Yorkshire Almanac Young William Allison sees Bob Gowland, Kilvington’s blacksmith, slaughter a pig while drunk

22 January 1863: Young William Allison sees Bob Gowland, Kilvington’s blacksmith, slaughter a pig while drunk

William Allison. 1920. “My Kingdom for a Horse!”. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

From a Diary which I kept in 1863 the following passage shows that I had not passed beyond the primeval savage or cruel instincts with which we are all born, until education in the humanities “emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros” [“soften the manners and subdue the mind” (Ovid)]. The extract is dated 22nd January 1863:

I saw a pig killed this afternoon. The first time it was struck it broke the rope and got away. It was pulled back and struck twice, and had its throat cut twice, and then was scalded to death.

Such miraculous changes come over us in process of time! for I, who would not now see a living thing hurt, if I could help it, was clearly interested in the butchery of that pig. I remember Bob Gowland, the Kilvington blacksmith, used to be called in when a pig had to be killed, and being, as I have said, not of sober habit, he did not strike with sufficient accuracy when attempting to fell the poor brute. It is horrible to think of now, but it is a reminder of what one was.

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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

Later:

Children nowadays are so old at such ages as from ten to twelve that it will seem no wonder at all when they are able, in due course, fifty years later, to tell what they did in their youth; but in my time children associated, for the most part, with children, and they did not so quickly become old-fashioned. I have mentioned taking pleasure in seeing a pig killed, and I ought in justice to myself to add that I and my sister were very kind to two young pet porkers, whom we named “Johnny” and “Jacky.”

It was a commonplace request, after doing lessons: ” Please may we go and play with the pigs ! ”

Pigs really are intelligent if you handle them kindly, and all went well with Johnny and Jacky till they grew big, and then, whichever was mine took fright at something and knocked me over on hard cobble-stones. I was partially stunned, and the pig galloped over my prostrate body. That ended this form of amusement, and the end of the pigs was not far distant.

The Englished Ovid is from a felicitous translation of the whole couplet added to a later edition of a 1711 essay on education by Addison:

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros

Ingenuous arts, where they an entrance find,
Soften the manners, and subdue the mind.
(Addison 1755)

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Comment

Later:

Children nowadays are so old at such ages as from ten to twelve that it will seem no wonder at all when they are able, in due course, fifty years later, to tell what they did in their youth; but in my time children associated, for the most part, with children, and they did not so quickly become old-fashioned. I have mentioned taking pleasure in seeing a pig killed, and I ought in justice to myself to add that I and my sister were very kind to two young pet porkers, whom we named “Johnny” and “Jacky.”

It was a commonplace request, after doing lessons: ” Please may we go and play with the pigs ! ”

Pigs really are intelligent if you handle them kindly, and all went well with Johnny and Jacky till they grew big, and then, whichever was mine took fright at something and knocked me over on hard cobble-stones. I was partially stunned, and the pig galloped over my prostrate body. That ended this form of amusement, and the end of the pigs was not far distant.

The Englished Ovid is from a felicitous translation of the whole couplet added to a later edition of a 1711 essay on education by Addison:

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros

Ingenuous arts, where they an entrance find,
Soften the manners, and subdue the mind.
(Addison 1755)

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12 September 1865: An unexpected gesture from Richard Scurr, watchmaker, at the Thirsk burial of John Pick Allison, solicitor

30 June 1880: Tom Palliser, a Kilvington drunk, denies to a York court that a half crown received from Col. Dawnay, Conservative candidate for Thirsk, was an electoral bribe

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

6 December 1853: The Rev. Heslop of Forcett (Richmondshire) writes in the old style to his protégé John Pick Allison regarding the death of the latter’s uncle, and suspicions of legacy-hunting

23 February 1863: The Rev Samuel Gray of Cundall tries to make school interesting for a nervous William Allison (12)

28 February 1863: William Allison (11) goes mouse-hunting with a fellow-pupil at Cundall (Ripon)

12 August 1866: William Allison (15) goes grouse shooting for the first time, on Saltergate Moor (Pickering)

11 August 1875: The Whitby town crier’s unique act for the municipal dog show

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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