Yorkshire Almanac Abraham de la Pryme describes eel-fishing for animal feed in the River Went near Doncaster

7 May 1698: Abraham de la Pryme describes eel-fishing for animal feed in the River Went near Doncaster

Abraham de la Pryme. 1870. The Diary of Abraham de la Pryme, the Yorkshire Antiquary. Ed. Charles Jackson. Durham: Surtees Society. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

May 7th. At Trumfleet water mills there are commonly every May such vast numbers of young eels comes over the wheels with the waters and runs into the mill, that they are forced to give over working, and to send into the town for the swine to devour them, for they are innumerable as the sand on the sea shore.

I was a fishing in the Went the other day. It is a narrow river, not over six yards over, but the crookedest and the deepest that ever I saw in my life, therefore it is rightly called Went, which signifies deep in Welsh. Every turn of the river makes a great bog on the other side, on which the water is thrown by the current; and there is delicate fish therein; but such quantities of eels that the like was never seen. Sometimes there will break out, or fall out of the hollow bank sides, when people are a fishing, such vast knots of eels, almost as big as a horse, that they break all their nets in pieces.

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

I struggled with the geography until I found Chris Firth:

It would be difficult to recognise the present River Went from this description given by de Prime. The river has clearly undergone many drainage operations since his time, and is essentially now a straight drainage channel… In a further paragraph of his observations, de Prime describes the Went as feeding Trumfleet Water Mill. This indicates that the course has been substantially altered as Trumfleet is now a considerable distance from the river channel (Firth 1997).

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

I struggled with the geography until I found Chris Firth:

It would be difficult to recognise the present River Went from this description given by de Prime. The river has clearly undergone many drainage operations since his time, and is essentially now a straight drainage channel… In a further paragraph of his observations, de Prime describes the Went as feeding Trumfleet Water Mill. This indicates that the course has been substantially altered as Trumfleet is now a considerable distance from the river channel (Firth 1997).

Something to say? Get in touch

21 June 1703: A whirlwind at Hatfield, Doncaster

15 August 1805: The Sheffield volunteer infantry depart to fight Napoleon on the beaches

11 March 1864: An inhabitant of Bacon Island survives the Great Sheffield Flood

20 March 1695: Why there are more sheep than foxes

5 June 1696: The Great Recoinage brings a satellite of the Royal Mint to York and rioting to Rochdale

11 November 1696: On communicating with Nathaniel Johnston, hidden historian of Yorkshire

30 January 1709: Charles Boswell, king of the gypsies, is buried at Rossington, Doncaster

25 November 1698: A scholar must also pursue a modern scoundrel like Dugdale the demoniac

18 September 1831: William Wallett, an unemployed Hull clown, sets out to walk from Tickhill to Doncaster for the St Leger in home-made clothes

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

Comment

Thomas Frost comments re two other impresarios:

The haze which envelopes the movements of travelling circuses prior to the time when they began to be recorded weekly in the Era cannot always be penetrated, even after the most diligent research. Circus proprietors are, as a rule, disposed to reticence upon the subject; and the bills of tenting establishments are seldom preserved, and would afford no information if they were, being printed without the names of the towns and the dates of the performances (Frost 1875).

However, the circumstantial evidence provided by Wallett has encouraged me to conjecture the date used in the entry – refutations welcome.

In the 19th century, the St Leger Stakes at Doncaster, Wallett’s destination, was run in September, so we have the month. This episode follows his trip to Gainsborough mart, where he stays in a beer house that opened after passing of the New Beer Act, which came into operation on 11 October 1830. Gainsborough fair commenced on Easter Monday, so at the earliest we’re talking on this evidence is September 1831. Wallett was married to Mary Orme in April 1839 despite the famous protests (perhaps exaggerated or invented for PR) of her father, and my impression is that he is unmarried here, so the latest possible date is probably September 1838.

The itinerant actor-manager William Abbott (?-?) – with whom Wallett had worked, with whom he stayed in Tickhill, and whom he saw for the last time at the end of the chapter – does not help date this episode. Wallett says he is “of the Theatre Royal, Crowle” – a thriving but small Lincolnshire market town – in humorous reference to the famous actor-manager William Abbot(t) (1790-1843), who worked inter alia at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and, like our Abbott, was bankrupted in England and died in the States (but of apoplexy in Baltimore or New York, rather than cholera in St. Louis). William Slout says Wallett spent four years with the Abbotts after starting his theatrical career at Hull in 1830 (Slout 1998), which might suggest September 1835, 1836 or 1837, but I don’t know his evidence.

Cholera may help. If Charley Yeoman really did die of cholera (about?) two months after his split with Wallett at Gainsborough, then he might have been a victim of the second pandemic, then this might confirm September 1832 as the sole candidate: cholera was only general in England in summer and autumn of 1832 (Underwood 1947/11/03) – see e.g. reports of the 1832 St. Leger (Highflyer 1832). But Yeoman might instead have been a victim of indigenous cholera or something similar. I haven’t read anything about cholera in the USA, so can’t comment on the cholera deaths of the Abbotts, apparently in St Louis, Missouri (the famous William Abbott died in New York or Baltimore of apoplexy).

But Wallett mentions having worked for “Little Jemmy Scott’s Coronation Pavilion” under usurper Charley Yeoman at Gainsborough this year, and Frost says Wallett was with Charles Yeoman’s Royal Pavilion in Gainsborough (Frost 1875), suggesting that circus celebrations in Brighton following William IV’s coronation in June 1830 took to the road.

Rain may be our greatest ally. Which Doncaster meeting was marred by rain on the Monday, the day before the St. Leger? 1831 mentions torrential rain on the evening of the day before, which is the one he was travelling on – he completed the outfit two days before – perhaps there were heavy local showers, and he was rained on https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433066598982&view=1up&seq=450&q1=Chorister No mention of rain

Something to say? Get in touch