Like many researchers, when I am browsing newspapers and other records I am often distracted by other interesting stories or snippets of information. When searching for articles online, there is less distraction as you are already narrowing your search terms to produce that eureka moment. But what online research does provide for, something that should be in every Local Historian’s toolkit, is what I call the art of serendipity, or more bluntly putting in a couple of keywords and see what happens, with surprising results! (You see, we have all done it).
 
The Titchborne Claimant

In the spirit of research on behalf of our faithful blog readers I thought I would search two online resources to which both Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council subscribe on your behalf. These are the Times Digital Archive and Nineteenth Century Newspapers Online. These are available 24/7 to Wiltshire Libraries and Swindon Libraries members respectively, through the following links: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/leisureandculture/librarieshome/libraryonlineresources.htm. To find out which other Wiltshire stories were discovered, please 'read more'... 

http://www.swindon.gov.uk/leisuresport/libraries/24hourlibrary.htm

Together with many online resources, they are also accessible to everyone on computers in the History Centre and libraries in both Wiltshire and Swindon. Given the seasonal hot spell, I thought I would see what pops up if I were to search the key words Wiltshire AND Weather.

Searching Nineteenth Century Newspapers Online, which alas does not include a Wiltshire newspaper, I scored four hits …on essentially the same article in 1873, in those magnificent publications The Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser for Lancashire, Westmorland, Yorkshire etc. (4/10/1873), The Preston Guardian (4/10/1873) and Jacksons Oxford Journal (1/11 & 22/11/1873). The articles, all titled Wiltshire Weather Proverbs, seem to be based on a paper given by the Rev. C. H. Smith at a recent meeting of the Wiltshire Archaeological Society. So taken was the Oxford Journal (or so short of news), that it printed the lecture in two parts.

The key source for the author appears to be the good old Wiltshire shepherd. He says: “The labourer, and above all, the shepherd, employed all his life long on our open Wiltshire downs and fields has remarkable opportunities for studying the sky, and noting the signs of the seasons; and I have often been amazed at the accuracy with which he can forecast a change in the weather, when to ordinary eyes not the slightest symptoms of alteration were apparent.”  These abilities the author attributed to the shepherd’s “constant observation”, “prolonged experience,” an “instinct shared with many branches of the animal and even the vegetable world” and not least “a mind not overburdened with many thoughts.” (At this point I would like to point out to all farmers that these are the views of a nineteenth century clergyman).

Best of all, the author quotes many proverbs, and in one article relating to almost every month of the year. So naturally my attention was drawn to what we can expect this summer, well “a mist in May, and heat in June, make the harvest come right soon” but another proverb notes “a dripping June, brings all things in tune”. There’s nothing like hedging your bets, but this was probably enough to send the good folk of Preston and Lancaster out on to the moors to see if the local shepherd had developed the skills of his or her Wiltshire cousin.

More intriguing for me, however, was that on the same page on the Preston Guardian, just after the foreign intelligence, was an article on the famous court case concerning the Titchborne Claimant, a man called Arthur Orton claiming to be the long lost Sir Roger Titchborne, heir to a family fortune. Some of you who visited the History Centre just after we opened will know that we displayed a large banner-sized image of a man and woman standing in front of Stonehenge. The man in the photo, we believe, was the Titchborne Claimant. Now that really is the art of serendipity!

Next, I searched the Times Digital Archive. At this point I have to admit that I performed this search once before so the result was not entirely unexpected (call it my control experiment). Using the same search terms I scored two hits. The first was a real gem, it being the Death from Inclemency of the Weather (31/12/1844), taken from the Wiltshire Independent. The weather, of course, was not the real issue here. It is a story about the death of a poor man, John Matthews of Brinkworth, but more substantially it is an indictment of the new Poor Law, instituted ten years earlier and featuring the Malmesbury Union Workhouse.

Entry referring to John Matthews in the Malmesbury Union Workhouse Minute Book, 1844
Ref: H9/110/3

Mr Matthews, his wife and child had been admitted to the workhouse. Several months later they left the workhouse, with a promise from the relieving-officer to find Mr Matthews work with a contractor, but the contractor refused to employ him.  He then went to Wales looking for work and to obtain clothes he had earlier pawned there, leaving his wife and daughter to go back to the workhouse. Returning eight weeks later, half-starved, he applied for admission to the workhouse again, whereupon he was immediately taken into custody and committed to prison for leaving his wife and child chargeable to the parish. Two months later Matthews, with a known heart-disease, was discharged from Devizes prison with just a few rags to wear and into the freezing cold weather. He was given 4d and half a loaf of bread to sustain him. During an intense frost, he managed to get as far as the Shoulder of Mutton public house in Bromham, where the frost-bitten man was taken into care by the landlord and then conveyed to the Malmesbury Union Workhouse. Unfortunately, John Matthews did not recover and a Coroner’s jury recorded a verdict of death from the inclemency of weather due to heart disease, sudden exposure to the cold and insufficient clothing.

Part of Bromham's listing in the Post Office Directory, 1848
showing the Shoulder of Mutton Inn

Some readers will know that I have a keen interest in the history of the Poor Law and this is something I would never have found any other way. The other important part played by serendipity is that it often jogs ones failing memory. Back to the earlier articles on weather proverbs, Rev. Smith quotes John Aubrey, who noted the excellence of drought for farmers from a common saying in the south west “that a dry year never does cause a dearth.” This reminded me of Aubrey’s remarks on the astrological observations of the antiquarian William Camden, who believed that when the Moon is in Scorpio “tis fatal to the town of Shrewsbury.” Now I remember why I stopped working in that town twelve years ago!

Terry Bracher

Archives and Local Studies Manager