large lamp-flame now used, and the big prisms bending above and below, there is not a ray of light that escapes.’

This system is called holophotal. The word means reflecting or refracting light without loss of light. Paraffin is the illuminant. ‘Nearly every sort of oil haws been used,’ says the lighthouse keeper, ‘but paraffin comes to the top. It burns brighter, and it is cheaper.’

Peering into the midst of the prisms to see the gigantic lamp itself, we distinguish not one wick but many – seven in fact, like concentric rings – one within the other.  Some lights, indeed, have nine wicks; this multiplication of them, of course, greatly increasing the illuminating power. With these numerous wicks, the oil has to be supplied by clock-work pumps, or pushed by a heavy piston. An overflow pipe permits the paraffin to run back to the fountain should it at any time rise above a certain point.

The electric light has also been used with great success at various lighthouses; and for harbour lights, where gas may be readily obtained, that illuminant is sometimes employed. But at times even the most powerful illuminants are obscured by fog – what then?

Then this curious-looking trumpet comes into play. Terrible is the nose it makes. No human breath blows it. Gas engines are needed, and in some lighthouses oil engines and compressed air are used to evoke its ear-splitting but useful sound. When the day is dense with obscuring fog and even the light of a nine-wick  lamp, focussed into a few powerful beams by many prisms, can struggle but a poor mile or two into the bewildering gloom, then this trumpet, called by strange irony a siren, will shriek forth its warning blasts.

There are two discs in the siren-trumpet, each disc a foot in diameter, and with a dozen radial slits. One disc is fixed but the other rotates rapidly, nearly 2000 times a minute.  Sirens can be so arranged as to give signals, such as two or three blasts in rapid succession at certain intervals; and the passing sailors should then know the lighthouse, even as if they could see its characteristic light. The shriek of the siren can be heard sometimes for ten miles. Charges of detonating powder are also fired at some stations, electricity being used to explode the cartridges; so that when the light fails to piece the shrouding fog, the lighthouses still strive to perform their duty of guiding and warning, by means of thunderous sound. A little-known explosive called tonite is sometimes used for these warnings. Tonite appears to be a mixture of gun-cotton and nitrate of baryta forced into a cartridge like a candle.

‘And what are those panes?’ you ask; looking a frameworks of copper filled with glass.

‘Storm panes,’ is the answer; ‘they are kept in readiness should a pane of glass be broken in the lantern.’

‘And do you often have to use them?’

‘Very rarely; and then it is generally because birds or stones are blown against the lantern glass in a tremendous gale. It is very seldom that the wind alone breaks the glass. You see these gun-metal mouldings and thick plate glass panes are very strong.’

‘Do birds break the glass?’ exclaims some one in surprise.

‘They do so, and no mistake. You might be watching here some dark night and see scores of birds beating against the glass, and blown hard against it. Perhaps they are migrating to another country at the change of seasons, or perhaps they are coming to this land. Anyhow, there they are; likely enough they are tired out with their flight and attracted by the light, or knocked against the glass by the wind.’

What a different scene is thus conjured up, from the calm, bright summer sunshine of the lovely afternoon. But whatever the moods of weather – though tempests rage and torrents of rain lash the streaming glass; though the storm-tossed billows strike the house with thunderous sound, and dash the spray high up the sides; though the blasts seems to shake the massive tower with the fury of wind and wave; though choking fog encompass it around, or the calm moon rides in a cloudless sky – yet still in every change of changeful life this friendly beacon sends forth its warnings of light and sound.

Reproduced with permission of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council

From The Church Monthly in 1894: “Out with the Fire Brigade” by F M Holmes

There is the alarm bell!

The startling clang rings through the room and a tablet has fallen on the wall, not far from your head, revealing the name of the London street whence the alarm was given.

Some one has broken the glass and pulled the handle of the fire-alarm post in that thoroughfare, and instantly all the arrangements of the station for proceeding to the fire are set in motion.

There are always men on duty, and more alarm bells ring with noise enough to wake the proverbial Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. A pair of horses are always in readiness, their noble heads, full of animation and expectancy, turned towards the stable door and the light  harness hanging over them,  ready to descend at a second’s notice, is dropped on their backs.

The intelligent creatures know the ring of the alarm bell as well as the men and are as eager to be off. The preparations are so complete that, when a rope is pulled, down falls the harness. Full of excitement, the steeds are led to the engine which, in its turn, is as fully prepared as are the horses. The traces are hooked on, the men  jump to their seats, and with the startling cry of ‘Fire! Fire!’ screamed as only a London fireman can utter it, the engine tears out of the station and into the street. Less than two minutes has elapsed since the ringing of the alarm bell; and the engine is already on its way.

Most exciting is the rush through the streets. Quick movement through the air is usually exhilarating at any time and to this is added the excitement of the fire and the startling cries of the firemen. Everything scatters before us. Even the red carts of the Post Office – which may trespass on the thoroughfares reserved for royal processions – have to give place to the dashing Fire Brigade.

With steam hissing from the boiler, with horses all aglow with excitement, and with alarming cries of ‘Fire! Fire!’ ringing along the street, a pathway opens as if by magic through the most crowded thoroughfares; and almost before you know it you have arrived at the scene of the fire.

Here the excitement is no less; but the men are as cool as cucumbers. ‘Play on that part of the building’, comes the order, hardly sooner said than done. The engine, which a few minutes ago was quiet at the station, is now at vigorous work some miles distant from its home.

The flames burst out through the veil of smoke and leap upward to the sky. The gathering crowd press forward with excited faces and are, with difficulty, kept back by the few policemen on the spot. A cry raises: ‘Somebody is in the building!’ And here comes the fire-escape which will reach the highest windows. It is placed against the house and quickly a fireman mounts. See! he has rescued a mother and child, and he brings them down amid excited cheers. Sometimes he has a much harder task; for he enters the burning building and gropes amid the blinding smoke and scorching heat to rescue the half-suffocated sufferers from the flames.

Meantime, other engines have arrived. Each fulfils its part. While some are playing on the fire itself, others are drenching surrounding walls with water to prevent the fire from spreading; and ere long the officer in charge will be able to report that the fire is localised and mastered.  Wise forethought, as well as smart promptitude on the part of the men, have contributed to these satisfactory results.

If you had inspected the engine you would have found everything ready for instant departure – the fire laid, axes, hose, and apparatus in position; but you would also have found two things which perhaps you would not expect. Under the boiler is placed a movable gas jet which keeps the water always hot; and by the funnel is  large fusee [a large-headed match capable of staying alight in strong winds].

When the alarm sounds, one of the men on duty ignites the fusee at once – he knows exactly where to find it – and drops it down the chimney. The fusee is certain to flame well and lights the material below, already prepared to receive its fiery touch. The quick rush of the engine through the air does the rest; for the speed creates such a strong draught that the engine fire soon roars in its box, and raises the heated water to steam.

The steam in the fire-engine is used for pumping the water and throwing it on the burning building. But, successful as it is, the steam fire-engine has not superseded the use of manuals; while for small fires – of which there are a great number in the Metropolis – the little portable hand-pumps are said to be of the greatest value. These little pumps can be used anywhere, and taken into rooms where the fire may be burning. Speedily used they will, in ordinary circumstances, quickly extinguish the flames and prevent a little conflagration from becoming a big one. The water for their use is contained in a bucket which is supplied by other buckets of water handed up by assistants.

Valuable as these little pumps are for small fires, however, there is need, of course, for the glittering and powerful steam fire-engines for bigger fires; and of these ‘steamers’ the Brigade have fifty on land and about ten floating on the Thames. There are also a large number of manuals. Their wheels are broad and tired with wavy iron bands which project in some places beyond the sides of the wheels themselves.

Many persons, no doubt, would puzzle for hours over the reason for these strange iron tires; but the reason is simple. They are used to prevent the wheels from canting or tripping at the tram rails which seam so many London thoroughfares. It would be a bad accident, and a terrible hindrance at a critical time,  for a fire-engine to be overturned when driven at a headlong pace to a fire. In the same way, should a horse fall when tearing along, the harness is so arranged that the turning of a swivel-bar at the end of the engine-pole dividing the two horses, will free the animal in front, and he can be unhooked and helped to his feet again in a trice.

The hose also is subjected to a most severe testing before being used. At a fire, the water is forced through the hose at a pressure of a 110 pounds to the square inch. For a hose to burst under this strain would be a great disaster. Consequently, every length is tested up to the severe strain of 300 pounds to the square inch, so that it is as certain as anything mortal can be to stand firm in actual work. The hose is now made of strong, India rubber-lined canvas which is light and flexible as well as tough and tenacious, and has quite superseded the old hose, made of pieces of leather and riveted together by metal fastenings. The hose for the suction-pipe, communicating with the water supply, is usually stiffened by spiral wire and is still very flexible.

A fire-engine, therefore, has to do two things: it has to draw large quantities of water from a suitable source of supply; and it has to throw that water, steadily and continuously, and sometimes to a great height, on to the fire. This is accomplished by means of force-pumps in the engine and an air-chamber. The pumps draw water through the suction tube from the water pipes under the street, or other suitable source of supply, and force the precious fluid into a strong air-chamber or chest, thereby compressing the air in that chest to a high degree. But, having pressed the air to a certain point, the air itself will, in its turn, become stronger than the fore-pumps, and exert pressure on the water, which it forces out through the host to the fire. It will continue to do this until the water sinks in the chest.  So long, therefore, as the two pumps force water into the chest, up to or above the requisite level, so long will the compressed air expel the water to the fire in a steady and continuous stream. The two pumps are arranged to work reciprocally – that is, one is drawing water, while the other is forcing it into the air-chamber, each in its turn.

The rule is that a steamer shall go from one station and a manual from another station in the neighbourhood.  Thus, the stations are not left without resources should another fire break out in the district. All the Metropolitan stations are connected by telegraphic or telephonic communications, so that the Headquarters at Southwark can be acquainted with all that occurs as regards fires in the Metropolis, and a large force concentrated speedily, if necessary, at any point. In addition to Headquarters there are five District Stations, each having a superintendent in control of the district, and having telephonic speech with Headquarters, and with each station in the district.

Being liable to be rung up in their sleep, firemen are, so to speak, kept constantly on duty, except for 24 hours in every 14 days which is their ‘day off’. Should, unfortunately, several fires occur about the same time in the same neighbourhood, the men may have to work for some 36 hours at a time. And, on returning from a fire, the hose has to be cleaned and scrubbed, and hung up in the hose-well to dry; the engines have to be kept in good order, and prepared for another journey at once should necessity arise.

Constant vigilance is the order of the day with the Fire Brigade; and to this is added elaborate preparation and daring bravery. Most of the outside public see only the headlong speed and feel the exciting thrill of the fateful moment; but behind and around that dashing ride lies the most careful fore-thought.

Reproduced with the permission of Aysgarth PCC.

Steam fire engines were in use from the 1840s until the 1920s. For more about them and a photo of horses pulling one at speed  click here

On her Majesty’ Service

by Frederick Sherlock:

Everybody knows the telegraph messenger. All over the kingdom, in  town and country, his bright, smart uniform is to be seen and, next to the postman, no public servant of the Queen is more in request. His office is one of great responsibility and usefulness; and if on any given day the electric telegraph suddenly came to an end, business would speedily become disorganised, and a great inroad would also be made upon the happiness of many  homes.

The messenger has no knowledge of the contents of the brown envelopes which are put into his hands to deliver with all speed. When he knocks at the door and hands in his message, he cannot tell whether he is a bearer of good news or ill. Sometimes his visit means nothing but sorrow. It may be the loss of the breadwinner by a fatal accident; or the news of a loved soldier son’s death in a far-off clime; or the tale of an attached daughter’s end in a London hospital after a lingering disease. Ah, well! for good or ill the telegraph messenger bustles about day after day, proud to be in Her Majesty’s service, and conscious that his calling is of real use to the community.

The conditions on which boys are taken into the service are not without interest. The limits of age are from 13 to  15.

Candidates between 13 and 14 must be at least four feet seven inches in height, without boots, and candidates between 14 and 15 not less than four feet eight inches. They must have passed Standard V of the new Educational Code, or some equivalent test, and are required to produce a satisfactory certificate of health from their own medical attendant, and certificate of having been satisfactorily vaccinated within the last seven years.

Duty does not commence, as a rule, before 8am and it continues for nine hours. The wages are 7s a week, rising by 1s a week annually to 11s, and uniform is supplied, including boots. All candidates have to sign a declaration, stating they are fully aware that this employment will not entitle them to promotion, compensation, or pension. That their services will be discontinued on their attaining 16 years of age, unless they then succeed in passing a competitive examination for direct appointment as postmen on reaching 18 years of age, or elect to remain two years longer as messengers, on the understanding that if they then enlist as soldiers, they shall, after serving the prescribed time with the colours, have preference over soldiers who have never been in the service of the Post Office, in obtaining employment in that department.

The other day I had a peep at the small Blue Book of ‘Instructions for Messengers in London’, which each messenger is required to produce at every inspection, and also whenever asked for by the messenger’s superior officer. The instructions cover conduct and delivery.  Rule 6. ‘You are at all times to keep yourself scrupulously clean, and to have your hair short and neatly cut.’ Or Rule 9… ‘You must take off your cap when in the Office, and you must always be respectful in your manner when spoken to by any person.’ City messengers are specially cautioned against sliding down handrails of the staircases! This is certainly a hard saying, for most health, high-spirited lads are under the impression that sliding down the handrail is an expeditious and graceful way of coming downstairs!

Rules 11 and 12 will command the sympathy of many people. 11. ‘You are strictly forbidden to smoke in or abut the Office, at any time, or in the streets when you are in uniform. Gambling, raffling, playing cards, and practical joking are strictly prohibited’. 12. ‘You must not, on any account, go into public-houses during your hours of duty except to deliver telegrams,’ which leads me to say that the Post Office.

At Christmas time severe temptations are placed in the way of the postmen and telegraph messengers. The ‘Christmas Glass’ has been the ruin of many fine fellows. Let us hope that this year the Christmas box to the postman and to the telegraph messenger will be in current coin, so that the receiver may take it  home, and spend it in the way he thinks best, or put it by in the Savings Bank for the rainy day which is sure to come when least expected.

From Church Monthly  1893, pp336-338. with permission of Aysgarth PCC.  The illustration was drawn by H Johnson