A prison sentence today has been cynically likened by some people to being at Butlins when compared with the austere conditions of penal servitude in the 19th century. Assuredly, conditions were a lot harsher then, and nobody living at the time would likely have doubted that one stretch in prison was an effective deterrent against [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Hardy’
Hardy’s Church
St. Michael’s at Stinsford is often spoken of as “Hardy’s church,” a reference to Dorset’s most famous son; the novelist, poet and architect Thomas Hardy, who said, “I shall sleep quite calmly at Stinsford, whatever happens.”
The writer had discussed his funeral with Stinsford’s vicar the Rev. H.G.B. Cowley but when the time came the literati [...]
Edgar Lane – Musician of Distinction
“Dorset has lost a distinguished musician, one who shed lustre on the profession with which throughout his lifetime he had been associated” (Southern Times, February 11th 1938.) So ran this obituary to one of the two most distinguished musical figures to be associated with Dorset in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor was Edgar Alfred [...]
Frederick William Boyton Smith
Today he is virtually forgotten, yet he fathered no fewer than one hundred and ninety three short salon pieces and organ works. Information about his remarkable life is distinctly hard to obtain, yet he was a contemporary and associate of Thomas Hardy, and set many of the writer’s poems to music. Now, after more than [...]
Harry Pouncy – A great publicist for the Dorset scene
Just two months before he died Harry Pouncy visited Pokesdown Technical School in Bournemouth to do what he had become accomplished at doing as an erudite hobby throughout his life: to present a lecture with slides on the beloved county of his birth. Of that lecture on February 3rd 1925 the Bournemouth Echo reported: “There [...]
Dorset – Smugglers Coast
The south coast of England in particular has had a long tradition of smuggling, especially where there are many coves or inlets ideal for concealing contraband. Devon and Cornwall are particularly well endowed in this regard, but Dorset has hardly been less important as a focus for the trade. The life of Isaac Gulliver, the [...]
John Pouncy
Although beginning his working life as a house decorator, John Pouncy became a pioneer in the development of photography, a creative but somewhat immodest genius who had to contend with rivalry over the inventor-ship of the process he was convinced he could rightly lay claim to. He also had a sympathetic and philanthropic side to [...]
Nellie Titterington – Maid of Max Gate
She was a domestic in a class apart: a kindly, no-nonsense servant living towards the tail end of the age of domestic service. But Nellie Titterington was not just another woman in service in a household of the gentry or privileged upper class. She was privy to the private life and foibles of Dorset’s – [...]
