Yorkshire Almanac A cat joins John Wesley’s street congregation at Robin Hood’s Bay

24 June 1761: A cat joins John Wesley’s street congregation at Robin Hood’s Bay

John Wesley. 1827. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 3. London: J. Kershaw. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

I walked round the old Abbey, which, both with regard to its size, (being, I judge, a hundred yards long,) and the workmanship of it, is one of the finest, if not the finest ruin in the kingdom. Hence we rode to Robinhood’s Bay, where I preached at six, in the Lower-street, near the Key. In the midst of the sermon, a large cat, frighted out of a chamber, leaped down upon a woman’s head, and ran over the heads or shoulders of many more; but none of them moved, or cried out, any more than if it had been a butterfly.

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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

Does Wesley experience animals as part of his flock, or were there simply a lot around? See e.g. the Doncaster donkey, the Gainsborough rooster…

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Does Wesley experience animals as part of his flock, or were there simply a lot around? See e.g. the Doncaster donkey, the Gainsborough rooster…

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22 June 1761: John Wesley is troubled by fish at Guisborough

3 July 1761: John Wesley visits an unjustly bankrupted Yarm liquor smuggler in York Castle

19 July 1761: John Wesley speaks at the first love-feast at Birstall

24 July 1761: Jonas Rushford (14) of Bradford tells a perhaps envious John Wesley how the Skipton magician Timothy Crowther helped him find a missing man

24 July 1766: Hats off for Jesus at Pateley Bridge

18 July 1784: Wesley finds children “restrained from open sin” at one of the first Sunday schools, at Bingley

20 January 1536: Thomas Cromwell’s dissolvers of monasteries, Richard Layton and Thomas Legh, report allegations of whoring and theft by William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains

9 May 1757: John Wesley rides into Huddersfield in the Wild West Riding

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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