Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/297

 9". 8. vn. AWUL 13, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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murdered there long ago. It is also saic that the 'coymen will not go near it after dark, and will make a long round to avoic it. The frames and nets formerly usec there have long since gone to decay. Some of your readers may have heard this story. F. B. DOVETON. Karsfield, Torquay.

PARKS THE LUNGS OF LONDON. When was this expression first used? In 'Green- wich Fair,' in ' Sketches by Boz,' the author commences his sketch by asking :

" If the parks be ' the lungs of London,' we wonder what Greenwich Fair is a periodical breaking out, we suppose, a sort of spring-rash : a three days' fever, which cools the blood for six months after- wards, and at the expiration of which London is restored to its old habits of plodding industry, as suddenly and completely as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them." Chap. xii. p. 98, New York edition.

In the Gentleman's Magazine, 1827, p. 124, the expression is made use of by a correspondent & possibly Carter in quotation marks, which would seem to imply it was then of recent origin. JOHN HEBB.

[At 8 th S. ix. 93 J. H. W. states that Mr. Wind-

REV. ROBERT THOMSON, LL.D. On 24 June 1796, the Rev. Robert Thomson, LL.D., pur- chased the estate and advowson of Longstowe, Cambridgeshire. In 1810 he presented him- self to the living, but resigned it five years later, continuing, however, to live at Long- stowe Hall. He died 6 January, 1831 (tablet in the Hall chapel, and Gentleman's Magazine, ci. i. 280). Dr. Thomson married Charlotte Eleanor Luck, and had issue two sons, John and Henry, and seven daughters, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Helen, Augusta, Jemima, Sophia, and Henrietta. I am anxious to obtain in- formation regarding Dr. Thomson's parentage, his surviving descendants, and the source of his doctor's degree, which, so far as I can ascertain, is not of Oxford, Cambridge, Lambeth, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, or Aberdeen. He seems to have had some reputation in London scien- tific circles as far back as 1786 (Gentleman's Magazine, xcviii. i. 583). A younger brother, John Thomson, B.A. Cantab. (St. John's Coll.) 1790, M.A. 1793, D.D. 1808, a native of Edin- burgh, died in 1817 at York Terrace, Ken- sington, where he had been u master of a long established and highly respected academy " (Gentleman's Magazine, Ixxxvii. ii. 571).

P. J. ANDERSON. University Library, Aberdeen.

SIR JAMES EYRE (1734-99). The Gentle- man's Magazine for 1787, part ii. p. 644, records the death, on 5 July, 1787, of the wife of Sir James Eyre, Knt., Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1787) and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (1793). Can any reader supply particulars of this ladv's maiden name and parentage and the date of her marriage? Sir James Eyre subsequently, on 16 April, 1791, married Mary, daughter of Henry Southwell, of Wisbech, Cambridge- shire, Esquire (see Gentleman's Magazine for 1791, part i. p. 381, and Watson's * History of Wisbech,' 1827, p. 265). In the life of Sir James Eyre given in the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.,' vol. xviii. p. 99, his marriages are not men- tioned. H. C.

JEWISH ACTORS. I am anxious to find out how many Jews and Jewesses have adopted the stage as a profession in England from the earliest times. The names will, I think, suffice for my purpose. S. J. A. F.

[They are very numerous.]

OFFICIAL LISTS. Where are to be found lists of the officials of the Courts of Aug- mentation (chancellor, treasurer, attorney, solicitor, &c.)and Wards and Liveries (master, attorney, receiver, auditor, &c.) ; also the Masters of Requests 1 W. D. PINK.

"SHOEHORNED." Could any reader oblige me with a reference to an instance of the use of this word ? I cannot find " shoehorn " as a verb in any available dictionary. It is so used in the following cutting from the Barrow North- Western Daily Mail of 6 March :

" It may be true that experts differ on all things, but there must naturally be a wider difference between an expert who knows his business, such for instance as a Commander-in-Chief, and a non- expert who has had no training for the work, and who is shoehorned into a position like that of the War Secretary at the caprice of the Prime Minister ior the time being."

W. DURIE. Barrow.

CHARTER CONDITIONS. In the charter by which Alan, Earl of Brittany, grants an estate in Cambridgeshire, including the church of Swavesey, to the abbey of SS. Sergius and Bacchus at Angers, there are two conditions which seem to be unusual. '!) All the offerings and fees belonging to his church are to be free of episcopal custom ind service, except sixpence at Easter for jhrism (" prater sex denarios ad Pascham H-O chrismate"). (2) A monk is to attend ,he archdeacon's visitation, not because cus- /omary, but for love of the archdeacon and