Affliction sore, long time he bore, Physicians WAS in vain.
Pale consumption gave the silent BELOW, etc.
In our graveyard in Cowgate there is an epitaph upon old Mrs. Thomas, by which you are informed, that
Making carpets and beds she did pursue With care and industry is very true, The established religion she did profess In hopes, through Christ, of Heaven to possess.
Such rubbish as that, under the veto of the present Cemetery Commissioners, will, I hope, soon disappear. But there is one in the Cathedral graveyard (the existence of which is not generally known), on the tombstone memorial of an old family of this place, and I trust it will not be allowed to disappear. It is very superior to what they generally are. It is on the right just as you go through the Arch by the Deanery, and is to the memory of one of the Richardson family:
Stranger pass by nor idly waste your time In bad biography or bitter rhyme; For what I am, this cumbrous clay ensures, And what I was, is no affair of yours.
The old gentleman, as you see, has carried his cynical humour to the grave with him. It was quoted in an article in “Blackwood’s Magazine” on “Monumental Inscriptions” a few years since.
[Picture: Peterborough Market Place A.D. 1795. N. Fielding of Stamford. Specially drawn from a painting in Peterborough Museum]
NEWSPAPERS.—DISTEMPER.—GUILDHALL.—HANGINGS.—DARING BURGLARIES.—A LOCK-UP STORY.—AN ALIBI.—THE MUD CASE.—WHEN THE RAILWAYS FIRST CAME.—RETROSPECTIVE.
IN my former Notes I alluded to the Post Office. Well, the first Post Office I recollect was a little room about 10ft. square—I think it has been altered since—in one of those houses at the back of the “White Lion” gates. An old gentleman lived there who was Postmaster, and I think he was assisted, being rather infirm, by his daughter, and I have been told it was the amusement of a little grandchild or a little boy accustomed to visit him, that by way of a treat he was allowed to catch letters in his pinafore, and as a grand treat he was allowed to stamp them. At that time the Post Office establishment consisted of the Postmaster, the lady who assisted him, and the letter carrier, who, as some of you recollect, was Mrs. Waterfield, a tidy woman, who had a little basket in which she carried letters. By degrees the establishment got on. You will bear in mind that at that time we were not troubled with Post Office Orders. There was no way of conveying 5s. or 6s. in stamps, or by order, from one part of the country to another. The present Post Office consists of palatial buildings, since their enlargement in 1904, and great departmental accommodation, the smallest room of which is larger than that old Post Office altogether. It would not do now to catch letters in a pinafore, as their number is many millions a month. There are telegraph messages, Post Office Orders, and Savings Bank business. The Postmaster and old woman have grown into a Postmaster at £500 a year, Chief Clerk, a very important personage, the Assistant Superintendent (Postal Department), the Assistant Superintendent (Telegraph Department), 7 controllers, and a staff numbering altogether nearly 350, with 66 sub-Post Offices—a pretty good number. A great deal of the business is forwarding mails passing through Peterborough, as a convenient centre for such purposes.