History

LOST DORSET NO. 26 WEYMOUTH

David Burnett, The Dovecote Press

The message on the back, written in August 1908, says it all: ‘My dear Chummy. This will give you some idea of the crowds here on August Bank Holiday. This is only half the beach. Most of the natives clear out on that day. There are no rocks. Free and easy bathing. Sammy.’ The current chaos at Britain’s airports may add to the numbers on all Dorset’s beaches this August, though few are likely to be as crowded as in the postcard. Weymouth owed its popularity to ‘Swindon Weeks’ – the annual closure of the Great Western Railway works in Swindon. By the mid-1880s, and on one day alone, 6,000 workers and their families disembarked at Weymouth Station on special ‘Trip Day’ trains before heading for one of the hundreds of family-run lodgings that sprang up behind the esplanade. Apart from the sands, the principal attractions were the Pavilion, which opened in 1908, musical concerts by military bands in the public gardens, and excursions by paddle-steamer to Lulworth Cove or round the battleships of the Channel Fleet anchored in Portland Harbour.

Lost Dorset: The Towns 1880-1920, the companion volume to Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, is a 220-page large format hardback, price £20, and available locally from Winstone’s Books or directly from the publishers.

dovecotepress.com

OBJECT OF THE MONTH THE ‘ROMAN’ COIN MOULD

Elisabeth Bletsoe, Curator, Sherborne Museum

Acurious object brought into the museum in its inaugural year is described as a coin mould, purportedly found in a ditch near Sherborne Castle by a Mr Wick who was clearing the drains in 1923. Our records show that it was initially identified, and indeed exhibited, as Roman and depicting the Emperor Gallienus, but is that entirely accurate?

We can definitely say it is a stone fragment, smooth on one face, measuring 110mm x 65mm x 33mm. Four perfectly round indentations show the obverse of coins or tokens; these are linked to enable liquid metal to flow freely between them. An additional hole suggests a peg socket, indicating that this is only one half of the mould. The ‘coins’ have heads with radiate crowns and are clearly based on Roman coins from the third century AD. The legends read as a series of letters which are not reversed as they would be in a genuine mould. These words are indistinct and are dissimilar in each coin except for a three-letter grouping near the heads: SHe or possibly SNe. The coins form two pairs; one pair has a diameter of one inch, the other 7/8ths of an inch.

The mould certainly piqued the interest of Gordon LePard, former county archaeologist, and he asked if he could study it in detail. He was able to confirm that it was almost definitely post-medieval in date since imperial measurements had been used. He believed the maker was unfamiliar with casting objects because the letters were not written mirror fashion as they would normally be. He was completely unable to locate any equivalent example, either to the mould or its ‘coins’, although he did hazard a guess at a few possibilities.

It could have been a mould for the creation of token money, made on various occasions in British history, particularly when the circulation of official currency was inadequate. Notable insufficiencies occurred during the English Civil War, when supplementation was known as ‘siege money’, and again during the late seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. It is feasible that the readable letters were a mint mark for Sherborne, and the recorded find-spot might suggest associations with the sieges of Sherborne Castle. An alternative might be that it was for the making of gaming tokens in the form of adapted coins; a common practice in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. LePard, however, in the light of his earlier inability to find any comparable recorded examples, felt inclined to dismiss both theories.

Another possible solution is that the mould is a ‘pseudo-antiquity’, faked and deliberately placed in a context where it might be discovered and assumed to date from the Civil War. While this idea seems outlandish, Gordon pointed to what he considered as one of the strangest episodes in Sherborne’s history; that of the so-called ‘Bone of Contention’. In 1911 a carved bone depicting a prehistoric horse was ‘found’ by some Sherborne schoolboys. Initially celebrated as a rare example of Paleolithic art, doubt was later cast on its authenticity causing a controversy lasting until the 1990s when it was finally revealed as a fake. Gordon still ponders the question of whether the two objects are connected, made by the same hand. The museum also houses a similar Bone, but whether it is the original fake or a copy of it remains uncertain. We shall probably never know the answers to either.

sherbornemuseum.co.uk

Sherborne Museum is open from Tuesday - Saturday 10.30am–4.30pm. During August, the museum opens on Monday 15th and 22nd 11am-1pm for Messy Museum Mondays; free activities for children accompanied by adults.

A LOCAL TRAGEDY

Cindy Chant

Stephen Barnes/Alamy

This is the story of Charlotte Bryant, an unfortunate girl of Irish gypsy origins, who lived in a little cottage in Coombe, Sherborne. It is an unhappy story and it was the death of her husband Fred Bryant that started a murder inquiry which led Charlotte to the scaffold in Exeter prison in 1936.

Charlotte first met Fred when he was serving in the British army during the Irish troubles in 1922. She was an illiterate 19-year-old and believed that Fred, in his smart soldier’s uniform, would take her away from her life of poverty. He fell for her physical charms, married her and brought her back to his roots, where he obtained a job as a cowman on a farm near Sherborne. Soon the dream started to fade, and reality set in. She had just exchanged one life of poverty in Ireland for another in Dorset.

Missing the excitement and the attention of the soldiers of the Northern Ireland barracks, she began finding local men who would pay for her favours. Her husband Fred became aware of what she was doing and surprisingly condoned and encouraged her behaviour, as it was a struggle to survive on a cowman’s wage. He told a neighbour, ‘I don’t care what she does, £4 a week is better than 30 shillings.’ She was known locally as Black Bess or Killarney Kate and was thought of as promiscuous and a drunken slut. A businessman from Yeovil, thinking she was carrying his child, gave her £25 to have an abortion. Later she turned up with the child and demanded regular payments for her silence. Neither the businessman nor Fred was the father of this child.

In 1933, Charlotte met her most serious lover yet, Len Parsons, a travelling horse dealer with a gypsy background. He also became friendly with Fred and was invited to be the lodger. However, he did not lodge there permanently as he already had a common-law wife and four children. He was also the father of Charlotte’s 5th child! Fred did not like this arrangement, as Parsons was now sharing his wife’s bed and he was having to sleep on the sofa. He was finally ordered to leave and moved to Dorchester taking Charlotte with him, and renting rooms in the town.

However, Charlotte missed her children and so she returned home, and to her husband. They discussed the situation and Parsons was allowed back into the house, due to Charlotte being completely besotted with him.

But dark forces were at work and in May 1935 Fred suffered his first mysterious illness. He recovered from severe stomach pains but later that year he had another very painful attack. This time he was admitted to the hospital in Sherborne, but sadly died the next day on 23rd December.

The doctors thought the death was suspicious and ordered a post-mortem. Arsenic was found in his body. These findings were reported to the Dorset Constabulary who then visited Charlotte and the children and removed them to the workhouse in Sturminster Newton, while they conducted an intensive search of the Bryant’s cottage and garden. This once sleepy little market town suddenly became a hive of activity which lasted for several weeks. Residents had to endure the presence of police, crime reporters and forensic detectives.

The remains of a burnt-out tin, which once contained an arsenic-based weed killer, were found in the fireplace. With this vital information, the Police visited all the chemists in the vicinity. In Yeovil, they found a chemist who had sold some weed killer to a woman who could not read or write and had signed the drug register with an ‘X’. Charlotte was arrested and charged with the murder of her husband.

This was a high-profile poisoning case and Charlotte’s young children were brought into court to give evidence. Their testimony was unintentionally very damaging to their mother’s case, in the way questions were put and answered. One wonders how much Charlotte’s lowly status and known promiscuity played a part in her trial. Sadly, in those days, Charlotte was virtually at the bottom of the social pile – considered illiterate and immoral. Her well-publicised trial was considered a good lesson to other women not to stray from the ‘straight and narrow path of morality’, as perceived by the male-dominated society of the time.

Charlotte was taken to Exeter jail, and then to the gallows on the morning of Wednesday 15th July 1936. As was the custom then, it was an entirely private affair with no onlookers present. Only the Catholic priest, who reported, ‘She met her end with Christian fortitude.’ By lunchtime the same day, she was buried in the grounds of the prison. Her children remained in the care of Dorset County Council.

Specialist Matthew Denney will be in the Sherborne area on Thursday 25th August to value your objects & antiques

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