As far as the North Wales Gazette was concerned, the last week in February 1823 was not an occasion to celebrate Good News. It certainly doesn’t seem to have wasted time in looking for any. We are told immediately that an inquest had been held on Hugh Williams of Tycoch, in the parish of Llanddeiniolen, who came to his death when a slate tile fell on his head. Next, we have an unfortunate fisherman called John Owen, being rather groggy, (as they say,) who fell off the pier at Holyhead and drowned, to be quickly followed by a cat in Dumfries that was guillotined as it was leaning out of an open window which closed suddenly.
They did admit that the report in last week’s paper about the death of Captain Randolph was over-dramatic. He did, as reported, fall from his horse but he remained quite healthy and was certainly not dead but they didn’t allow a trifling error such as this to distract the paper from its theme,
There had been another inquest, this time on John Ellis, from Llanrug, who died in a barbarous conflict with another man in which his thumb was nearly bitten off, the inflammation and the fever brought on in consequence, terminated his existence. Ellis was, by all accounts a sober, quiet, inoffensive young man, and the only son of his parents, cut off at an early age of nineteen.
The verdict was manslaughter, and the brute was committed to the county gaol awaiting trial. Readers are told that the Coroner used the opportunity to point out to young men the melancholy consequences of allowing their passions to hurl them into such brutal and cowardly excesses; he urged all present to caution young men against this inhuman and savage practice of biting and gnawing each other; the fatal and melancholy consequences of which they then beheld a most mournful and lamentable instance. Sound advice, I would say.
There is another example of the dangerous and threatening world that North Wales had suddenly become. A group of eight prisoners escaped from Ruthin Gaol, causing a great deal of anxiety in the town. They were all awaiting trial at the next assizes for shop-lifting in Wrexham, a place where the five-finger discount has never been terribly popular. The prisoners made their escape by bursting open the large door to the felon’s yard, and climbing over the wall using tables and stools. The ease with which they escaped would certainly suggest that security arrangements needed an urgent review, Ruthin Gaol being, in fact, actually a gaol.
One of the current debtors residing in what was clearly not secure accommodation, called Lloyd, and who was in the adjoining debtor’s yard at the time, heard the unmistakable noise of their rattling chains and quickly raised the alarm. Bells were rung and the people of Ruthin joined in the search for the fugitives. Six of them were quickly apprehended. However, the two remaining fugitives had disappeared. Such things have a habit of causing unrest.
But if the thought of two wanted men skulking through the dark streets of Ruthin wasn’t enough to unsettle the fine people of the town, we are then told that when officers went to secure the felon’s yard, they realised just how dangerous a situation they were in, since the whole of the prisoners had provided themselves with large knives. Perhaps contemporary policing and the nature of custodial sentencing needed more than an urgent review.
Was anything actually inspiring civic confidence in Ruthin in 1823? Well, certainly not its water cisterns.
The paper warns of the increasing numbers of inflammatory infections of the bowels being reported. House-keepers are warned to have their cisterns well cleansed and, if made of lead, to be well scrubbed with a hard brush. Because of a recent shortage of river water, (as a result of frost and ice) the sediment had gathered in the lead pipes, which has become offensive to the constitution, producing deleterious effects. Nice.
And if all this wasn’t bad enough, consider the snow in North Wales which still remained in those roads which are not much frequented. The coaches to Aberystwyth were delayed by a week, and, between Dolgellau and Talyllyn, the snow was about fifteen feet deep. Several travellers were stranded at Dolgellau, which might, for some, be less inviting than drinking from the cisterns of Ruthin.
There is a rather unfortunate tale from the Channel Islands which shows that the editor will leave no stone unturned in his search for unpleasant stories. He was always ready to go that extra mile in search of the grimmest news items, so that his readers didn’t have to.
Two men were found guilty of forgery, robbery, and were sentenced to spend two consecutive Saturdays in the pillory and then, after the second occasion, to be flogged, and then banished from the island.
On their first session in the pillory, they were exposed to an incessant shower of snowballs for one hour. One man suffered dreadfully; his mouth, ears, and cheeks were severely lacerated, some of the snow balls being so very hard, that they rebounded violently from the pillory; his eyes were blackened.
He also received a blow in the groin which occasioned strangury, which continued for several hours, (the details of which are much too unfortunate for inclusion on a family website), and he became delirious from the severity of his punishment. On the following Saturday, they were exposed again and then flogged, during a blizzard of snow and sleet. Judicial retribution in the Channel Islands appears to have been a little more robust than that which was on offer in Ruthin.
No, The North Wales Gazette was certainly not committed to spreading sunshine along with a cheery word and a smile, and you might, as I did, wonder why. Was the world really such a cruel and unrelenting place in February two hundred years ago?
And then I found this on page three and perhaps, just perhaps, everything falls into place, even after all this time.
When you read this story from Bow Street, near Aberystwyth, you do wonder whether the reporter, or indeed the editor, was reaching out for help when he writes about ‘connubial devilry,’ and how difficult it was to obtain a divorce. It is, we are told, only your wealthy couples who can shake off their fetters; the needy ones must wear them for life. The report is allegedly about a large, middle aged man decently dressed in black who approached the magistrate for help with his unhappy marriage.
If you wish to get divorced, I cannot do that for you, he replied. We should have little time for anything else, I fear, if we could divorce all the unhappy couples who apply to us.
Well? What do you think? Am I on to something?
