Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/427

 s. i. APRIL so, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

cities, the tolling of the bell to register th

actual death-stroke is probably continued k,

this day, and contributors will no doubt b

able to supply instances of the survival o

the " passing," as distinct from the "funeral

bell, other than those furnished below. On

of the peculiar features of the practice i

the account rendered by the bellringer, in

the number of his strokes, of the age of tb

deceased. In some -districts it is alway

rung exactly twenty-five hours after death

the tenor bell for the adult and the treble fo

a child, the big bell being reserved fo

funerals. In rural districts, we are told in

Mr. William Andrews's 'Curious Churcl

Customs,' 1895, p. 129, after the passing-bel

has tolled, the sex of the deceased is indi

cated most generally by tolling twice for a

woman and thrice for a man, and to this is

often added the age by giving one toll for

each year. In the Penny Post of 1 February,

1871, the passing-bell is described as being

then still rung " at a village near Grantham,

Lincolnshire" (p. 55). Up till 1865 in the

town of Guildford (and possibly it is still the

custom) the passing-bell was tolled every

morning after the parishioner's death until

the funeral morning ; and a lady who died

about the year 1868, aged seventy-two,

remembered the passing-bell at Somerton, in

Oxfordshire. Some information as to this

survival may also be found, I think, in

vols. xxi. and xxiv. of the Penny Post.

J. H. MACMlCHAEL.

Passing-bells are by no means out of use in very many parish churches, even in London. At present, and as long as I can remember during thirty years, announcements of the nature in question are and were frequent from the campanile of St. Peter's, Hammer- smith. I remember the same custom obtain- ing when I was a boy in the parish church of Bermondsey. O.

In the North the passing-bell is more generally known as the death bell. DR. MURRAY will find scores of references on the subject in past volumes of ' N. & Q.'

The Venerable Bede was perhaps the first to make mention of the passing bell, but if DR. MURRAY will look up Strutt's ' Manners and Customs ' and Bourne's ' Antiquitates Vulgares,' he will, I think, find much of the information he desires.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D. Bradford.

The custom of tolling the passing-bell while a person is dying still prevails in Belgium, and probably in other Catholic countries as well. I recollect that while I was staying in

a religious house near Ghent some years since the bell was tolled at intervals all day for a member of the community who was on his death-bed. The death bell is, I believe, tolled in a different manner, so that those who hear it know at once whether it is for a passing soul or for one who has already passed. In some parts of Ireland the passing as well as the death bell are still rung, I am told, as no doubt they were in many places in England up till the commencement of the nineteenth century. FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

I believe I am correct in saying that the passing-bell, as ordered by Canon 67, is still tolled at the parish church of Offham, St. Michael, in Kent. Why this ancient and most fitting custom should have been allowed to fall into disuse it is hard to say, but most probably negligence has been the cause, as is so often the case in regard to old customs. JOHN SYDNEY HAM.

DR. SAMUEL HINDS, FORMERLY BISHOP OF NORWICH (10 th S. i. 227). I have made a con- siderable search as to the funeral of this well- jnown prelate, but, so far, find no record of _t. I was at the Guildhall Library about a
 * ortnight ago, and mentioned the matter to

an elderly clergyman, an entire stranger to me, who said that for a year or two before the bishop's resignation he was doing tem- porary duty in the Norwich diocese, and remembered many of the circumstances of the

ie. The bishop's resignation was entirely due to the way in which Mrs. Hinds (his second vife) was received in Norwich society. It was well known that she was much below lim in station, and was (so my informant tated) a domestic servant in his household. ?he obituary notice of about a quarter of a
 * olumn in the Times of Monday, 12 February,

872, stated that "he resigned the see of Norwich in 1857, from domestic reasons much anvassed at the time, and retired into private life." In the Times of the previous Saturday, among the deaths, the notice eads :

" On the morning of the 7th inst., at his private esidence at Netting Hill, after many years of con- inuous and great suffering, the Right Rev. Samuel [inds, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich, in his 8th year."

The 'D.N.B.,' in its notice of Dr. Hinds, eems rather to bear out the statement of my [erica! informant, for, while it gives full articulars of his first wife, his second narriage is thus recorded, "He married a econd time some years before his death," no articulars as to his second wife being given, 'or many years he resided at Walmer House,