Memories of eighty years / by John Beddoe M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.

  • Beddoe, John, 1826-1911.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Memories of eighty years / by John Beddoe M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    of a Sunday in July. It was a local hurricane or tornado, which affected a narrow strip of West Worcestershire perhaps a dozen miles long, but only a few hundred yards in width. It lasted only seven minutes, but levelled most of the trees it en- countered, upset a heavy wagon full of hay, and perpetrated a good deal of damage. The air was so full of branches of trees, bundles of hay, and so forth, that one could scarcely see fifty yards. We were all so much taken up with the damage sustained by our neighbours that we took no thought about our little estate of Northwoods, nor indeed did we know that the path of the storm had included it. But early next morning I was awoke by a stone impinging on my window, and was hailed by my father’s land- bailiff with— “ Sir, I've bad news. All the trees in the archat [orchard] “be blown down, and all the grass in the meadows be laid as flat as if it had been rolled, and all them poplars along o’ the river have got their heads twistled off.” His tale was nowise exaggerated ; but we managed to shore up most of the apple trees, and ultimately they were not much the worse. The period of which I have been speaking was in some parts of England, notably in Wiltshire, known long afterwards as “ the hungry forties,” but I do not believe that in Worcestershire and Shropshire it at all deserved that unpleasant title and reputation. I have little or no recollection as to the w'ages of the peasantry. Whatever they were, they were largely supplemented by gifts and perquisites; and the truck system (which, however, was not much in vogue)