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January 19th, 2010:

The Fifth of November and Christmas in the Workhouse 1860

Jan 19th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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A report in the Dorset County Chronicle of 8th November 1860 comments “Just as the legislature appears determined to suppress the commemoration of ‘The Gunpowder Plot’ the custom has revived in spirit so far as Dorchester is concerned.”

Under the dateline “The Fifth of November” readers were told that “not for some time have the streets of Dorchester witnessed such scenes” squibs and crackers flying about in all directions, and several large tar-barrels and fireballs being rolled along amidst crowds of small boys and “children of larger growth.”

The main event, however, was a torchlight procession, in the midst of which a large effigy of the Pope was borne along, suspended from a gallows. The scene reminded the Chronicle’s reporter of Carnival: people dressed in a variety of “outlandish” costumes including representations of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi escorting a youth in women’s attire as “Young Italy,” at the head of the procession.

The large crowd paraded along High West Street and South Street during which the liberator of Italy was loudly cheered. Then onto the Maumbury Rings where the effigy was burnt surrounded by the revellers whose faces were eerily lit by the light of the torches and all the while squibs were being thrown about.

“Young Italy” was borne triumphantly back into the town “the streets of which resumed their ordinary quiet aspect after the assemblage had exhausted their store of fireworks.”

Around the 19th December 1860 the weather turned: promising Dorset a white Christmas, heralded by a severe frost. ‘The Chronicle’ reported that a gentleman had written to ‘The Times’ telling that the temperature in his garden had reached 8 degrees below freezing.

The cold spell ended over the New Year. “There was a heavy fall of rain and the snow, which had covered the ground to a depth of several inches, disappeared on Sunday with a rapidity that was truly astonishing and must have caused considerable inconvenience by flooding the land in various localities.”

At Wool the pressure of water was so great it damaged a culvert near the railway station making the line dangerous to trains. A telegraph message was sent to Dorchester and a “body of men were set to work so as to temporarily make the line good.” The newspaper’s report continued “W.Meare, Esq., the able superintendent, made arrangements for engines to meet at the spot, so that the traffic was conducted with only a short delay, and the trains were able to run as usual on Monday.”

At Bridport a building that was being erected was blown down. The building some 400-feet in length had been constructed to a height of two storeys and roofed, but the “ends were open and thus the wind found play and the place was rendered a complete wreck.”

The unusually severe weather brought plenty of wild fowl into the extensive waters between Wareham and Poole and many fell to the guns of the locals living along the shore.

The weather did not stop those more fortunate from providing some Christmas cheer for their poorer neighbours. On Christmas Day all the inmates of the Dorchester Union workhouse had roast beef, plum pudding, with beer and tobacco for the men. A round of festivities continued ’till New Years day.

Mrs. Herbert Williams of Stinsford who was of the habit of having the children from the Dorchester Union house visit her residence at Stinsford for a feast had instead to take liberal amounts of plum pudding, sweet cakes and tea to the workhouse.

The old folk of the union house were entertained to dinner by the Rev. T. R. Maskew where they “thoroughly enjoyed themselves over plenty of roast beef and plum pudding with plenty of other delicacies.” The following day it was the turn of Captain and Mrs. Kindersley, of Syward Lodge who treated all the inmates with cakes, the women with tea and sugar, the men with tobacco and a variety of toys for the children. On the Monday after Christmas the Misses Campbell gave the children cakes and toys and the women tea and cake.

On New Years day Dorchester’s mayor J. F. Hodges Esq., provided a substantial dinner and tea for the workhouse inmates. He granted the women a store of tea and the men a quantity of tobacco. He also gave to the residents of the Almshouses tea, sugar and a quantity of beef, “with which to enjoy themselves at this festive season.” The Chronicle commented “The care shown by Mr Hodges for the poor, and his solicitude for their comfort and welfare, are most praiseworthy…”

Elsewhere around the county there were similar acts of kindness. At Gussage All Saints the better off parishioners, at their own expense, provided for the carriage from Poole of coal for the poor. The coal paid for by The Earl of Shaftesbury and The Provost and Fellows of Queen’s College, Oxford.

On Christmas Eve, Colonel Lutterell, “the proprietor of the valuable and much admired Wootton Manor” gave to the deserving poor of the parish of Wootton Fitzpaine, a large quantity of good beef.

At Wimborne Minster a Special Offertory was given on Christmas Day for distribution amongst the poor. At Charmouth after Christmas a large quantity of bread was given to the poor families of the parish and this was made possible by means of a bequest by the late John Bullen Esq. Good warm clothing was distributed to the poor by the charity of the late Mrs Marker.

A “notorious” poacher named Dicker who lived at Milborne St. Andrew was arrested and taken before magistrates at Blandford charged with shooting at one of the county police while in the execution of his duty.

Mary Anning – Fossil Collector of Lyme Regis

Jan 19th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Visitors to the Dorset resort of Lyme Regis in the 1820’s would most likely have noticed a diminutive brunette in a dark dress with cloak and bonnet, holding a basket in one hand and a claw-hammer in the other, picking her way over loose boulders wasted from the cliff. Probably they little realised that they were watching Mary Anning, and her business on the shore in those distant days was more than just a past time. The girl was out beach combing – not for the man made artefacts of her own time, but the astonishing profusion of fossils being weathered out by wind and waves from the wasting cliffs.

The girl began in a small way, collecting the numerous bivalves locally known as “Devil’s Toenails” (Gryphaea) and the bullet-shaped shells now known as belemnites (the skeleton of an early form of squid) but popularly called “Devil’s Thunderbolts.” Other popular names for the various fossils were “Ladies Fingers” “John Dories” or “Crocodile Bones.”

Mary was born in the town in 1799, the daughter of Richard Anning, a man living a lowly existence as Lyme’s carpenter and cabinetmaker. The family was not wealthy, and Richard and his wife (also called Mary) and their two children spent much of the time living on parish relief. Looking for a means to supplement his income, Anning conceived the bright idea of collecting and washing the myriad fossils to be found along the beach, to sell to tourists. Daughter Mary was a bright girl who took an intense interest in her father’s collecting. Before she was ten years old, she too was going out onto the beach with hammer and basket, the intention being to increase her father’s sale stock displayed outside his shop. In these forays her brother Joseph was often to be seen at her side.

Her first big break however, came in 1810 when she was eleven. In that year Richard Anning and Joseph discovered what seemed to them to be the head of a crocodile, worked loose from a recent cliff-fall. The carpenter felt certain the rest of the skeleton must have been left behind in the cliff, so he advised Mary to watch out for it when out on her regular collecting forays. But only a few months later her father was dead. In the meantime Mary continued to collect from Black Ven and Charmouth beaches. Then four months after her father’s death a violent storm caused a landslide, and the much prized “crocodile” skeleton was revealed. Mary skilfully traced out the fossil, hiring help to transport it, but it was several years before the 30-foot long creature was reconstructed.

What Mary had found was the first in a series of marine vertebrate finds which would make her name. It was in fact an Ichthyosaur, a now extinct marine reptile of the Jurassic period. Mary sold the Ichthyosaur to a Mr Henley for £23, a man who in turn would later sell it to the British Museum for twice as much. The specimen is now in the Natural History Museum. Ichthyosaurs were reptiles with a dolphin-like body, paddles, a fish-like tail and large eyes, but without a neck.

The next big find came in 1811, when Mary and Joseph unearthed the first Plesiosaur, a creature broadly similar to Ichthyosaurs, but having a long flexible neck and larger rear paddles. It could reach up to 40 feet in length. This skeleton first went to a natural history museum in Piccadilly before being purchased by the British Museum in 1819. In 1824 Mary made the discovery of the first Plesiosaur in perfect condition, though this specimen was much smaller than 40 feet. She sold this specimen for £120 guineas.

But there was to be another remarkable find in 1828; not a sea reptile this time, but a flying one. With a wingspan of 4 feet (up to 26 feet in an adult) this was the first Pterosaur, a creature called Dimorphodon, to be discovered virtually in tact. The fourth finger of each hand was elongated and supported a flight membrane. Dimorphodon probably flew by gliding.

Mary made the last important discovery in 1832, when another fine specimen of a 30-foot Ichthyosaur emerged from the Jurassic clay on the shore. On this occasion an amateur was accompanying her. This is now in the Natural History Museum, Kensington.

The fulcrum of Mary Anning’s collecting and discoveries was principally the need to make a living in hard times. As she searched Mary encountered many other people higher up the social scale than herself, who were nevertheless interested in her work. The Annings were poor, but on one occasion they did have a lucky break when Lt.Col. Birch of Thorpe Hall in Lincolnshire, hearing of Mary’s work and the family’s plight, gave the Annings £400 from the sale of his own fossil collection. She made the friendship of two sisters called Philpott, who often came to Lyme Regis to collect fossils themselves. Two men in particular, Sir Henry De la Beche, who founded the Geological Museum and School of Mines, and William Buckland, a clerical West Country geologist were influential in winning for Mary her enduring reputation and success.

In Mary’s day Lyme was becoming a popular resort and collectors were finding rare curiosities. The Anning fossils were regularly being bought by visitors arriving off the horse-coaches at the Pilot Inn. But the growing interest in the ancient animal remains was at a time when geological knowledge was in its infancy and very much framed within literal interpretation of the Bible and Creationist orthodoxy. The fossils being collected by Mary Anning and others were considered to represent thousands rather than millions of years, or were perhaps the remains of creatures, which perished in Noah’s Flood. Over the course of her short life, Mary’s work would make her well known and respected by many famous geologists of the day. She was aware – possibly ahead of her time – that fossils were not just curiosities, but were things of greater significance in the understanding of life on earth in its remoter antiquity.

Mary’s later years were spent in relative comfort. But she had never been robust, and by 1845 she had become morose and ill tempered, a trait which may have led to her becoming a lone beachcomber. The underlying cause of her disagreeable nature was probably the cancer, which was eventually to kill her. Nevertheless, this did not prevent her worth being appreciated by the scientific establishment, and she was elected a member of the Geological Society in recognition of her help to geologists of her day.

After her death in 1847 a stained glass window was dedicated to her memory in Lyme Church.