Yorkshire Almanac Gloves, scarves and money are distributed liberally among attendees of the funeral of Waide Calverley

30 May 1705: Gloves, scarves and money are distributed liberally among attendees of the funeral of Waide Calverley

Walter Calverley. 1886. Memorandum Book of Sir Walter Calverley, Bart. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Samuel Margerison. Durham: Surtees Society. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

My sister Waide, having been out of health a good while, and by reason of a jaundice reduced to a very great weakness, and having lost her stomach, it pleased God that she died, at New Grange [Headingley], on Saturday, 26th May, about noon, or near one of clock of the same day. She was sensible to the last moment, and died very penitently, and I was there, and my mother, and had been most of that week, and also several times before, and her funeral was appointed to be at Calverley on the Wednesday following. At which time she was brought in a hearse upon my wheels to Calverley church, and interred in my father’s quire, this being 30 May same, and Mr. Killingbeck, vicar of Leeds, preached a sermon (being by her direction), and took his text out of first book of Kings, chapter. 19, verse 4, about the prophet Elijah requesting for himself that he might die; which he handled very gravely. The gentlemen at the funeral had gloves and scarves, which were above 60, and all the rest gloves, which perhaps might be about 70 or 80, besides gentlemen’s men, etc. And there was £5 given out to be distributed to the poor, by Mr. Graham and S.H., to have been 3d. a piece, but they finding them very numerous, gave them but 2d. a piece, and in so doing distributed all that, and near 10s. more. So that there were towards 700 poor persons that had dole.

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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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Reproduction through the blind benevolence of Leeds Other Paper (RIP).1 April 1979: Amid motorway mania in Leeds, West Yorkshire Council is today to reveal plans to link Chapeltown and Woodhouse by a ¼-mile suspension bridge across Meanwood Beck

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Via Remember LOP, a feed by Tony Harcup which pays tribute to some splendid local journalism, unimaginable today.

Council sources claim the scheme was a victim of the first wave of cuts imposed by Margaret Thatcher following her General Election victory a month later.

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