Melksham Times Past: Old Peter had a reputation

DURING Petty Sessions in 1874, Stephen Alford, a 53-year-old quarryman from Whitley, was charged with being drunk in Bath Road on Saturday 24th October.

PC Petty said he found the defendant about 11pm lying on his back in the road drunk and sick. His wife, Hephzibah, 52, was with him and got him home.

During the hearing, Alford was asked what he had to say about the incident, to which he replied, “Why the awld ‘ooman an’ I awny had a quart at Witt’s. Tidn’t the beer as does it, tis the vowel ayer of the quarry as get’s awyer I. When a feller has been in thick place awl days, and then comes out an’ gets a quart, tis shawer to do it.”

(“Witt’s” as mentioned by Alford during his testimony, would have been the home of Thomas Witts, a stone mason, who had lived in the Red Lion for the majority of his life).

In his 14th November 1874 write-up of the petty sessions, a reporter for the Wiltshire Times recalled another man in town who’d been a notorious drunk. “Poor old Peter used to blame his legs, but ‘Old Peter’ had actually got married, and does not trouble the magistrates now.”

‘Old Peter’ was Peter Abbott, who, at the time of the article, was 58 and unmarried. He’d been found in a similar drunken state (“as usual”), lying on the road in Shurnhold in May that same year. In August he had had married Hannah Taylor, 39, a laundress who had been living on King Street; it was a first marriage for both. And it seems that she had a calming influence on ‘Old Peter’ — that is, until her death three years later in 1877. Abbott was back to his drunken ways, as reported the next year and years following, until his death.

Abbott was found dead at his home, at age 70 in 1886. According to the Devizes Gazette on 7th October 1886: “The evidence proved that deceased had been very intemperate for years, taking very little food. On Monday last he complained of colic and was seen in his garden about 10am. At 12 he was found lying dead on his bed. The medical witness considered that deceased suffered from peritonitis, which induced syncope of a fatal character.”

In other words, Abbott mostly drank and took very little food and he basically starved himself to death.

Although the reporter in the first article seemed to infer that Alford had taken Abbot’s place as ‘the town drunk’ I have not run across any further drunken escapades by Alford.

Public drunkenness was quite common in the 18th and 19th centuries. But it wasn’t until the 1830s that Temperance buildings were established to promote total abstinence. The home of James Hurn on Bath Road was converted to the Willow Coffee Tavern in April 1881 and offered a space where people could meet and socialise without being subjected to alcohol-induced negative behaviour. Named for the willow trees that lined the river almost immediately opposite, it remained there for 90 years. Lidl now stands in its place.