22 March 1731: “Vegetable caterpillars” amid the artichokes at Dodworth (Barnsley)
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:
.Excerpt
Our gardener, Thomas Bowman, showed me a great curiosity which he found in digging among the artichoke plants. It resembled exactly a caterpillar, but, when broke in two, was only a root, which, he says, he has seen produce leaves, there being many of them to be met with in a strawberry bed at Banks. I call it the vegetable caterpillar.
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.
Abbreviations:
- ER: East Riding
- GM: Greater Manchester
- NR: North Riding
- NY: North Yorkshire
- SY: South Yorkshire
- WR: West Riding
- WY: West Yorkshire
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Original
Our gardener, Thomas Bowman, showed me a great curiosity which he found in digging among the artichoke plants. It resembled exactly a caterpillar, but, when broke in two, was only a root, which, he says, he has seen produce leaves, there being many of them to be met with in a strawberry bed at Banks. I call it the vegetable caterpillar.
63 words.
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.
- Artichoke (1)
· - Caterpillar (2) ·
- 📌Dodworth (17) ·
- Gardening (6) ·
- Hobson, John (32), enthusiastically morbid diarist of Dodworth Green (Barnsley), the date of whose own death is unknown ·
- Root (1) ·
- Strawberry (3) ·
Similar
- 6 July 1825: James Backhouse, a Quaker nurseryman from York, triumphs with exotic varieties at the Yorkshire Horticultural Society’s summer meeting in Leeds
- 10 November 1653: Thomas Baynes (allegedly) compares Parliament’s sequestrators to an agricultural pest
- 13 June 1635: A Puritan talks to the gardener at York of the notorious miser and swindler, Sir Arthur Ingram
- 12 September 1731: Edward Garner of Dodworth dies, perhaps the victim of his runaway horse
- 28 April 1730: John Hobson meets a nematicide at Woodall (Rotherham)
- 1 January 1735: Silkstone parish sends the presumably destitute James Lindly (7) as a servant to John Hobson in Dodworth
- 10 October 1730: John Hobson observes a fiery red star to the north over Barnsley
- 5 May 1732: William Lindley of Dodworth recalls how charcoal burners would cheat coal merchants at the time of the Restoration
- 29 May 1732: Old William Lindley of Dodworth tells various marvellous stories from his youth
- 30 April 1733: John Hobson sacks his maidservant for alcohol abuse
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