I’ll be honest, I’m a bit worried about it. The Long Suffering Husband took early retirement last year and since then I’ve filled my life with extra things to do. I’ve taken on things that retired people should do but I’m still working.
This year The Moot Hall is 600 years old and they have started a project to get the court records onto a database. I thought this sounded like an interesting thing to do with my spare time (“What spare time?” asked the LSH) . Yesterday we took a trip to the records office to get familiar with the project. After a tour and meeting the book wizard in the basement we started to look at some of the records.
I ordered the Court Minutes from 1882 and started to struggle with the handwriting.
I was expecting a couple of cases of petty theft but the first one I looked at could only have been found by me.
4th July 1898
Incident arising from a (something indecipherable)
How disappointing. I couldn’t even read what the charge was but I ploughed on.
Harriet L?? of Hazeleigh. Widow. On her oath hath said, “I was in Fambridge Road at about 8.15pm when I saw him, a dredger of Maldon coming close to Starlass(?) Farm. I heard someone calling out ‘behind you’. I looked around I saw a man in the arch. He was coming towards me. He undid his trousers and he felt of himself. I saw his penis. His penis was fully erect. I went into the Farms yard and he went onto Maldon afterward.”
Another witness testified that he was “under the influence of drink. I know what he was doing.”
Only I could pick a first case to look at that was an indecent exposure.
He was found guilty and got seven days hard labour.
The trouble is I now want to know more about this man and if I can’t know then I’m prepared to make it up. Teddy Smith and his terrible behaviour has taken up a space in my mind. I have no sympathy for him but can still see him breaking rocks for seven days before going back to work, clearing mud from the river so that the barges could come upstream until next payday when he drinks his wages in the Dolphin before staggering up the High Street and down Fambridge road to expose himself to another unsuspecting Harriet.
And what of Harriet and her son George? George was actually a terrible witness, saying that he didn’t see anything. Did she become too frightened to go out, or was this the last man’s payday penis she was prepared to look at before reporting him?
This faction has to stop. This is a great project that shouldn’t be spoilt by the easily distracted, loose with the truth work avoiders, like me.
I ordered the Court Minutes from 1882 and started to struggle with the handwriting.
I was expecting a couple of cases of petty theft but the first one I looked at could only have been found by me.
4th July 1898
Incident arising from a (something indecipherable)
How disappointing. I couldn’t even read what the charge was but I ploughed on.
Harriet L?? of Hazeleigh. Widow. On her oath hath said, “I was in Fambridge Road at about 8.15pm when I saw him, a dredger of Maldon coming close to Starlass(?) Farm. I heard someone calling out ‘behind you’. I looked around I saw a man in the arch. He was coming towards me. He undid his trousers and he felt of himself. I saw his penis. His penis was fully erect. I went into the Farms yard and he went onto Maldon afterward.”
Another witness testified that he was “under the influence of drink. I know what he was doing.”
Only I could pick a first case to look at that was an indecent exposure.
He was found guilty and got seven days hard labour.
The trouble is I now want to know more about this man and if I can’t know then I’m prepared to make it up. Teddy Smith and his terrible behaviour has taken up a space in my mind. I have no sympathy for him but can still see him breaking rocks for seven days before going back to work, clearing mud from the river so that the barges could come upstream until next payday when he drinks his wages in the Dolphin before staggering up the High Street and down Fambridge road to expose himself to another unsuspecting Harriet.
And what of Harriet and her son George? George was actually a terrible witness, saying that he didn’t see anything. Did she become too frightened to go out, or was this the last man’s payday penis she was prepared to look at before reporting him?
This faction has to stop. This is a great project that shouldn’t be spoilt by the easily distracted, loose with the truth work avoiders, like me.
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