Thursday 16 July 2015

What The Papers Said

John Allen sold his wife for 3s 6d; the electric fluid entered a cottage and smashed the furniture; a bear and a deer absconded from a boat and The Bugsworth Nick Club terrified local women.

One Saturday evening, not long ago, a man who had been making a little too free with "John Barleycorn", had to pass through Taxal churchyard where a deep grave had been dug (for an interment on the morrow), close to the footpath over which the jolly fellow had to pass on his way home; and being rather unsteady in his gait, and not quite able to maintain his true perpendicular, he unfortunately fell into the grave; and being unable to get out again, he quietly resigned himself to his fate and went to sleep. Shortly afterwards, one of his boon companions, in passing the same way, had the misfortune to fall into the same grave and rouse the first occupant from his sleep, who feeling himself offended at the intruders visit, muttered out in an angry growl "It's strange one cannot lie quietly in the grave".

Read about these and other curious stories in "What The Papers Said" a selection of news reports from the 19th and 20th centuries about the Derbyshire villages of Bugsworth, Furness Vale and Whaley Bridge.

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