Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/211

 izs. vir. A. 28. Mao.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

171

Immediately over the sign and just under -the eaves is a board with the words " Post office " on it.

On the left side of the print, opposite the Black Boy, is another inn with the sign of a Lion on a board fixed on a high post in front of the building. In the background .appear the tower and spire of a church.

The print is full of figures, coaches, javelin men, trumpeters, and lookers on, and is most interesting. E. P. LANDON.

Torwood, West Byfleet, Surrey.

This inn and the Saracen's Head are two distinct houses. The Black Boy, celebrated .as the inn at which old Weller met with -Jingle 'and Job Trotter, and Weller " took 'em up, right through to Ipswich," was demolished about 1857, and an ordinary public house now bears the name. An illus- tration of the old inn appeared in The Licensed Victuallers Official Annual for 1904.

The Saracen's Head was the headquarters of Anthony Trollope when he hunted with the Essex hounds, and some of his work is =said to have been done at the inn.

A good account of the Black Boy will be iound in The Dickensian, of August, 1918. T. W. TYRRELL.

St. Elmo, Sidmouth.

Mr. Miller Christy in his 'Trade Signs of Essex' (p. 134) states: "The Black Boy now existing at Chelmsford is not the same Tiouse that went under that name during the last and previous centuries, though standing on the same site." He then gives much interesting information about this -famous house. The frontispiece to his book is a reduced reproduction of the engraving of Chelmsford High Street in 1762, by J. Ryland and in this the Black Boy plainly appears. WILLIAM GILBERT, F.R.N.S.

( Oua LONDONT LETTER ' (12 S. vii. 128;. As having daily written the ' London Letter ' ^or a well-known provincial journal for 33 years, I cordially agree with MR. ROBERTS that "the origin and development of [this] popular feature in provincial papers would make an interesting chapter in the history of British journalism." I attempted a sketch of it in an address in November, 1907, to the undergraduates of Trinity College, Dublin, at the invitation of the then Provost, the late Dr. Andrew Traill, who presided on the occasion, which was reported in some fulness by the Dublin newspapers, only disparaging comment appeared

in the small weekly journal \' SinnJ\Fein,' printed partly in English and partly in Irish, a short-lived organ of the now wide- spread movement in its infant days, which deplored in a paragraph, written in advance, that "an h-less Cockney " I happen to be a Cornishman had been called in to speak to Irishmen on any subject whatever. It is my earnest hope to carry this sketch much farther yet ; but, meantime, I would note that * London Letters ' of the news-giving type can be traced certainly to the earliest years of the seventeenth century, though MR. ROBERTS has extended the vogue of the original style of such by furnishing proof that, until as late as 1729, extracts were printed in provincial newspapers "From a written London Letter."

ALFRED ROBBINS. 32 FitzGeorge Avenue, W.14.

The Nottingham Mercury for 1715, and The Weekly Courant (Nottingham) for 1715, both contain several instances of news by London Letters. Much of the news of the Jacobite rising, and the trial and last speech of James Earl of Derwentwater comes in this form. ' Foxe's Letter,' 'Dormer's Letter,' 'Roper's Letter,' and 'Miller's Letter,' are frequently used as headings, while Scotch letters, and letters from Preston, Vienna, Cologne and Copenhagen are often given as news. M. N.

WIDEAWAKE HATS (12 S. vii. 28, 157).' I do not know whether Mr. G. A. Sala ever wrote anything about the origin of the word " wideawake," but I find the following in his ' Antiquarian Echoes for the Year 1883,' which may be worthy of a place in ' N. & Q.' :

" I noticed the other day in that astonishingly rich and interesting treasure-house of antique statuary, the Museo Torlonia at Rome, the marble bust of a man whose headgear was of the precise shape and size of a modern * wideawake.'

A hat somewhat of the ' wideawake ' pattern

of the Ancients,' and it is worn by a Grecian soldier otherwise attired in a pallium, but it lacks the thoroughly Whitechapel-road -cum - Bethnal-green appearance of the hat worn by the effigy of the marble in the Torlonia Museum."
 * chickaleary cove ' I mean the gentleman in

GALLOWAY FRASEB. Strawberry Hill.

I remember a schoolfellow of mine having a green one, then called by him a "Wide- awake," in 184S or '49. J. T. F.