Historic domestic troubles in the parish of Woodbury

Nowadays we complain about the problems of the NHS and Welfare services, but would one like to live in the times when the following incidents occurred? The only remedy that poor and mistreated people had was to petition the Justices of the Peace at the Devon Quarter Sessions. Since many of the victims were illiterate it is assumed that the overseers of the poor of the parish would be responsible for the petition on their behalves. Each parish had its constable elected from the more prominent people but they were untrained with limited duties, though they could send wrong-doers before the local JP for examination - he would commit them to the next sessions of the Quarter Sessions if he considered it appropriate. You can see from the following extracts action was taken by the JPs, but in many cases there is no record surviving of the outcome of the complaints, and since the JPs only met quarterly, any remedy could take a long time to materialize. 

In 1648 Wilmott Wall, a widow, sent a petition to the JPs in which she stated that ‘she had a daughter placed by the parish of Woodbury with one William Cooke who by her ill usage for want of clothes and clothing was almost crippled and sent home to her who, by her good ordering, in the space of six months recovered her again and brought her to her said master but then within one year after, by his hard usage of her, brought her in such a case that her toes rotted from her foot and so sent her home crippled and lamest some 4 ½ years since.  And upon complaint made thereof to the worthy bench it was ordered that the said William Cooke should pay the petitioner towards the relief and maintenance of her said poor lame daughter 12d weekly which he paid but one month and then refused to pay any more.  The petitioner was very poor and not able to maintain herself.  Wherefore her most humble desire is that your worships will be pleased to commiserate the cause of her and her poor daughter but to grant the order that the said William Cooke do pay the arrears that are behind and may continue the payment at the same 12d weekly according to the former order without which they can no way subsist’. It is not possible to know where William Cooke lived in the parish since at the time of the petition the Cooke family owned or leased several estates in the parish including what was known as Cooks Farm in Woodbury Salterton as well as Witherhayes Farm in Gulliford and an estate in Venmore. In 1646 Widow Wall was supported by the Overseers of the Poor as shown in a poor rate of that date.
In the following petition in 1670, although the victim was not from Woodbury, the Seaward family of Clyst St George did own land in Woodbury, and the name has survived in the name of the village school there. William, the son of William Petrock, a tenant farmer from Clyst Hydon, was apprenticed in 1667 to the Widow Seaward of Clyst St George. The petition declared that ‘because of extraordinary beating and want of necessaries for an apprentice viz: his lodgings being on straw, his clothes being only rags and full of worms, the said widow allowing and animating her son to beat the apprentice frequently and in an unreasonable manner to the endangering of his limbs and life’, and was presented to the JPs They ordered the son, on behalf of his mother, Widow Seaward, to answer the charges of the petitioner. 

In 1670 a petition was sent to the JPs by Joan Saunders of Woodbury.  She begged for financial help from the County fund for maimed soldiers and said that her husband, Richard Saunders, had been impressed for Service against the Dutch.  He had not returned after the war and it was not known whether he was alive or dead. She was living in great poverty and supporting four small children. Richard married Johan Leach in 1653. It is probable that the Overseers of the Poor were giving the widow some financial help, and probably assisted her in the petition. Once again no record has survived to see what the outcome of the petition was. 

In September 1683 Thomas Mellis (also spelt as Melhuish), a Woodbury tenant farmer, was taken before the Justices at the Quarter Sessions for mis-treatment of an individual.  The evidence for the case has survived and shows a shocking circumstance as described by Grace Reed, a spinster of Woodbury.
                                ‘On Saturday, 22nd September she found a man called Robert lying on her master’s dunghill with the smallpox out upon him, who told her that he was very sick of the smallpox (as he had been told). She asked him whence he came and where he had lodged, who told her at the house of Thomas Mellis in the parish of Woodbury, to whom he paid 3s 6d per week for his lodging and diet.  Being there in his bed very sick on Wednesday last, Mellis bid him rise, but he replied that he was very sick and not able, whereupon Mellis called him a “heavy-headed lubber”, and that he would pull him out of his bed.  He forced him to rise and then put him out of his door, and ever since he hath been very sick and that he had been upon hay tallets.  Grace believed he would have died on the dunghill had not her master, in compassion, ordered him to be taken in and put into a bed and carefully attended, and that Grace believes that he is in great peril of his life’. 

A Victorian case of domestic violence was reported in the local newspapers concerning a man called John Grant, who was a mason.  In 1865 his wife, Sophia, complained to the magistrates that she had been married for 40 years and had nine children, but had receive nothing but continual abuse and ill-treatment from her husband (for which he had previously been sent to prison) – she asserted that due to his excessive jealousy she could no longer live with him for fear of her life. Despite her devotion and long service, John asserted “she isn’t what she should be”. Evidently the assault was a brutal and unprovoked attack. John was sent to prison for one month with hard labour and bound over to keep the peace for three months when freed.  Two years later Sophia again applied to the magistrates for her husband to be bound over to keep the peace.  She said that ‘she had been monstrously ill-used and he had threatened to kill her, and she was afraid of him”.  After producing nine children “he had turned unfaithful and spent his living with harlots”, and worse still evidently wished her to turn to prostitution as he no longer intended to keep her.  John was sent to prison for six months this time.
In 1869 John Grant was in trouble again.  At a former court he had been ordered to pay Henry Bastin, a shopkeeper, money that was owed, but declined to do so. At a new Court hearing his wife, Sophia, said that her husband was now aged 60 and did scarcely any work in the winter. The magistrate told her that he should have saved in the summer and must pay 2s. 6d or go to prison for seven days.  Mrs Grant said “but he won’t get work, sir, and he might as well live through the winter in prison as not. Shan’t be able to pay it, sir.” John was sent to prison for seven days. John Grant appears in other records as a poacher and thief – so appears to be one of Woodbury’s ‘bad apples’.