Yorkshire Almanac Leeds retailers agree to early closing – eight o’clock in summer and seven in winter

22 August 1853: Leeds retailers agree to early closing – eight o’clock in summer and seven in winter

John Mayhall. 1860. The Annals and History of Leeds, and Other Places in the County of York. Leeds: Joseph Johnson. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

A public meeting of the retail tradesmen of Leeds, convened by the mayor was held at the Court-house, in favour of the early closing of their shops. The meeting pledged itself to close retail business at eight o’clock in summer and seven in winter.

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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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Is this Richard Jefferies’ Yorkshire nightingale?

Its appreciation of Yorkshire is extremely arbitrary. In some parts it is often to be met with; in others its occurrence is very rare. A few years ago a nightingale came to a wood in the neighbourhood of one of the large manufacturing towns. The intelligence was soon noised about, and the wood got to be so popular that an enterprising omnibus proprietor started a vehicle that took passengers ‘to the Nightingale’, at sixpence a head. The bird soon left that wood, and a little boy who got up into a tree and imitated it, was very near being stoned in the moonlight by some angry passengers who were disappointed at the failure of their excursion. (Jefferies 1886/04/10)

Between urban pollution and bird-catchers, nightingales never stood much a chance:

In 1879 a Nightingale was heard singing in Mosley Wood, Horsforth, some ten or twelve years before ; it was shot by the keeper a short time after.

[…]

Geo. Roberts observed that ” on the 13th of May one commenced singing in a small wood called Bushy Cliff, situate about five miles south-east of Leeds …. and began to sing each evening about half-past ten, and continued in song till four in the morning. I, along with several others, walked about in the adjacent meadows most of the nights of the 15th and 16th hastening to it. … I was somewhat surprised at its tameness ; on the third evening many boys and young men from villages round about assembled, and created some uproar, without, however, disturbing it from its perch, and the game-watchers got within a few yards of it. Early in the morning of the 17th, four days after its appearance, it was captured with limed twigs by two Leeds bird fanciers : a few meal-worms were thrown down among the twigs, and in less than five minutes after the bait was laid, the bird was secured.”

[…]

In 1846, one at Colonel Gunter’s, Wetherby Grange, where, alas, I saw a blackguard at two o’clock in the morning with a cage, and two or three nights afterwards its song ceased, so I presume he caught it.

(Clarke 1907)

John Le Mesurier may have been the only nightingale ever to (ahem) sing in Berkeley Square: