Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

I had a fine black of about sixteen years of age, presented to me by a gentleman [Mr. Drax] who brought him over from Barbados. This black lived with me some years, and died about this time of an imposthume in his head. Six weeks after he was buried [margin note: October 20] I received an account that at London it was credibly reported there that I had caused him to be gelt, and that the operation had killed him. I laughed at it at the first, conscious it was a falsehood, and a ridiculous story, till being further informed that it came from the Duke of Norfolk and his family, with whom I had had some differences at law, and that he had waited upon the king to beg my estate, if it became a forfeiture by this felony.

I thought it convenient to send for the coroner to view the body with a jury, before it was too far decayed, that a rottenness of the part might not be imputed to incision. The coroner accordingly summons a jury, and does his office; but when they came to uncover the breast, it was so putrified they would go no farther; so that upon the examination of eleven witnesses, some that laid him out, and some that saw him naked, several, because of his colour, having a curiosity to see him after he was dead, they gave their verdict, that he dyed ex visitatione dei, by the hand of god.

This, however, was not thought sufficient; for within a few days after, there came one Bright, a lawyer, one Chappel, an attorney, (both concerned in the duke’s affairs,) and one Buck, a surgeon of Sheffield, whom I had caused to be prosecuted not long before for having two wives, together with some others, with my Lord Chief Justice’s warrant, directed to the coroner to take up the body; which the coroner refused to obey, saying he had done his office already. These ambassadors, however, took up the body, and Buck, under pretence of viewing the part the better, would have taken it up with a penknife, but it was not suffered, lest by that instrument he should give the wound he sought for. But what was not only a mercy, but a miracle also, the part proved to be perfectly sound and entire, though the body had been so long under ground, and the rest of it was much putrified and decayed; so that shame of face and confusion came pretty plentifully upon the actors in this extraordinary scene.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Did the allegations circulate as a interracial cuckoldry joke – there’s probably a porn meme of this nature – with the servant presumed to be serving Mrs more than Mr?

Mr Drax must be Colonel Henry Drax, son of Colonel Sir James Drax (c. 1609 – c. 1662), a pioneer of the plantation system. Barbados was said in 2022 to be threatening to sue their descendant, the Tory MP Richard Drax, for reparations.

Something to say? Get in touch

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Abscess (1) W/G ·
• Barbados (3) W/G ·
• Bigamy (2) W/G ·
• Castration (2) W/G ·
• Charles II (1630-85) (27), King of Scotland 1649-51, King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration until his death W/G ·
• Cuckold (1) W/G ·
• Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk (1) W/G ·
• Humour (29) W/G ·
• Inquest (15) W/G ·
• James Drax (1) W/G ·
• London (84) W/G ·
• Race and sexuality (1) W/G ·
• Reresby, John (1634-89) (23), Thrybergh-born, politician and diarist, governor of York 1682-88, 2nd baronet W/G ·
• Restoration comedy (1) W/G ·
• Richard Drax (1) W/G ·
• Richard Raynsford (1) W/G ·
• 📌Sheffield (80) W/G ·
• Slavery (22) W/G ·
• 📌Thrybergh (6) W/G ·

All tags.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Did the allegations circulate as a interracial cuckoldry joke – there’s probably a porn meme of this nature – with the servant presumed to be serving Mrs more than Mr?

Mr Drax must be Colonel Henry Drax, son of Colonel Sir James Drax (c. 1609 – c. 1662), a pioneer of the plantation system. Barbados was said in 2022 to be threatening to sue their descendant, the Tory MP Richard Drax, for reparations.

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

5 October 1665: John Reresby finds that Charles II has broken a promise and made someone more generous than him sheriff of Yorkshire

15 January 1685: John Reresby, governor of York, refuses to help exempt Sheffield cutlers from the hearth tax because of insufficient rewards for past favours

10 December 1769: Part of the northern ballad about Bill Brown, a Brightside (Sheffield) steelworker and hare-poacher killed by gamekeepers today near Rotherham

4 July 1838: 26 girls and boys drown trying to escape via a tunnel from flash flooding in Huskar Colliery, Silkstone, Barnsley, after the steam lifts fail during a rainstorm

31 July 1667: Thomas Danby, Leeds’s first mayor, is stabbed to death late at night in London

25 May 1728: King Jessop, the fighting rector of Treeton (Rotherham), is buried at Sheffield, and remembered for his punch and his parody

12 September 1687: Installation of a bell at St Leonard’s, Thrybergh

17 June 1685: John Reresby tells the House of Commons that London deserves higher taxes because its very existence is a tax on the rest of England

11 September 1666: Nine days after the start of the Great Fire, Margaret Hodgson of Richmond tells a York court that a beggar told her yesterday of a plot to burn London

4 September 1947: Conflicting hopes for the future of the nationalised coal industry, as a wildcat strike against increased hours at Grimethorpe spreads through the South Yorkshire coalfield

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Re this wave of unofficial strikes:

Major-General Sir Noel Holmes, chairman of the north-eastern division of the National Coal Board, in a statement yesterday on the strike at Grimethorpe Colliery, said that 140 coal-face workers, out of 2,682 employed at the pit, were not doing a fair day’s work. A committee representing management and workmen had decided that the stint for the 140 workers should be increased by 2ft., but they refused to accept its findings and came out on strike. The other coal-face workers came out in sympathy. “As much as I dislike mentioning this fact,” said Sir Noel Holmes, “it is only right to recall that at Grimethorpe since January 1, 1947, and before the present strike, there have been 26 sectional unofficial stoppages, which have lost 33,000 tons of coal to the nation. The present stoppage up to date represents a further loss of more than 40,000 tons.” (Times 1947/08/27)

Holmes’s Wikipedia article curiously doesn’t mention this phase of his career.

I’m guessing that the Welsh ex-Puritan authoritarian Communist Arthur Horner is the voice of the NUM in the above – see e.g. the Times for 9 September.

Interesting comments on the wartime coal boards by T.S. Charlton, colliery manager at Cortonwood:

The management of the collieries is in the hands of men trained primarily in management of mines and miners. They have a working knowledge of all the machinery available and how best it can be used, but the details of this side are left to the mechanical and electrical engineer. Labour costs are two-thirds of production costs, and therefore the handling and the best use of men are of the greatest importance to managers. Why it should have been decided that labour leaders should be good labour directors is, apart from the political issue, difficult to understand, unless it is on the old adage of “poacher turned gamekeeper.” Unless and until the production director has control of his labour side, I can see little hope of his schemes proving effective.

The miners have put forward suggestions to improve output, but they appear to do no more than improve the position of the miner. Can it be said that any suggestion already put forward by the men has put up the output figure? Why should it be assumed the men’s side of the pit production committees should be able to improve output in any way? Their training, inclinations, and very job depend upon their obtaining the best for their electors rather than for production.
(Charlton 1943/12/01)

Charlton was clearly a clever and capable man – it would be good to know more about him.

Something to say? Get in touch