Yorkshire Almanac Elizabeth Hawksworth endeavours to mount a horse behind her husband

18 August 1730: Elizabeth Hawksworth endeavours to mount a horse behind her husband

John Hobson. 1877. The Journal of Mr. John Hobson, Late of Dodworth Green. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Charles Jackson. Durham: Surtees Society. A (morbid) compendium of everyday England. It is sometimes unclear whether the date given is that of an occurrence or that on which news reached his capacious ears. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

Elizabeth Hawksworth, formerly wife of Samuel Sadler, afterwards of Edward Bramhall, died at Shepperd’s Castle, of a fall from a horse which she received the 18th instant, at Peniston races. As she was getting up behind her husband the horse threw them both.

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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 love the editor’s note:

This post equitem adventure on the part of this unfortunate lady needs explanation to the present generation, for there are probably few now living who have ever seen such a feat effected. In days when roads were bad, carriages were few, and railroads were not dreamed of, it was the custom for many females of different ranks in life to take up their position on horseback upon a comfortable seat called a pillion (from pillow) behind their husbands, servants, or others, as the case might be. I can well recollect, in the first quarter of the present century, some of the older race of farmers’ wives coming to the markets at Doncaster in this style, with their baskets of eggs and butter resting before them upon their knees. Swift has:

The horse and pillion both were gone;
Phyllis, it seems, was fled with John.

Captain Adam Eyre, in his journal, Jan. 23, 1646, speaks of having borrowed a mare ‘to carry my wife and myself.’ 1646–7 March 17, Robert Eyre having come to him on business, ‘he promised to ride with his wife to Derby, and wished me to bring him a pillion seat to carry her on.’ 1647, May 11, speaks about his wife and himself both riding upon one horse, and having a dangerous fall. Same year, Aug. 24, ‘I went to Birchworth, and Priscilla rid behind me.’ In this fashion Queen Elizabeth, when she rode into the city, placed herself behind her Lord Chancellor. The side-saddle, it is true, was in use at that period, but none but the most experienced riders ventured with it. An anecdote is related in ‘Ramsay’s Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character,’ p. 64, regarding an old Gallowegian lady of a period when a too liberal conviviality sometimes led to awkward occurrences. An old laird was returning from a supper party with his lady mounted behind him on horseback. On crossing the river Urr, at a point where it joins the sea, the old lady dropped off, but was not missed till her husband reached his door. The party who were despatched in search of her arrived just in time to find her remonstrating with the advancing tide, which trickled into her mouth, in these words: ‘No anither drap; neither het nor cauld.’ The Daily News of Oct. 19, 1874, says: ‘In our grandfathers’ time it was not unusual for a lady to be married in her riding habit, and jog off for her honeymoon on a pillion with her arms round her husband’s waist. The apparently meaningless leather belt still worn by grooms is what Mr. Tylor would call a survival of the practice of riding pillions. The fair equestrian who of necessity sat behind held on by this leathern girdle.’ A ‘male pylyon,’ i.e. a pillion to carry a maille or portmanteau, containing treasure, is mentioned in the steward’s accounts of Edw. Seymour, earl of Hertford, 1537.

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Comment

I love the editor’s note:

This post equitem adventure on the part of this unfortunate lady needs explanation to the present generation, for there are probably few now living who have ever seen such a feat effected. In days when roads were bad, carriages were few, and railroads were not dreamed of, it was the custom for many females of different ranks in life to take up their position on horseback upon a comfortable seat called a pillion (from pillow) behind their husbands, servants, or others, as the case might be. I can well recollect, in the first quarter of the present century, some of the older race of farmers’ wives coming to the markets at Doncaster in this style, with their baskets of eggs and butter resting before them upon their knees. Swift has:

The horse and pillion both were gone;
Phyllis, it seems, was fled with John.

Captain Adam Eyre, in his journal, Jan. 23, 1646, speaks of having borrowed a mare ‘to carry my wife and myself.’ 1646–7 March 17, Robert Eyre having come to him on business, ‘he promised to ride with his wife to Derby, and wished me to bring him a pillion seat to carry her on.’ 1647, May 11, speaks about his wife and himself both riding upon one horse, and having a dangerous fall. Same year, Aug. 24, ‘I went to Birchworth, and Priscilla rid behind me.’ In this fashion Queen Elizabeth, when she rode into the city, placed herself behind her Lord Chancellor. The side-saddle, it is true, was in use at that period, but none but the most experienced riders ventured with it. An anecdote is related in ‘Ramsay’s Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character,’ p. 64, regarding an old Gallowegian lady of a period when a too liberal conviviality sometimes led to awkward occurrences. An old laird was returning from a supper party with his lady mounted behind him on horseback. On crossing the river Urr, at a point where it joins the sea, the old lady dropped off, but was not missed till her husband reached his door. The party who were despatched in search of her arrived just in time to find her remonstrating with the advancing tide, which trickled into her mouth, in these words: ‘No anither drap; neither het nor cauld.’ The Daily News of Oct. 19, 1874, says: ‘In our grandfathers’ time it was not unusual for a lady to be married in her riding habit, and jog off for her honeymoon on a pillion with her arms round her husband’s waist. The apparently meaningless leather belt still worn by grooms is what Mr. Tylor would call a survival of the practice of riding pillions. The fair equestrian who of necessity sat behind held on by this leathern girdle.’ A ‘male pylyon,’ i.e. a pillion to carry a maille or portmanteau, containing treasure, is mentioned in the steward’s accounts of Edw. Seymour, earl of Hertford, 1537.

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31 October 1674: Riding home to Pontefract from Wakefield fair, a sozzled Silvanus Rich enters the River Calder in flood at Wakefield bridge

12 September 1731: Edward Garner of Dodworth dies, perhaps the victim of his runaway horse

22 September 1731: Death of a mad mule-baiter

5 May 1732: William Lindley of Dodworth recalls how charcoal burners would cheat coal merchants at the time of the Restoration

13 March 1728: Wild daffodils in the hedges at Wickersley (Rotherham)

28 April 1730: John Hobson meets a nematicide at Woodall (Rotherham)

10 October 1730: John Hobson observes a fiery red star to the north over Barnsley

29 May 1732: Old William Lindley of Dodworth tells various marvellous stories from his youth

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

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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

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