Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/180

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. A. 24, 1907.

in his pedestrian tour, nor does the company of his wife and stepdaughter account for the supposed omission. That tour only really began when Borrow, with twenty pounds in his pocket, parted from the ladies at Llangollen on Thursday, 21 Oct., 1854. His solitary southward tramp lasted till the evening of the 16th of the following month, when he took the train at Chepstow, " first class," for London to rejoin his family, his twenty-six days' walk having cost him considerably under a pound a day.

Between Llangadog and Gwynfe he meets a gipsy caravan and introduces himself to the driver, Capt. Bosvile, as the " Romany Rye " of thirty years ago. In the course of a thoroughly Borrovian conversation the worthy owner of the " fighting mug " tells him why the gipsies are fleeing from Wales. It is because " the country is overrun with Hindity miscrey, woild Irish, with whom the Romany foky stand no chance." I remember the reappearance of the Welsh gipsies quite well, and also the pitiful plight of the swarms of poor Irish vagrants who temporarily displaced them in the years succeeding the great famine in Ireland. In George Borrow's book alone have I ever seen in print any reference to this curious episode in Welsh rural economy. On the very last day of his trip, as he is trudging from Newport to Chepstow, Borrow en- counters a young Irish female tramp, who, though not herself actually a member of the recent exodus, gives him the other side of this Irish-and-gipsy struggle. No Welsh- man can avoid heaving a sigh of relief at this poor girl's reply to a question respecting one shameful incident related by her : '' Did this affair occur in England or Wales ? " " In the heart of England, yere hanner " ; or fail to admire Borrow's noble rejoinder : " Well, I am glad it didn't happen in Wales ; I have rather a high opinion of the Welsh Methodists. The worthiest creature I ever knew was a Welsh Methodist."

J. P. OWEN.

THE OLD SESSIONS HOUSE, OLD BAILEY. The sale of the fixtures and fittings on 18 July of this familiar building is a prelude to its early demolition. There is little of historical importance attaching to the place, and public interest in its past is more of a morbid than a sentimental character. It was this, and not the antiquarian interest, that drew the very mixed crowd on the view day and during the sale, and sent them exploring its courts, passages, cells, and many rooms. They were impressed largely

by the direct association with famous criminals, and the mental reconstruction of the scene of the trials that had been " reported in full." The showman, as at the sale of the fittings of Newgate Prison, purchased anything of more than intrinsic worth, and we shall be invited later to sea elsewhere the " Prisoner's Dock of the Old Central Criminal Court " (lot 108, 10?.), and the cell in which Lord George Gordon died (No. 5, lot 156, 51.), and that from which Jack Sheppard escaped (No. 7, lot 153, 11. 10s.). The last named is a very doubtful attribu- tion.

Ample descriptions of the sale and some illustrations were provided by The Daity Chronicle, The Daily Graphic, and The Evening News of 19 July. By those who wandered as far, there was to be seen in an upper room a huge quantity of interesting correspondence and papers originally belong- ing to Alderman Lucas, circa 1810-30. Another room was littered with the Sessions Papers and Recorder's notes of the cases heard during the past ten years.

The history of the building is given at some length in ' Old and New London,' ii. 463, and Knight's ' London,' No. xciv. There is also a scarce little volume, ' The Humours of the Old Bailey ; or, Justice shaking her sides, being a Collection of all the Merry and Diverting Trials for the last Thirty Years,' London, 8vo, n.d. In ' Memoirs of the Right Villanous John Hall,' &c., 1708, there is an interesting description of the court. My copy is imperfect, and that at the B.M. has all after p. 38 missing.

The Old Bailey Sessions Papers com- menced 1674 (?), and continued until 1834, when they were renamed Central Criminal Court Sessions Papers.

The site, divided into three lots, was let by auction 29 July. On the site included in the third lot a portion of the Roman Wall still exists, and The Morning Post (30 July) provides a history of this small area since its earliest days. Unfortunately, the writer hopelessly confuses Ludgate and Newgate. ALECK ABBAHAMS.

HAMPSTEAD'S HISTORICAL HOUSES. (See 10 S. v. 483 ; vi. 52, 91, 215, 356, 497 ; vii. 312, 413, 472 ; viii. 12, 114.) MR. HARLAND- OXLEY'S article, ante, p. 12, reminds me that no one has yet given an account of the houses of historical interest in Hampstead denoted by commemorative tablets.

The first to be so marked was that of Sir Rowland Hill on Haverstock Hill, called Bertram House, where he lived for thirty