Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/95

 12 s. in. FEB. 3, i9i7.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

89

FROM LIVERPOOL TO WORCESTER A CENTURY AND A HALF AGO.

(See ante, pp. 21, 63.)

I HAVE received the following notes from MAJOR LESLIE :

" I think that the date of the Diary must be at least thirty years earlier than MB. LEWIS suggests

" 1. The Rev. W. Enfield (entry of Oct. 11) was Rector of the Warrington Academy from 1770 to 1783, in which year the Academy was dissolved (see ' D.N.B.').

" 2. ' The new Bridge ' at Shrewsbury, pre- sumably the English Bridge, was completed in 1774.

" The Diary, therefore, is placed between 1770 and 1774. In 1771 Oct. 11 was on a Friday, and this, I think, fixes the year in which it was written.

" The entry of Sunday, Oct. 13 (Manchester) : ' We went into the new church built in the Gothic taste,' probably refers to the church of St. John, Deansgate, built in 1769, ' a building of red sandstone, in Gothic style' ('CasseU's Gazetteer,' 1896).

" The continuation of the Diary may give further clues as to the writer. The style is like Boswell, and the ' parted good friends with the fille de chambre ' is distinctly Pepysian."

The facts given by MAJOB LESLIE as to the dissolution of the Warringtcn Academy in 1783, the Rev. W. Enfield's connexion with it, and the completion of the " English Bridge" at Shrewsbury in 1774 are con- clusive as to the date of this journey. It must have been made in some year between 1770 and 1774. That vear was doubtless 1771.

MK. HERBERT WHITE writes: "The Foundling Hospital at Shrewsbury was built in 1765, and was closed in 1774, as such, for want of funds. Prisoners were kept in the build- ing during the American War. In 1784 it was bought by the town and made into a ' house of industry.' Not quite a hundred years afterwards it was converted into the present new schools.

"In 1774 Dr. Johnson visited Shrewsbury. On September 10 he sent for Gwyun, architect of the .English Bridge, then building, and he shewed us the town. "

MR. WHITE adds :

"I know the Raven, and stayed there in 1910. My grandfather went to Shrewsbury School in 1798."

The bridge must have been completed shortly after Dr. Johnson's visit in 1774. It took, therefore, three or four years to build. This is what one would expect from the statement of the diarist as to the cost of the structure and the expenditure incurred "ip to 1771: "It is to cost. 20,000/.; some ,OOOZ. are already laid out."

The original diary is in the possession of Col. Charles St. John Roche, D.L., V.D., of Purley, who was~good enough to allow me to copy it for publication in ' N. & Q.' It came to him with other papers of his grandfather, Capt. Joseph Roche, R.N., and he supposed that it was a diary of this officer. But this is impossible as the latter was bom in 1789. It is quite possible, how- ever, that it was a diary not of his grand- father, but of his great-grandfather. It seems likely that the diarist, whoever he was, was a military officer.

It is certainty written in a more archaic style than one would expect to find used by a midshipman of 1811.

PENRY LEWIS.

CURIOUS TAVERN SIGN. The following struck me as worth a record in ' N. & Q.' : " The Oakley Hounds will meet on Saturday, January 13, at The Cat and Custard-Pot, Shelton, Beds." From The Bedfordshire Times, January 5. H. K. ST. J. S.

" SISTER "= HOSPITAL NURSE. The illus- trative quotation of earliest date given in ' H.E.D.' for " sister " as meaning " a member of a body of nurses ; also spec, a head- nurse having charge of a ward in an in- firmary or hospital," is of 1873, from Mrs. Brookfield's ' Not a Heroine.' Its use, how- ever, can be traced a long way farther back, for in The Craftsman of March 20, 1730/31, appeared the paragraph :

"Monday the Go\erriors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital came to a Resolution for allowing a certain Salary to the Sisters, Nurses, and Watches, viz. the Sisters of the foul Dressing Ward 40Z. per Ann., the Nurse of the same 251., and the Watches 151., and the Sisters of all the other Wards 30/.. Nurses 201 , and Watches 10Z."

" Watches," in the sense indicated here, seems to have died out ; but " sister," from the manner in which it was employed, must have been in common use long even before 1731. ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

COAL-BALLS. The fact is not generally known that Sir Hugh Platt made an attempt to introduce the use of " patent fuel " in England in Queen Elizabeth's time. His ' cole - balles " were made of "seacole" crushed under foot and sprinkled with thin " pap " made of diluted " lome," the whole turned over with a shovel <JT spade, and the mixture " wrought into balls between your hands like snowballs," the whole manipula- tion being " according to the manner of Lukeland " (wherever that may be) in Germany. The loam was " to sweeten and