Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/354

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. ix. MAY 3, 1902.

dramatic version was in two acts and weight scenes, adapted from Prest's thrilling narra- tive of 'Sweeny Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street, and the String of Pearls,' by George Dibdin Pitt, and produced by Samuel Lane at the Britannia Saloon, Hoxton, in 1842. Mark Howard was the fiendish Figaro ; Mrs. Atkinson (mother of the celebrated Sadler's Wells actress) the pie-maker and paramour of Todd Maria Lovett (who is shot by Sweeny, instead of being brought to the scaffold as in the French narrative) ; Charles Pitt (afterwards manager of the Sheffield Theatre) enacted the Peckham madhouse keeper Jonas Fogg ; Joseph Reynolds (an old favourite at the Brit.) was the Indian officer Col. Jeffrey; and Sam Sawford was the victim (Mark Ingestrie). Frederick Hazleton brought out a later edition of ' Sweeny Todd ' in three acts at the old Victoria Theatre, George Yates taking the part of the barber fiend, and making it very popular among the patrons of fourth-rate playhouses.

HENRY C. PORTER. 14, Livingstone Road, West Brighton.

Elizabeth Catherine, daughter of Thomas Rivett, Esq., M.P. for Derby, by Anna Maria his wife, daughter of the Rev. Peter Sibley, was baptized at All Saints' Church, Derby, 8 April, 1751. She married in London, 24 July, 1769, as his second wife, Brigadier-General John Carnac, Comrnander-in-Chief of the Forces in Bengal, and thereafter second in Council at Bombay, who distinguished himself by the important victory gained over Shah Alum, Emperor of Delhi (the Great Mogul), and a French contingent, commanded by M. Law, who, with fifteen officers and fifty of his men, was taken prisoner near Patna, on 15 January, 1701. General Carnac died 29 November, 1800, at Marigalore (Malabar coast), where he was buried, aged eighty- four years. Mrs. Carnac died at Broach, Bombay, on 18 January, 1780, aged twenty- eight years, and was buried in Bombay. Monumental inscription to the memory of General and Mrs. Carnac in St. Thomas's Cathedral, Bombay. Vide Burke's ' Baronet- age,' s.n. ' Rivett-Carnac.'
 * MRS. CARNAC,' BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

LIONEL A. V. SCHANK.

MALLET USED BY CHRISTOPHER WREN. The Standard of the 23rd of April states that at the laying of the foundation stone of the new mission church of the Good Shepherd, Small Heath, Birmingham, which took place on the previous day with full Masonic ritual, Lord Leigh, the Provincial Grand Master of Warwickshire, made use of the mallet known

as the Wren gavel, which was employed by Sir Christopher Wren at the laying of the foundation stone of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1675. N. S. S.

JEWISH MAY MEETINGS. On the llth of May the Jewish community will for the first time associate itself with the May meetings customs. The Daily Neivsof April 21st states that ** the conference will be unique in the

annals of English Jews All the synagogues

in the United Kingdom have been invited to the first of these forgatherings, which will be held in London on the llth of May next." Sir Samuel Montagu is to preside. The object of the conference is to unite London and provincial Jews in the common work of the community. One of the very first tasks to which the conference will address itself will be the dispersion (so far as practicable) of the seething Ghettoes in the East-End of London and several provincial towns. It is proposed to hold the conference every year in a different town, and it will be known as the " Jewish Congregational League."

A. N. Q.

ALLEGED ECLIPSE AT THE DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE. In Mr. Sichel's recent work on ' Bolingbroke and his Times ' (which I am glad to learn is to be supplemented by a second volume on the later part of his strange career) we read at p. 497, where the author is speaking of the death of Queen Anne, which occurred on 1 August, Old Style ( = 12 by N.S.), 1714, that "it was the day, as the supersti- tious noted, of an eclipse of the sun."

Now the moon was new that year on 30 July, so that there could have been no eclipse on 1 August ; as a matter of fact, the single eclipse of the sun that year was in December, only a small partial one and not visible anywhere in Europe. Mr. Sichel cites as his authority a letter from Swift to Pope, which is to be found in Swift's ' Works,' second edition, vol. xvi. p. 229. The letter in question is dated 28 June, 1715, and con- tains the passage :

" Upon the whole, you may truly attribute niy silence to the eclipse, but it was that eclipse which happened on the 1st of August."

Probably in the second clause of this sentence the word "eclipse" is used meta- phorically, and is intended to refer to the queen's death itself, which produced so great a change that " Queen Anne is dead " passed into a proverb, which is still occa- sionally used. There was a total eclipse of the sun, the central line of which passed over England, on 22 April, 1715, and possibly Swift refers to this in the first clause of the