The New Forest Snake Catcher

St Nicholas’ churchyard in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, is home to an unusual white marble headstone. The headstone depicts an old bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat holding a handful of snakes, standing  outside what appears to be a crude hut in a forest. The inscription on the headstone reads:

This stone marks the grave of Harry Mills, (better known as “Brusher Mills”,) who for a long number of years followed the occupation of  Snake Catcher, in the New Forest. His pursuit and the primitive way in which he lived, caused him to be an object of interest to many.  He died suddenly July 1st 1905, aged 65 years.

This eccentric man was born on the 19th March 1840 and for the early part of his life he lived in the village of Emery Down near Lyndhurst in the New Forest, where he worked as a labourer. In his forties Mills decided to move and to take up living in an old charcoal burner’s hut in the New Forest, just to the north of Brokenhurst. Armed with just a sack and a forked stick, Mills struck out on a new occupation as a snake catcher. Mills offered his services to rid the grounds of local properties of snakes, and he also set about catching snakes in the forest. The snakes that he caught were often sold to London Zoo as fodder for their snake eating animals. Word gradually spread about Mills and his eccentric ways, and he began to become a tourist attraction. This new found fame gave Mills the opportunity to sell ointments made from snakes and snake skeletons to curious tourists to further supplement his income. Some estimates suggest that during Mills’ 18-year snake catching career that he caught an astounding 30,000 grass snakes and 4,000 adders - which is an average of about 5 snakes per day!

Having lived in a small hut in the forest for many years, it seems that Mills decided to improve his lifestyle and build himself a larger hut. Sadly however, this hut was vandalised before it was completed. This crime for which nobody was caught, was possibly committed to prevent Mills from claiming any kind of squatters’ rights on the land which he had made his home. Following the destruction of his hut, the heart broken Mills took up residency in one of the outbuildings of his regular haunt, the Railway Inn in Brokenhurst. The destruction of Mills’ hut seems to have had a significant impact upon the man, as he died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 1st July 1905, not long after its destruction.

In honour of this local eccentric, Brockenhurst’s Railway Inn is nowadays named The Snake Catcher.

Harry Mills' gravestone.

Mills outside his hut in the forest, holding some captured snakes.

Mill's favorite haunt, The Railway Inn, now known as The Snake Catcher.

The pub sign.

Update: 10th March 15 - A scan of a recently acquired postcard showing Harry Mills and some of his snakes.

Pictures: Hampshire (February 2015).

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Wilsford's Unusual Lodge(r)

The gravestone in the below photographs can be found in St. Michael’s Churchyard in Wilsford (near Amesbury) in Wiltshire. The inscription on the gravestone reads:

Also

To The Memory of Her Husband

Oliver Joseph Lodge

Born 12 June 1851

Died 22 August 1940

Thankful For The Lover Which Has

Surrounded Him Throughout His

Time On Earth Full of Certainty

About Continued Existence

And Hopeful That His Writings May

Be A Comfort To The Bereaved

The gravestone is in memorial to Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge who was born in Stoke-on-Trent on the 12th June 1851 and who died near Wilsford on the 22nd August 1940. Lodge was a successful British Physicist whose illustrious career included holding the posts of Professor of Physics and Mathematics at University College, Liverpool and becoming the first Principal of Birmingham University, when it received its Royal Charter in 1900. Lodge's achievements resulted in him being knighted by King Edward VII and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902. In 1928 Lodge was given the freedom of Stoke-on-Trent.

During his scientific career Lodge's work included investigating lightning and electrolysis. However, Lodge's chief area of interest was electromagnetics and he seems to have been taken by the in-vogue theory of the Ether (the wave-bearing medium that was postulated to fill all space), and worked on the generation and detection of electromagnetic waves. Lodge is credited with perfecting "the coherer", a type of radio-wave detector, and as being the first person to transmit a message by a wireless signal, which he did in 1894. Lodge also pioneered the use of inductors and capacitors to adjust the frequency of wireless transmitters and receivers, and he invented the electric spark plug for the internal combustion engine, which was known as the "Lodge Igniter".

Outside of Lodge's mainstream scientific studies he also studied psychical phenomena including telepathy, was a member of the Ghost Club and served as president of the Society for Psychical Research from 1901 to 1903.

Lodge's acceptance of the theory of the Ether and his Christian faith may have had a bearing on his belief in life after death, and that the Ether may be host to a spirit world.  Lodge pursued these beliefs in 1914, following a family tragedy. Lodge had six sons, and his youngest son, Raymond, was killed during action in Flanders on the 14th September 1915. Following Raymond's death Lodge visited mediums Gladys Osborne Leonard and Alfred Vout Peters and began to communicate with his dead son. Lodge's scientific background meant that he regularly tested the mediums and probed them for information that only his son would know, and it seems that he failed to find any reason not to believe that he was in communication with his dead son. As a result of these séances Lodge became convinced that there was an afterlife and in 1916 he published an account of his son's adventures in the spirit world called "Raymond or Life and Death".

The dawning of the theory of relativity in the 1920's put an end to the need for an Ether, and as such it passed out of scientific vogue. Lodge however did not accept the new theory of relativity and remained steadfast in his belief in the Ether and in the afterlife.

In a final attempt to prove the existence of an afterlife it is said that just before his death that Lodge deposited a sealed message with the Society for Psychical Research. His aim was to be able to communicate the contents of this sealed message from the afterlife via the use of a medium. It seems however that the results of Lodge's final scientific experiment where deemed inconclusive and the existence of an afterlife still remains to be confirmed.

St. Michael’s Church in Wilsford, Wiltshire.

A memorial to Lodge and his wife, on the corner of the church's wall

Lodge's gravestone.

Pictures: Wiltshire (October 2014).

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Doctor, Druid and Cremation Pioneer

The statue shown below is a memorial, in Llantrisant, to the Welsh physician William Price (4 March 1800 – 23 January 1893) who is remembered for his eccentric lifestyle and as being the pioneer of cremation in the United Kingdom.

Price was born in Monmouthshire to a father who was a Reverend and whose unusual behavior may have inspired Price's own eccentric ways. Reverend Price suffered from a mental illness and was known to act erratically and experience fits of rage. The madness of Reverend Price saw him conducting a number of unusual activities such as: bathing either fully clothed or naked in local ponds; collecting snakes in his pockets; spitting onto stones to try to improve their value; and carrying a saw with him so that he could remove the bark from trees.

As a young man, Price trained as a doctor in London and after his training he returned to Wales to work as a general practitioner. He eventually became interested in the Chartist movement and their ideals that all men should have the right to vote, irrespective of their wealth or social standing. In 1839 the Chartist movement attempted an armed rebellion against the government, which failed. Whilst Price was not actively involved in this rebellion, his involvement with the Chartist movement necessitated him to flee from the country. So he fled to France, apparently disguised as a woman!

Whilst in exile in Paris, Price visited the Louvre museum and became interested in a stone on display there which sported a Greek inscription. It seems that Price erroneously interpreted this inscription as a prophecy declaring that a man would come in the future to reveal the true secrets of the Welsh language and to liberate the Welsh people. Price also seemed to assume that the prophecy applied to him, so he decided to return to Wales to free the Welsh people from the English authorities.

On his return to Wales, Price set himself up as a Druid and founded a Druidic group which began attracting followers. In his new calling as a Druid he took to  wearing a fox fur hat and emerald green clothing, and began to grow his beard long and stop cutting his hair. It is in this unusual garb that Price is remembered in the statue shown below.

In 1883 Price fathered a son, who he named Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ in Welsh), apparently to provoke the religious establishment and also because he expected great things from his child. Sadly however, the child died after only five months in January 1884. In his belief that burial polluted the earth and was therefore wrong, Price opted to cremate his son and he created the pyre on the summit of a hill near Llantrisant. It seems that a number of local people noticed the fire and when they discovered that Price was trying to burning his son’s body (cremation was a taboo in 1884), the mob turned on him. The Police eventually arrived and arrested Price for the illegal disposal of a corpse, and they removed the unburnt body from the pyre for medical examination. In court Price managed to argue that while the law did not state that cremation was legal, it also did not state that it was illegal either, and Price was subsequently acquitted of the charges.  On 14 March 1884 Price was finally allowed to cremate his son.

Price’s brush with the law on the issue of cremation paved the way for cremation to become generally accepted in the United Kingdom as a method of corpse disposal. The first official cremation took place in Woking only a year after Price cremated his son.

Price died in 1893 and unsurprisingly he opted to be cremated. His cremation ceremony was apparently attended by 20,000 spectators!

The memorial to William Price in Llantrisant. 

Pictures, Glamorgan (August 2014).

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The Durham Dwarf

The portrait below shows a man called Józef Boruwlaski. Boruwlaski was a diminutive entertainer who was born in Poland in 1739 into a family that ultimately consisted of 6 children, three of whom were unusually small. Boruwlaski was said to have been 64cm tall at 15 years old, 71cm at 22 years old, 89cm at 25 years old and finally reaching his maximum height of 99cm by the age 30. One of Boruwlaski’s elder brothers was reported to have been only a few centimetres taller than him, and his sister who was three years his junior, was reported to have been only 66cm in height (whether this was her ultimate height is unclear). However, it seems that Boruwlaski’s other three siblings were of a more normal stature, and he even had one brother who grew to be six feet and four inches in height. Boruwlaski and his two vertically challenged siblings may have been of a small size but they were also said to have been built in proportion to their height and to not have suffered any of the deformations or disabilities associated with typical dwarfism.

Boruwlaski's small stature gave him the problem of finding a suitable way to make a living, and many potential avenues of employment such as the clergy or military service were out of the question given his physique. This predicament led him to look for a wealthy sponsor and he eventually became adopted by The Starostin de Caorlix, and was then subsequently taken into the care of Countess Humiecka. This adoption kicked off Boruwlaski’s career as an entertainer and curiosity for European high society, a career that saw him touring Europe and meeting such influential people as the Queen of Hungary, the King of Poland, the King of England and the Queen of France. Even though Boruwlaski mingled with such important people, his real purpose was to essentially be an interesting diversion for the courts of the day and his travels saw him being taught to dance and play the guitar by some of the best professionals of the day. He was also often made to dress up in small copies of military uniforms and sometimes even posed in purpose built miniature doll’s houses. Some people may have classed Boruwlaski as a sideshow freak, and it must have been an interesting sight when he met a couple of prominent sideshow freaks of the era. He met Patrick Cotter (The Irish Giant) a man who stood 8 feet tall, and he also met the famously obese Daniel Lambert, who in his prime weighed in at massive 50 stone.

As Boruwlaski’s touring career came to an end he needed to find a new way to make a living. His later years saw him trying to make a living for himself and his wife (a woman of normal stature) from playing music, and eventually he had to resort to displaying himself in public and writing an autobiography to try to make ends meet. Eventually however, an organist of Durham Cathedral (Thomas Ebdon) offered Boruwlaski  a place to live, and Boruwlaski lived out his days in Banks Cottage in the company of the unmarried daughters of Thomas Ebdon. Boruwlaski eventually died in Durham in 1837 at the grand old age of 98.

It seems that the city of Durham fondly remembers its diminutive Polish resident and clues to his time in Durham can be found in a number of places. Durham Town Hall is home to a life-sized statue of Boruwlaski, as well as an oil painting of Boruwlaski as an old man. There is also a display of some of his personal effects, which includes a suit, hat, cane, chair and violin.

Durham Cathedral is also home to a tribute to Boruwlaski, his tombstone. Just inside the entrance to the cathedral on the right hand side a small stone slab (approximately 15cm x 15cm square) can be found set into the floor bearing the initials “J B”. It seems that Boruwlaski was interred in the cathedral, close to one of his influential friends (Stephen Kemble).

Following the riverside footpath that skirts the peninsular on which the cathedral resides brings the walker to a riverside folly. The folly is a mock Greek temple which is referred to locally as The Count’s House. It seems that during his touring days Boruwlaski used the title Count Boruwlaski, even though he had no formal right to the title, and as such, people incorrectly assume that the folly is where Boruwlaski once lived. The truth is less exciting however, and it seems that the folly was probably just an ornamental feature in the garden of the property where Boruwlaski saw out his retirement years.

For any readers who are interested in the Count’s life and travels a version of his autobiography can be found here.

A portrait of an elderly Józef Boruwlaski in Durham Town Hall.

A life size Józef Boruwlaski in Durham Town Hall.

A collection of Józef Boruwlaski's possessions in Durham Town Hall.

Durham Cathedral.

Józef Boruwlaski's tombstone inside Durham Cathedral.

The Durham folly known as The Count's House.

Inside The Count's House.

Pictures, County Durham (June 2014).

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Precision Agriculture

I have always been fascinated by some of the weird and unusual hobbies that people have, and some of the bizarre sports that people take part in. As such, during a recently visit to Anglesey my curiosity was piqued when I was introduced to a pastime that I never knew existed, the sport of competitive precision ploughing.

This seemingly odd sport sees competitors assigned a plot of land, which they plough slowly and meticulously, carefully measuring out and planning their furrows and then carefully cutting the soil. It seems that there are a number of factors against which competitors are judged, including the uniformity, firmness, and straightness of the furrows and the overall appearance of the plot (as well as a bunch of other aspects, which I cannot even begin to understand).

The competition was mostly centred around the use of vintage tractors, however there were a couple of competitors using vintage ploughs drawn by Shire horses (probably much more difficult to control than a tractor pulled plough).

So if your ever see an inordinate number of tractors in a field slowly ploughing small patches of ground with farmers fretting over their work and painstakingly measuring each cut, you may have just happened upon a precision ploughing competition.

Pictures, Anglesey (March 2014).

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