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A Guilty Face

One morning in 1727, York pubkeeper Hannah Williams found that her writing desk had been opened and a sum of money stolen. As waiter Thomas Geddely disappeared at the same time, there was little doubt as to the robber.

Twelve months later, a man calling himself James Crow arrived in York and took a job as a porter. The townspeople immediately accosted him as Geddely, but he insisted that he didn’t know them, that his name was James Crow, and that he was new to York.

Williams was called for, instantly identified him as Geddely, and accused him of robbing her. The man protested his innocence before a justice of the peace but had no alibi and admitted to a history as a vagabond and a petty rogue. At the trial a servant testified that she had seen him at the robbery scene with a poker in his hand. He swore again that his name was James Crow but was convicted and executed.

Some time later Thomas Geddely was arrested in Dublin on a robbery charge. While in custody he confessed to the robbery at York. A York resident who was visiting Ireland at the time declared that the resemblance between the two men was so great “that it was next to impossible for the nicest eye to have distinguished their persons asunder.”

See Mistaken Identity.

| Crime

Village Poetry

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Piddletrenthide_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_329719.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

On Aug. 21, 1974, the London Times announced the reassignment of a Church of England cleric:

Diocese of Salisbury. The Rev J.E.B. Cattell, Vicar of Piddletrenthide with Alton Pancras and Plush, to be priest-in-charge of Buckhorn Weston and Kington Magna.

This drew a flood of responses. Excerpts:

Is there really a parish of Piddletrenthide with Lanton Pancras and Plush? If so, I will have to retire there; it certainly is an improvement on ‘Maidstone.’

It’s in West Dorset and is as delightful as its name implies. We also have Toller Pocorum, Sydling St Nicholas, Whitchurch Canonicorum, and Ryme Intrinseca, to name but four others.

For sheer pleasure to the ear the redeployment of ecclesiastical strength in Yorkshire which appeared in your columns some 14 years ago remains supreme: ‘the Rev G.D. Beaglehole, Vicar of Kexby with Wilberfoss to be Vicar of Bossall with Buttercrambe.’

In 1960 you also announced: ‘The Rev G. Christie, Rector of Roos with Tunstall-in-Holderness, Vicar of Garton with Grimston and Hilston and Rural Dean of South Holderness to be Vicar of Pocklington with Yapham-cum-Meltonby and Owsthorpe with Kilnwick Percy, and Millington with Great Givendale, and Rural Dean of Pocklington.’

We in Hampshire can surely beat them all with our three hearty Wallops — Over, Middle and Nether.

One signpost in Shropshire reads simply: Homer 1, Wigwig 2. How’s that for brevity and wit?

May I on behalf of Scotland offer a brief contribution to this correspondence and draw attention to the tiny but ancient fishing village on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, which proudly bears the name ‘Society’?

The first place listed in Part Two of the 1961 Census Index of Place Names aptly describes the efforts of your readers in this silly correspondence: Labour-in-Vain.

A final letter read, “Sir, as a foreigner, may I say how enjoyable has been your correspondence on this subject, for in my country we do not have such quaint place-names.” It was signed “K.J. Wyatt, Turramurra, Kur-ring-gai, New South Wales.”

| Language

Insult to Injury

Anthony Burgess wrote his Enderby novels under the pen name Joseph Kell. So he was amused when in 1963 the Yorkshire Post asked him to review one of them.

Sensing a practical joke by one of the editors, he submitted a scathing review. “This is in many ways a dirty book,” he wrote. “It may well make some people sick, and those of my readers with tender stomachs are advised to let it alone.”

Alas, the assignment wasn’t a joke. The newspaper published Burgess’ review — and when it discovered his double identity, “I was attacked by the editor of the Yorkshire Post on Yorkshire Television and promptly, and perhaps justly, dismissed.”

See Conflict of Interest.

| Literature

Turning the Corner

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Down_and_out_on_New_York_pier.gif

Excerpts from the Harvard Economic Society’s Weekly Letter, 1929-1930:

  • Nov. 16, 1929: “[A] severe depression like that of 1920-21 is outside the range of probability.”
  • Jan. 18, 1930: “With the underlying conditions sound, we believe that the recession in general business will be checked shortly and that improvement will set in during the spring months.”
  • May 17, 1930: “General prices are now at bottom and will shortly improve.”
  • Aug. 30, 1930: “Since our monetary and credit structure is not only sound but unusually strong … there is every prospect that the recovery which we have been expecting will not be long delayed.”
  • Sept. 20, 1930: “[R]ecovery will soon be evident.”
  • Nov. 15, 1930: “[T]he outlook is for the end of the decline in business during the early part of 1931, and steady … revival for the remainder of the year.”

In 1931, strapped by the depression, the Letter ceased publication.

| History