Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/71

 12 S. V. MAECH, 1919.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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is given as the date of the trial ; but Walton gives the sentence as four months' im- prisonment with hard labour, whilst the recent book, ' In the Days of Victoria : some Memories of Men and Things,' by Thomas F. Plowman (1918), however, relates that the author was present when the incident occurred " in the spring of 1854 " at Oxford Assizes, he being then a lad of some ten years old and living with his father, a well-known resident of Oxford. Mr. Plowman says :
 * D.N.B.' puts it as one day. A quite

" I can still see the pathetic figure of the poor blubbering man as he stood in the dock, having pleaded guilty, and in broken accents appealed for mercy. He was a coal-heaver, and he looked it. He was in the old-fashioned clothes of his calling in those days, including breeches and thick worsted stockings. He told how his wife had rendered his house desolate by robbing it, and then running away with the paramour. He waited some years, and, hearing nothing of her, married again, and was living happily when she swooped down upon him and informed against him for bigamy."

These irreconcilable statements as to the time and place of an occurrence which became almost classic in its bearing on the change in divorce law are not without interest, and it should not be difficult to disinter the correct version from con- temporary newspapers, &c., or to ascertain whether Mr. Justice Maule presided on the Midland Circuit in the spring of 1845, and n the Oxford Circuit in the spring of 1854.

W. B. H.

BEWDLEY APPRENTICES AND MOTHERING SUNDAY. A quaint practice prevailed at Bewdley in the early part of the nineteenth century. The mother church of Ribsford has two porches. That on the south was known as the " Refreshment Porch " ; in it pewter plates and horn mugs were kept and on Mothering Sunday cakes and meac were freely provided, and placed ready to hand for the use of apprentices coming home to visit friends. The food was left un guarded, but none of the townsfolk at tempted to take it. The cakes and meac were put there early on Sunday morning The cakes were baked at Webster's in the High Street. The mead was brewed in a large earthenware pan some two or three days previous. It was composed of oranges lemons, and spice. The whole was paid for out of the Church Rate. It would be interesting to know if other towns made a like provision for hungry and thirsty apprentices. J. HARVEY BLOOM.

JAMES EDMUND SCRIPPS. British bio- graphers may like to know that James "dmund Scripps (1835-1906), the founder of The Detroit News, was born in London, though he went to America at the age of nine, settling near Rushville, 111., and Beginning his journalistic career on The Chicago Democratic Press in 1857. He bunded The Detroit News in 1873. Its listory has just been told in a beautifully produced quarto, issued by the News.

J. M. BULLOCH. 37 Bedford Square, W.C.I.

" SHEER HULK " : " THE SPANISH MAIN." The following remarks in ' Some Recol- ections ' of Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge have attracted my attention, and may perhaps claim that of other students of ' N. & Q.' :

" The ship's masts had to be brought to her and put in place. This was done at our naval ports by means of sheers .... At Devonport they were erected in a hulk lying in the stream, and always spoken of as ' the sheer hulk.' This recalls a ridiculous mistake in the song which says .... a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling. What is meant is, of course, a mere hulk ; for a sheer hulk was a much used and very useful vessel. The mistake is only one of several which landsmen are likely to make when they put sailors' expressions into print. The ' Spanish Main ' is often referred to in books as if it were part of the sea ; whereas it is simply the sailors' translation of tierra firme, and means the Spanish mainland in Mexico and in Central and South America as distinguished from the Spanish islands in the West Indies." P. 65.

ST. SWITHIN

[The ' N.E.D.' says, s.v. ' Sheer-hulk, shear- hulk ': "The etymologically preferable spelling shear-hulk is little used. In the popular figurative use of the word, derived from nautical songs, the first element is often misunderstood as sheer adj., and the compound written as two words." The line from Dibdin is quoted as the earliest figurative use.

Under ' Spanish,' 1, b, the Dictionary has : " Spanish Main, the mainland of America adja- cent to the Caribbean Sea, esp. that portion of the coast stretching from the Isthmus of Panama to the mouth of the Orinoco ; in later use also, the sea contiguous to this, or the route traversed by the Spanish register ships." Longfellow's ' Wreck of the Hesperus ' (1839) is quoted in illustration of the later use.]

SNODGRASS SURNAME IN IRELAND IN 1665. Amongst the persons who paid hearth tax in 1665 were Thomas Snodgrass, parish of Cloiileigh, townland of Ballybogan, and Robert Snodgrass, parish of Raphoe, townland of Beltany. See Lecky, ' The Laggan and its Presbyterianism,' 1905, pp. 112-13.. J. ARDAGH.