Yorkshire Almanac William Smith stands trial for the theft of William Taylor’s hat during a Monday all-nighter at the Labour In Vain pub in Hull

21 October 1830: William Smith stands trial for the theft of William Taylor’s hat during a Monday all-nighter at the Labour In Vain pub in Hull

Hull Packet. 1830/10/26. Hull Sessions. Hull. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

William Smith (20), charged with stealing a hat the property of Wm. Taylor. The prosecutor stated that on Monday night, the 12th inst., having passed the evening at the Labour-in-Vain, at South-end, late at night he got sleepy and laid his head upon the table. He did not wake until five o’clock on the following morning, when he missed his hat. There were many people in the room. On Tuesday morning, while passing along Whitefriargate, he met the prisoner, upon whose head he recognised his own hat; prisoner had at the time another hat under his arm. Witness procured a constable and gave him in charge. He said he had bought the hat and could take him to the shop.

Thomas Snodgrass, the next witness, gave his evidence with peculiar naiveté. He said that, at five o’clock on the Tuesday morning, he went into the Labour-in-Vain, to take a gill of ale, which was not unusual with him at that early hour, as, being a roper, he frequently rose to his work at three. On going into the room, he saw a number of persons, some asleep and some awake. He took not particular notice of them as he concluded they had been “adrift” all night. Presently he saw the prisoner take up a cap and a hat, and as he (witness) thought he could have no business with both, he “did” notice “his” motions. At last he threw the cap down and put the hat on his head. Witness said, “You look best in the hat, but it’s not your own.” Prisoner turned it round and round on his head many times, and seemed to like it, and at last walked off. Shortly after, the prosecutor waked up, and said he had lost his hat, and appeared to be in very great trouble, upon which witness acquainted him with what he had seen. The witness concluded his evidence by informing the bench that when the matter was “overhauled” before the magistrates the prisoner said that he was “fresh” at the time and took the hat by mistake, but that he was willing to pay the man. It was, evidently, the witness said, a drunken “consarn” in fair time, and as the man was willing to pay, he thought the court could not do better than look over it. To this ill-timed piece of advice the Recorder replied by requesting the witness to go about his business; informing him that he was sent for to give his testimony and not to take part in the judicial proceedings of the court.

The next witness, James Haller, constable, took the prisoner into custody at the request of the prosecutor. He said he would take them to the shop where he bought it, but witness thought the shortest way of deciding the affair was to bring him at once before the magistrates. On coming near the door of the Mansion House, he threw down the hat and ran off, but was overtaken in Salthouse Lane and brought back.

Guilty but recommended to mercy by the prosecutor on the ground that he supported an aged mother. To be imprisoned and kept to hard labour two calendar months.

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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.

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17 December 1674: Michael Gilburn, a Halifax lawyer, terminates a drunken weekend in style

17 July 1815: John Dunhill and William Bewell stand trial for their lives shortly after Waterloo, accused of the riotous demolition of a press-gang pub at 41, Humber Street, Hull

17 November 1865: Charles Harding, ex-landlord of the Labour in Vain at Hull, lists his debtors

4 December 1841: The York Herald tells of an almost omnivorous sheep

12 November 1207: Leeds’s municipal charter seeks to encourage female publicans

30 April 1872: MPs discuss drink, proverbial curse of the working class, with James Wetherell, Leeds’s chief constable

17 January 1865: At Leeds, temperance advocate Wilfrid Lawson MP calls for the sale of alcohol to be banned

25 September 1705: Daniel Defoe is amazed by Leeds’s outdoor cloth market on Briggate, shortly before the opening of the white cloth hall

23 January 1640: Andrew Marvell’s father drowns in the Humber at Hull

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Andrew Junior left to look after himself.

The manner of his father’s death, and the fact that the poet himself was born in reclaimed Holderness, should give pause to those who take offence at his lines on Holland:

How did they rivet with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground,
Building their watery Babel far more high,
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky!
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o’er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what’s their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest (Marvell 1665).

I must find out more about Mrs. Skinner of Thornton, North Lincolnshire, who adopted him.

Marvell was not the only person with reason to dislike the crossing:

There are some good towns on the sea-coast; but I include not Barton, which stands on the Humber, as one of them, being a straggling mean town, noted for nothing but an ill-favoured dangerous passage, or ferry, over the Humber to Hull; where, in an open boat, in which we had about 15 horses, and 10 or 12 cows, mingled with about 17 or 18 passengers, we were about 4 hours tossed about on the Humber, before we could get into the harbour at Hull. Well may the Humber take its name from the noise it makes; for in an high wind it is incredibly great and terrible, like the crash and dashing together of ships (Defoe 1748).

In “To a Coy Mistress” Marvell laments his lover’s absence in the lines “I by the tide/ Of Humber would complain” (Marvell 1898), which inspired Angela Leighton to a rather excellent poem, “By the Tide of Humber” (Leighton 2023) which I hope I’ll be allowed to use.

I haven’t managed to access Nicholas von Maltzahn’s “Death by Drowning: Marvell’s ‘Lycidas’.”

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