The news

Jul 06, 2015 21:26

I found these when I was looking for something else. They are all taken from newspapers in my area, collected by local historian Pip Wright.



This sort of thing happens all the time round our way:

Witch bottles
Stephen Choppen, once the village blacksmith of Hadleigh in Essex, whose suicide was reported lately, took his life just as he had entered upon a wider notoriety. He was one of the characters in Mr. Arthur Morrison’s last book ‘Cunning Murrell,’ which was published only a few weeks back. A sketch of him with his dog and his cat also accompanied an article in ‘The Strand.’ Choppen was a link with a strange survival of superstition.
It was he who forged the iron witch bottles with which the wizard Murrell drove out devils. It is now 40 years ago since the wizard of Hadleigh died ...and Choppen must have been quite a youth when he started welding the witch bottles. Mr. Morrison tells us that when he last saw Choppen, a few months ago, the memory of the making of the first bottle was still a vivid one. The bottle, said Choppen, gave him trouble in the forging, for which he could not account. The iron wholly refused to be welded - till Cunning Murrell arrived and blew the fire, when all went well. The wizard used to fill these iron bottles with blood, water, fingernails, hair and pins. The bottles screwed up airtight, were placed in the fire by way of process against witches, and frequently burst with great success and devastation, thus signalising the destruction of the diabolical influence. Unfortunately, no witch bottle is left behind, the last one being destroyed in a bit of hocus pocus by Buck Murrell, Cunning’s son.
Aldeburgh, Leiston & Saxmundham Times: November 10th 1900

I can't believe people would say that about Prince Nicholas:

An absurd story is going about in the papers to the effect that Prince Nicholas of Montenegro went to visit the Queen dressed in a “kilt,” and some papers have gone so far as to embroider the original statement by saying that the garment was made of white muslin and stuck out like a ballet dancer’s skirt. Prince Nicholas does not wear, and never has worn, the "fustanella" which is the distinctive dress of the Mahomedans of Albania. What the correspondents mistook for a kilt was his long Montenegrin coat, which resembles nothing so much as an ordinary frock coat.
Woodbridge Reporter: April 15th 1897

Oh, those West End Doctors eh:

Many West End Doctors are setting their faces against fox-hunting for women, not so much because of the occasional accidents, but because of, the intense mental strain and nervous excitement which cross-country riding entails.
Eastern Daily Press: March 20th 1896

Here is a sad story about my street. The Star of the East (now the Ipswich Star) and the Eastern Daily Press, above, are two of the papers I work on:

The Star of the East, on October 27th 1891, carried details of an inquest on George Henry Stannard of the inappropriately named ‘Mount Pleasant.’ This was a slum in the Back Hamlet of Ipswich. He had died from eating toadstools. A widower, ‘addicted to drink,’ Stannard had previously been imprisoned for neglecting his five children who were discovered ‘in a most filthy condition covered with vermin and matted hair. The only furniture in the house was a damaged table, 3 chairs, a knife & spoon and a thin straw mattress.’ The children had survived by running errands for neighbours who gave them coppers, with which they purchased bread and herrings.
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