General Chat

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Gentleman’s Magazine

Newcastle-on-Tyne, Nov. 8 1819

Mr. URBAN,

THE concluding remarks of A. C. R. (p. S18), merit the greatest attention; and I now take up my pen for the purpose of still more strongly impressing their importance on your Clerical readers, who, I am afraid, consider the copying the Parish Register as an intolerable grievance.

It is a well-known fact, that by a Canon of James the First, the Clergyman of every Parish was required to send a copy of the Register annually to some particular place appointed by the Bishop of the Diocese: at present I believe this Law is regularly complied with ; but this has not always been the case, or at least if it has, the most shameful negligence is attributable to the person in whose keeping they have been placed; indeed I have some reason to suppose this, as I lately saw, in the possession of a friend, a great number of extracts from the Register of a certain Parish in this neighbourhood, and on questioning him as to the way in which he became possessed of them, was informed they were given to him by his Cheesemonger, and that they were copies, forwarded by the Clergyman of the Parish to the proper Office in a bordering Diocese, and had been allowed, through the negligence of their keeper, to obtain the distinguished honour of wrapping up cheese and bacon.

I can also attest, from my own knowledge, that no such records exist in the diocese of Durham, (except for the few last years) having lately had occasion to enquire for them, owing to the registers in the Parish being partly lost, and the remainder much mutilated. When we consider the great value of the information contained in Parish Registers, not only to Genealogists and Antiquaries, but to the people in general, as they are often required to establish claims to property which otherwise would probably be the source of endless litigation; I confess I am surprised that none of our reverend Divines (many of whom are distinguished for the great light they have thrown on Antiquarian subjects) should not, long ere this, have lent their aid to endeavour to remedy, this evil, so generally felt by Genealogists and County Historians, by completing the copies of all the Parish Registers; and thus preventing the possibility of a complete Ion which the burning of a Church, or other accidents, might occasion. Yours &c. DE THIRLEWALL.

In The Bermondsey Register, which begins in 1548

1604

The forme of a solemne Vowe betwixt a Man and his Wife, the Man having been longe absent, through which occasion the Woman being married to another Man took her againe as followeth.

The Man’s speech

Elizabeth, my beloved Wife, I am right sorie that I have so longe absented my sealfe from thee, wherby though shouldest be occasioned to take another man to thy husband

Therefore I do nowe vowe and promise, in the sight of God and this Companie, to take thee againe as mine owne, and do all other duties unto thee as I promised at our Mariage.


The Woman’s Speech

Raphe, my beloved husband, I am right sorie that I have in thy absence, taken another man to be my husband; but here, before God, and this Companie I do renounce and forsake him, and do promise to keep my sealfe onelie unto thee, duringe life, and to perform all duties which I first promised unto thee in our Mariage.


The Prayer

Almightie God, we beseech thee to pardon our offences and give us grace ever
hereafter to live together in thy feare, and to perform the holie duties of marriage one to another accordinge as we are taught in thy holie word, for thy deare Son’s sake, Jesus, Amen.

The first day of August 1604 Raphe Goodchilde of the Parish of Barkinge in Thames Street and Elizabeth his Wife weare agreed to live together, and thereupon gave their hands one to another, making either of them a solemn vow so to do in the presence of

William Stere, Parson
Edward Coker
Richard Eire, Clark

Susan,

Absolutely rivetting.

I spend a lot of time at the LMA just trawling various parish registers and you do come across some gems:)))

At the moment they are digitising the registers in preparation to putting them on line. This will make it much easier, of course, to find individual ancestors'
records but such a lot will be lost in not being able to see comments added by
various clergymen to some entries.

Just my opinion but to me genealogists
shouldn't have it too easy or all the fun goes out of this obsessive hobby.

Jean x.

I did enjoy reading that and especially the way they wrote thing down then. Wonderful. For a brief moment I was back in time. (I did have to laugh about the parish record being wrapped in cheese and bacon lol
Tina

Glad you liked them HS, my spell checker wasnt amused though :-)

Yes Jean, there are some real Gems, I love reading them too.

On Googlebooks there is a History of 'Parish Registers', which is well worth reading. It is not stuffy or boring, but informative as well as humorous. It may also explain why some of them are missing.

Even Dickens has written about them and tells us of the atrocities of PRs being used for numerous weird practices.

Perhaps I will use this thread for interesting Parish records entries :-)

Susan
x

From 'All year Round' 1862, by Charles Dickens, he says,

In recent time, a few years ago, the parish registers of Kew, certifying the ...
marriages, and deaths, were stolen, and they have not been recovered.....

I'll be going to the LMA again soon, I had no luck last time but now have a 'new' parish to search. There was an absolute gem of a lady on the staff there who gave me loads of help as I'd never been there before, I tried to thank her before I left but she'd disappeared!

Hi Shiela,

I wish I could go more often than I have. There is so much more than just names when reading the actual documents.


Monk Wearmouth. In 1790,

the Parish Registers were destroyed by fire at the residence of the minister, (except those of marriages from the 16th October, 1785, and of christenings from the 2d September, 1779, and of burials from the 3d January, 1768. The Vestry, under the sanction of the arch-deacon, sat for several successive days, published by advertisement, to receive and enter on record such authenticated copies of Registers as might be in existence, and the whole thus collected were sworn to before the magistrates at Sunderland, the 18th February, 1791.


The early Register of Barming, in Kent,

is a Transcript made in pursuance of Elizabeth's Injunction. It is unlike most, if not all others, it being written upon a roll of parchment, several yards in length ('); it has a memorandum indorsed upon it by the Rev. Mark Noble, the late Rector, that it had been out of the possession of the Rector for forty years, when Mr. Noble discovered it at the Homestall in a drawer, that Mrs. Dormer said it was
something she could not read, and that he claimed it and brought it away.


The Rev. S. Denne, rescued the Registers of two
Parishes in Leicestershire, one from the shop of a bookseller, and the other from the corner cupboard of a working blacksmith, where it had lain perishing and unheard of more than thirty years.


St. Mary, Aldermanbury.

In the year 1625, Mr. Downing, the Curate of this Parish, his wife, three of his children, and the Parish Clerk, were victims to the plague, and the consequence was that a hundred names were entered in the Register from recollection."

East Norton, Leicestershire.—The oldest Register of
this parish was taken away some years since, by one of the former Vicars, and no one now can tell where it is to be found. The present one is not of an earlier date than about 1780.

Birchington, Kent—At the end of the marriages and
burials in 1553, are the following notices of a Black
Book('). Here endeth the first boke of the Register of Bircheng- toun. The second boke, called the Black Boke, was spoiled by an ignorant woman."



Fleet Registers.

September ye 11th, 1745.

Edw"
and Elizab*
were married and would not let me know their names, y* man said
he was a weaver and liv'd in Bandylegwalk, in the Borough.


Bermondsey, Surrey.

James Herriott, Esqr and Elizabeth Josey, Gent, were married Jan. 4, 1624-5.

N. B. This James Herriott was one of the 40 children of his father a Scotchman.


Then there is the entry in one Parish register where the Minister voices his disdain at one womans prolific baptisms of children...he refused to enter any more into the registers.

Another book worth reading which also has some entries of those married in an 'unorthodox' way. A must for those who would like to understand more about the life and times of our ancestors. Highly amusing yet informative.

The Fleet Registers: Comprising the History of Fleet Marriages, ... By John Southerden Burn

From the Croydon Parish registers as recorded in

A Topographical History of Surrey

The parish Registers record a monstrous birth, from the body of- Rose Eastman, wife of John Eastman, being a child with two heads, four arms, four legs, one body, one navel, and distinction of two male
children, born the 27th of January, 1721-2.


On the 12th of May, 1728, so violent a storm of hail and rain, with thunder and lightning, fell at Croydon, as to strike the hail-stones, which were from eight to ten inches round, some inches into the earth. The cattle were forced into the ditches and drowned, windows were shattered, and great damage done. Great damage in and near Croydon was, also, done by a storm of thunder and lightning in 1744.

On the 12th of May, 1728, so violent a storm of hail and rain, with thunder and lightning, fell at Croydon, as to strike the hail-stones, which were from eight to ten inches round, some inches into the earth. The cattle were forced into the ditches and drowned, windows were shattered, and great damage done. Great damage in and near Croydon was, also, done by a storm of thunder and lightning in 1744.
________________________________________________

Seems the great British weather hasn't really changed that much after all?

Thanks for the interesting readings Susan,some are grim aren't they?

Mau x

Hi Mau,thanks for your interest :-)

There are many 'weather reports' in Parish registers and from reading other documents and books, it seems that disasters of the kind we see were common place even all those years ago. The way they are described it would seem the weather was far worse than we have ever experienced.

It is also interesting to note that a majority of Parishes had 'disaster funds' for places many many miles away and added to their Parish records.

Quite a few Ministers also added their feelings about particular people to be read by any who viewed the Parish records. There are some rather unflattering comments to be seen. Just as well this has died out now.....I wonder what would be written about people today lol

Moving on from Parishes records for the time being.......

The Social History of Great Britain During the Reigns of the Stuarts
By William Goodman
1847

NAILS.—The art of nail making is one of the most ancient in Birmingham. It is not, however, so much a trade in as of that town, for there are but few nail makers left in it. The manufacturers are so scattered round the country, that we cannot travel in any direction out of the sound of the hammer.*


When I first approached this town, says Mr. Hutton, from Walsall, in 1741, I was surprised at the prodigious number of blacksmith's shops upon the road ; and could not conceive how a country, though populous, could support so many people in the same occupation. In some of these shops. I observed one or more females stript of their upper garment, and not overcharged with their lower, wielding the hammer with all the grace of her sex. The beauties of their face were rather eclipsed by the smut of the fire. Struck with the novelty, I enquired ' whether the ladies in this country shod horses?' but was informed with a smile, 'they are nailers.'

Did you know?


LIVERPOOL.—This important sea port, now second only to London, in the year 1565, contained only 138 householders and cottagers. In the reign of William III., an act of parliament "vvas obtained, enabling the corporation to build and endow a Hew church, and to make the town independent of the neighbouring
village of Walton. Another church, St. Peter's, was
built in the reign of Queen Anne.
( it was called a village)


CHESTER was a sea port of considerable consequence, when its neighbour, Liverpool, was only a mere fishing village ; sixty years past, it was the principal mart for Irish linens, after which, that intercourse began to decline.


BRISTOL, in the reign of the Stuarts, was the second port in the kingdom, and long had the most considerable connexion With this Union and the West India Islands.

HULL was the principal port for the North Sea whale fishery and the Baltic trade.

Local Records; Or, Historical Register of Remarkable Events

1752 April 13.—

The following felons from Morpeth gaol were put on board the Owners' Goodwill, Captain Moorland, in order to be transported to South Carolina, for seven years, viz.:—Robert Armstrong ;

J. Fall, and Margaret his wife; William Fall, and Jane his wife; Robert Clark, and Elizabeth his wife ; James Robertson ; James Cowburn alias Cockburn ; Dominick M'Connel; Alice, wife of Robert Gibson; Jane Gregg, widow; Elizabeth, wife of J. Wilson alias Taylor; Thomas Kimmins; Peter Brown; Jane Campbell alias Wilson ; and Jane Gregg, junior. Armstrong was the person that used the gaoler and his wife and the turnkey so barbarously.

These felons were part of the very numerous gangs of Faws who infested the county of Northumberland, and who were incessantly shop-breaking and plundering. Fourteen were advertised as having returned within two years, and were again lurking about Northumberland. See April 18, 1767.

1754 (August 19).—

Dorothy Catinby, of Love Lane, on the Quay, Newcastle, was executed on the town-moor there, for the murder of her bastard child. She behaved in a very penitent manner, but persisted to the last that she did not murder her child.

The body, after hanging the usual time, was taken to the Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected, and lectured upon by Mr. Hallowell, Mr. Stodart, Mr. Lambert, and Mr. Gibson, surgeons.

Dorothy Catinby, who was a widow, left three children by her lawful husband, two sons and a daughter. The sons, it was said, after their mother's ignominious end, drowned themselves, and the daughter left her service in Newcastle, and went to a remote part of the kingdom, where she might live without reproach.

1758 April 11.—

Susannah Fleming, stood in the pillory at the White Cross, Newcastle, an hour, pursuant to her sentence, for the first time, (being to stand once in a quarter, for a year,) for fortune- telling ; who, though not molested by the populace, was nearly strangled before the time was expired, occasioned either by fainting and shrinking down, or by tying too much about her neck, and being thereby straightened in the hole.

A sailor, out of charity, brought her down the ladder upon his back, in nearly a dying state.


Hmmmm!....not saying a word!

1763 October 23—

In the evening, a washerwoman, named Susannah Nicholson, residing in the back Row, Newcastle, with a small knife cut and mangled herself in a most cruel manner: she cut off her nose, and both her ears, the upper eyelids of both eyes, most part of the under lip and part of the upper; she also cut about four inches across her throat, and also cut off part of both her breasts, and finished her unparalleled cruelty by stabbing herself in the left side, which entered into the cavity of the breast. In this most awful and horrid state she lived until the next day.

Coroner's verdict, lunacy. An account of this suicide found its way into the Paris papers, soon after it happened, and excited the horror and
commiseration of all Europe.

These are fascinating, Susan... odd how some things we thought were peculiar to our age, have actually been occurring a long long time.... isn't there some new law or act coming into effect soon that will curtail the activities of modern day fortune tellers and psychics?

And the weather!

And I would love to know what act of ignorance the poor woman committed, that destroyed those records!

Fascinating!

Love

Daff xxx