Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/294

 290

NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. VIL APRIL 12, 1913.

" BETHLEM GABOR." What is a " Beth- lem Gabor " ? The words occur in a letter of Mr. Josiah Wedgwood, dated 5 May (1805), Gunville (Dorsetshire). The letter describes the deeds of a press-gang in the village and the frantic efforts of the men to escape. It ends :

" Our waggoner, coming from Poole yesterday, met poor Harding escorted by three men armed, and himself pinioned. I declare this circumstance almost made a Bethlem Gabor of me."

H. E. LlTCHFIELD. Burrows Hill, Gomshall, Surrey.

"To BANYAN." Lady Lyttelton, in a letter to Mrs. Robartes, dated Windsor Castle, 5 Nov., 1839, mentioning a guest, Count Kolowrath, says :

"He has been ill and so he banyanned upon lobster salad and chocolate cream, washed down by deluges of champagne." ' Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, Lady Lyttelton,' 1912, p. 293.

Can any of your readers give me another example of this verb ? It does not appear in ' N.E.D.' A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

FRENCH FISHING RIGHTS. Has France still fishing rights at St. Pierre and Miquelon ? I have an impression that, under King Edward VII. , she consented to abandon them in exchange for some concessions on the west coast of Africa. W. F. LORD.

VERTICAL SUNDIALS. I recently bought out of a mason's yard a pair of carved stone vertical sundials one made to face south, and the other to face north. I should like to know if north-facing dials are common, and of any literature there may be on the sub- ject. The dials in question came off a building in Clerkenwell near the Sessions House, lately pulled down. Can any Londoner tell me what building it was ? SYLVIOLA.

LAWRANCE, SURGEONS AT BATH. I shall be glad if any of your correspondents will furnish me with a list of Lawrance or Lawrence surgeons at Bath, hailing from Aberdeenshire, practising between 1720 and 1820. ROBERT MURDOCH LAWRANCE.

Cairnchina, 23, Ashley Road, Aberdeen.

CASTLE OR CASTEL FAMILY. Can any of your readers inform me whom Capt. Castle (or Castel) married, and what were his own and his father's Christian names ? He was lost off the Scilly Islands with Sir Cloudesley Shovel in the frigate Association in 1707. I shall also be glad of any informa- tion relating to the family.

HUBERT PALMER.

Stamcliff, Granvilie Road, Eastbourne.

HISTORY OF THE " PECCAVI " PUN. (11 S. vii. 226.)

MR. WOOLLCOTT at the above reference disputes Sir Charles Napier's claim to the original application of " peccavi " to his own exploits, and presumes that Punch was the father of it on 13 May, 1844 (vi. 209). I cannot at present produce an extract from the Register of Births, 1843, signed by Sir Charles, but MR. WOOLLCOTT has not convinced me that my reference to the parentage still accepted by representatives of the Napier family (' Cambridge Modern History,' xi. 736) is wrong.

The occasion when Napier used the expression is, I believe, correctly given by W. H. Davenport Adams in his * Episodes of Anglo-Indian History,' p. 186 (1880). He there states that, after the capture of Oomercote i.e., 4 April, 1843 Sir Charles " was able to announce in a punning des- patch, which referred to the opinion of many that the war was unjust, ' Peccavi,' I Ve Scinde."

Napier's diary for 5 April shows that he regarded Brown's successful operation as decisive : " This completes the conquest of Scinde ; every place is in my possession " (' Life,' by Sir Wm. Napier, Murray, ii. 356).

J. C. Marshman (chap, xxxvii., vol. iii., p. 249 of his ' History of India ' ) fixes the same date. Oomercote

" was found deserted, and Sir Charles Napier soon after announced to the Governor-General the complete subjugation of the country, which he made the subject of a pun -. . . .peccavi."

Until the record room produces the dispatch or letter referred to, it is sufficient to establish a prima facie case, and ask your readers for an adjournment before these two authorities, and the humbler writer in the ' Cambridge Modern History ' who is alone quoted by MR. WOOLLCOTT, are found guilty of robbing Punch.

" Peccavi " was on the tip of Charles Napier's tongue, and when he took Scinde the Word was in front of him, so as to suggest its suitability in his letter reporting events to Ellenborough or to the Commander- in -Chief. Thus he wrote on 14 Dec., 1842 : " Ameers cry ' Peccavi ' : yet I should not say that, for they deny guilt " ; and again on 28 Jan., 1843: " This will tame the Ameers or the devil's in them, but they will cry peccavi or disperse " (vol. ii. of ' Life,' pp. 251 and 307).