man 11 1483 – 1485 Richard III
£1.00Court record 1483-1485 Richard lll one page from original roll in Latin
man 12 1485 – 1509 Henry VII
£1.00Court reord 1485 – 1509 Henry Vll one page A4 transcribed from Latin
man 39 Subsidy Roll for Penkhull 1327
£1.00his is a transcribed copy of the Subsidy Roll talken of Penkhull in 1327.
This Subsidy was granted by the First Parliament of King Edward III. to meet the expenses of the Scotch War. The Statute has been lost, but the King’s Commission, dated 23rd November, 1 Edward III., recites that the Earls, Barons, Knights, Citizens and Burgesses of the Kingdom, had granted to him a twentieth part of all moveable goods for the defence of the Kingdom against the Scots.
The Collectors and Taxers for co. Stafford were John de Acton and Richard de Hampton. The Commission directs them to summon before them the most loyal and best men of each vill, from which they were to elect four, or six, or more if they thought it desirable, by whom the assessment could be best accomplished. These were to be sworn to fully and loyally make inquiry into the goods possessed by every man of the vill on Michaelmas Day, 1 Edward III.
mis 1 A Personal prospective of post-war family hardships.
£1.00Probably the most significant thing for the immediate post war years was rationing and little money. For families it must have been especially hard for mothers and hardships continued as for a decade following 1945. What is more surprising they are all within a person’s lifetime and have no relationship to present-day austerity.
As children we only had new clothes at Eastertime and these were purchased from the Co-op Emporium in Liverpool Road, Stoke, with the ‘divvy’ mother received on what we had spent at the co-op over the year. I was totally fascinated by the overhead wires carrying the Dart Cash Carriers from every corner of the store to a central elevated cashier’s desk.
Just a short part of an interesting view of life in the early 1950s. 2 pages
One of the highlights was when our landlord Mr. Bourne decided it was time to replace the ducket lavatory with actual clean fresh flushing one. The whole yard was dug-up for a water supply from the kitchen. I could not believe it; it was flushed with clean water you could drink – such wonders of the world I thought. But having water laid on brought a whole new set of problems in the winter months with freezing. Old rags were used as lagging to wrap around the pipe, but this was not sufficient. So, in addition a paraffin lamp had to be secured and placed by the pipe to keep the water from freezing ultimately leading to a burst-pipe and possibly no water for weeks.
mis 7 Fatal Duels
£1.00Guilty or Not Guilty that is the question or does a Duel prove who is or who is not?
Searching through my archives of the Potteries Mercury for 1830, I came across a most interesting account of a duel taking place in London but what made it special was the behaviour of both parties following the outcome of the duel but also the inquest that followed.
Duelling had been the way officers and gentlemen settled matters of honour for centuries. Up until the mid-19th century there were situations where a meeting with pistols or swords was seen not just a possible response to a perceived insult, but the only honourable one. Men risked being ostracised from society for not issuing a duelling challenge in response to an insult. This is a true story. An introduction to a two page facinating artical of the once popular was of resolving and argument or a public insult. two pages.
por 12 The Parish Hospital of Stoke upon Trent built 1842.
£1.00Surprisingly this building still stands within the middle of the Royal Stoke University Hospital and now used as offices. The building is listed by English Heritage. It was built to provide assistance for the sick, both to resident inmates, but importantly to the people of Stoke-upon-Trent.
Male and Female wards for general cases. Wards for the elderly and infirm. Fever, Itch and Smallpox wards. There were also wards provided for Lunatics and Midwifery and finally a Nursery sick ward. In addition, the general items were also listed, Surgery, Nurses’ rooms, and the important water closets something the vast majority of the parish working classes had never experienced. In fact. It was quite a comprehensive hospital at the time catering probably all the needs of the general population of the parish.
This article reflects on when it was bult, its design and importantly how many rooms/wards and what uses they were put to. Gives one of the earlies insights to the early facility of medical treatment and is the only work that has been researched and compiled on its history and use since it was opened in 1842.
1 x A4 page
hea 11 Causes of death 1789 – Stoke-upon-Trent.
£2.00This is an Excel sheet listing all known diseases of the time, the number of deaths and their ages.
An important contribution to life and death in the 18th century listing then all known diseases and how many people died as a consequence. It’s a good study for listing the main causes of death in different areas which in many cases was a direct result of either living or manufacturing conditions. A useful document to study for humanities subjects.
hea 13 Chloroform trials at N.Staffs. Infirmary – Etruria.
£2.00I discovered that it was only a matter of months that chloroform was demonstrated for its properties on humans in 1847 by Scottish obstetrician, Sir James Young Simpson. The report stated that Simpson was the first to demonstrate chloroform, most likely to an audience of his peers. It was described as “this new and important anaesthetic agent – the peculiar powers of which produced insensibility to pain and used widely from the early 1850s.
However, my research proved that it was first discovered, not in Scotland as reported in medical papers but in Etruria at the Peoples Dispensary for the sick with a 15-year-old girl in 1848. Skill and care were required to differentiate between an effective dose (enough to make patient insensible during surgery). In fact, in December 1846 the Potteries Mercury which pre-dates the official published date of the discovery in 1847.
man 10 1461 – 1483 Edward IV
£2.00court record 1461-1483 Edward lV six pages A4 transcrived from original Latin
man 14 1547- 1553 Edward VI
£2.00Court Record 1547 – 1553 Edward Vl three x A4 pages transcribed from Latin to English
man 23 1685 – 1688 James II (Deposed 1688)
£2.00Court Record 1685 – 1688 James ll (Deposed 1688)
five x A4 pages transcribed from Latin documents into English
min 1 Thomas Minton, Master Potter
£2.00Thomas Minton was one of a number the famous potters towards the end of the eighteenth century such as Spode, Whieldon, and Wedgwood. He was born Shrewsbury in 1766 commencing his employment in the 1780s as an apprentice transfer print and engraver. specialising in copperplate. Upon his completion of his apprenticeship he went to London where he executed commissions for Spode and others. Whilst there he married Miss Sarah Webb shortly afterwards, he and his wife removed to Stoke. After twenty-six years of engraving Minton decided to try his hand at potting for himself by this time, he had already engraved the famous Willow pattern, adapted from a design of Chinese origin.
At Stoke he rented one of four houses in a rather dilapidated condition that had been built by Thomas Whieldon called Bridge House at the junction of what was Whieldon Road and Church Street. In April of that year at the ages of thirty-three Minton and set up his own pottery factory for the manufacture of white glazed earthenware tableware in 1793. Three pages.
mis 3 Canada Cottage, Penkhull – appearance of a Well in the kitchen
£2.00In an old cottage found in Canada Cottage, Queens Road, Penkhull Stoke-on-Trent dates from 1814 during renovation of the kitchen, unearthed as a large deep well with water running through the bottom.
The well is 9m deep and is brick-lined in a manner that I’ve seen in other examples of the 18th and 19th centuries. Stylistically, the bricks appear to be no earlier than the late 18th century, but, equally, could be early 19th century in date. The owners pointed out a small number of pottery sherds that had apparently been found above the sandstone slab used to cap the well – most of these pieces were early-mid 19th-century in date but offer somewhat iffy dating evidence as they’re essentially unstratified finds. Since the find the current owners have made this into a feature of the house, Not only is it now flood-lit it has a plate glass top cut to size making a feature many others residents in the area would like Certainly worth a read.
Two pages with a number of photographs.
mis 4 Chloroform used first in the country at Etruria Hospital.
£2.00Quite by chance I came across an article dated 26th December 1846 which pre-dates the official published date of 1847. In the article recorded in the Potteries Mercury it first acknowledged the work of Prof Simpson, who had demonstrated chloroform for its anaesthetic properties on humans but in fact had applied numerous experiments on himself and others first which gave rise to its rapid increase by the of the medical profession in favour to that of ether. The interesting fact remains is that surgeons at Etruria had performed operations with the use of chloroform several months prior to the work of Simpson being published, such was their skill of administering the drug resulting in a number of successful operations. Two pages