Operation Strawberry

For those of you who were over here on Monday, you may remember I had suffered a great injustice. The strawberry plant I bought on returning from Italy in April had started to bear fruit, which was then stolen from me in a most brutal manner. I feel I have been wronged in the most extreme way and have decided to set up Operation Strawberry to find justice for myself and my garden.

The aim of the inquiry:
To find the thief who thought it was ok to enter a garden not their own and help themself to the fruit they found there.

Statement from the injured party:
At 5.10pm on Sunday 7th July 2013, I arrived home from work. I went straight into the garden as it was hot and I wanted to sit down and read for a bit. Near the table is a strawberry plant. The day before, there was one strawberry which was almost at the point of being ready to eat. I had decided to give it one more day to go a bit redder. On the day in question, I sat down to read and looked at the strawberry plant and saw that the strawberry was no longer there.

Victim presents Exhibit A (photograph of crime scene):

Victim impact evidence:
The loss of the strawberry has caused me great distress. I worry about leaving the other blossoming strawberries to go to work. I feel unsafe in my own garden and have thought about getting rid of the strawberry plants altogether, to avoid the possibility of further heartache, should the thief return. I worry for my cherry tree, plum tree and tomato plants and have taken to counting the budding fruit five times a day. This has been a difficult time for me.

The suspects:

Suspect A – the fattest pigeon the world has ever seen
Suspect B – a human
Suspect C – a bat
Suspect D – the wind
Suspect E – the feisty squirrel

The evidence against Suspect A:
Suspect A, the fat pigeon, has been a regular in the garden for over 18 months. The victim claims to have seen him strutting around eating the bread that she puts out. She has rarely seen him fly and thinks he would find it a great strain to do so, given his body weight. She has seen him fly from the garden to the fence to perch but very little other movement. Given the height of the strawberry at the time of its disappearance, the pigeon would have had to be hovering in mid air to have got a good peck and dislodged it. This seems unlikely, given its dislike of flying in general. An authority on the matter (Google) tells me that wild birds do like to eat berries but there appears to be little solid evidence to bring into this courtroom about the specific situation of pigeons and strawberries.

You may leave the stand now, Fat Pigeon, unless you would like to offer any closing statements.

Fat Pigeon: “Has anyone got any bread I can eat, please?”

The evidence against Suspect B:
Suspect B, a human, is dealing with a lot of hurdles to get to the garden and the strawberry. Firstly, all the gardens on the road are joined together and are attached to the all the gardens behind the houses on a parallel road. There are no alleyways in between the gardens and no access to the general public. A human would have had to contend with a lot of gardens and fences before reaching the garden in question and in so doing, would have passed many other opportunities for fruit pilfering. There were no footprints or signs of forced entry in or around the garden. As such, it seems unlikely that a human is responsible for the crime.

You may now leave the stand, humans. Would you like to offer any closing statements?

Humans: “We could never steal from such a fantastic blogger. We definitely didn’t do it.”

The evidence against Suspect C:
Suspect C, a bat, is known to have a taste for sweet fruits but generally sticks to things growing higher up in trees. The strawberry plant would be far too low for a bat to consider it a snack worth going for. While the victim recalls seeing bats fly low over the garden during summer evenings, the time of the day that the crime was committed is at odds with the known waking hours of bats. The theft must have happened before 5.10pm, the time when bats are generally not known to be active. It seems unlikely that the bat was involved in the strawberry theft.

You may now leave the stand, bat. Do you wish to give any closing statements?

Bat: “Zzzzzzzzzz…..”

The evidence against Suspect D:
Suspect D, the wind, has been responsible for other fruit destruction in the garden, the victim says. The plums and cherries have all had to contend with unusual summer weather consisting of lower temperatures and higher winds than usual. It seems the wind could have played a part. The forensic evidence team returned to the scene of the crime the following day and shook the branches of the strawberry plant but no strawberries were seen to fall from the plant. Whilst leaving the property, one member of the team accidentally brushed lightly against the plum tree and a small green unripe plum fell to the ground, thus demonstrating the different effects the wind has on the different plants. It seems that, while plums dislodged and fell quite easily, the strawberries were more solidly affixed to their branches. The team also scoured the area at the time the crime was first reported and found no evidence of a fallen strawberry. It is unlikely, therefore, that the wind played a part in this crime.

You may leave the stand, wind. Do you have any closing statements?

Wind: “Sorry about the plums and the cherries. It was an accident.”

The evidence against Suspect E:
Suspect E, the feisty squirrel, is seen in the above photograph braving even the Fat Pigeon to get near the bread. We have evidence, therefore, that this Feisty Squirrel will face intimidating situations if the reward is a tasty snack. The squirrel has a taller body and stands on his back legs, bringing him to the correct height to be able to reach the strawberry plant where it sits on a slightly raised platform. The recognised authority on squirrels (Mumsnet.com) has a forum on which many fruit-growing members of the public have battled with the loss of strawberries via squirrel theft. Given the previous convictions in this area, it seems likely that the squirrel is the culprit. The victim recalls seeing this Feisty Squirrel in the garden often and has previously thought affectionately about him, as he was doing no harm. It now appears that there has been some premeditation to this crime, as the many visits by the squirrel were likely used to keep an eye on the growing fruit and know when it was ready for picking. It had obviously overheard the plan to eat it the following day and knew it was his chance to strike. It also seems, given the timing, that the squirrel had been building up a picture of when the house (and garden) were empty, the inhabitants being out at work, and chose precisely his moment to strike, using the information he had gathered over the months.

In light of the evidence, Feisty Squirrel, I hearby convict you of the crime of strawberry theft from Miss LL Maisey and order you to pay a fine of fifty nuts. You are also under a restraining order which prevents you from being within 100 metres of the garden boundary. Should you attempt to enter the garden illegally, you will be shouted at and the victim shall run at you with raised arms and yell obscenities.

This court is adjourned.

A trip back in time to the workhouse

It’s Wednesday and it’s time for Rambler5319 to take over with his guest post again. Enjoy….

 

Perhaps you remember the post NaCl (from 1st Aug) about salt: its early production techniques and different uses. In it I said I would try and visit the Salt Museum at Northwich in Cheshire and last Friday that’s what I did. First thing to note is that, a couple of years ago, the place changed its name from the Salt Museum to the Weaver Hall Museum & Workhouse. I had intended to write up on the whole visit but there was quite a bit of interesting stuff on the workhouse so will do that this week; next week will cover the salt bit of the Museum and another site visit.

I arrived, in boiling sunshine, an hour or so after opening time and yet was still able to choose any spec in the completely empty car park!

Here’s the front entrance

The Museum is housed in the refurbished original buildings of the old Workhouse, built as you can see in 1837, the year Queen Victoria came to the throne. The irony is that an original salt museum, built in 1887 by two local businessmen involved in the salt industry, collapsed due to salt mining subsidence! A replacement was built in 1909 and eventually the collection moved to Weaver Hall in 1981.

I went in and paid my entry fee; parking was free. The curator led me through to the start point – the video room; a film show for one as I was the only visitor so far. After the brief intro film, the first displays were all workhouse related. Of course the workhouse was never meant to be an easy life; it was tough in order to deter people from taking it as an easy option. No state handouts for people to become dependent upon. All inmates had to work. Children were educated in the belief that by so doing they would improve themselves and their prospects. Here’s a quote from a 1901 Poor Law Handbook:

“The care and training of children are matters which should receive the anxious attention of Guardians. Pauperism is in the blood, and there is no more effectual means of checking its hereditary nature than by doing all in our power to bring up our pauper children in such a manner as to make them God-fearing, useful and healthy members of society.”

Interesting that they saw ‘pauperism’ as an inherited (“in the blood”) condition.
Here’s a poster, from a London workhouse in 1902, showing one kind of job people were given to do – in this case, Oakum Picking:

Note, from the write-up, the effects on people doing this work over a period of time. I’m sure they are what today we would call RSI (repetitive strain injury).
Next up was the laundry area and here are some examples of items you would expect to find there:

You can see the two signs to encourage the workers to keep going: one says, “Hard Work Is Its Own Reward” and the other hanging on the right wall, “Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness”. Do you believe it?

An interesting chart was this one below giving the daily & weekly meal allowances for each category of inmate: male, female, child, over 60s, nursing mothers & sick. Have a good look through and see what you reckon to those meals if you had to eat them.

In some areas of the country H.M. Prisons allowed each prisoner 292oz (8.27kg) food per week; workhouse rations, in the same area, were set at 137oz (3.88kg). Meals were to be conducted in silence and sometimes without cutlery! However if you look at the allowances in the Northwich Workhouse some do seem quite generous. I was curious as to what they might equate to so did a quick measure on my kitchen scales of some of the food rations there.

For example, here’s a pic of the over 60s allowances which they could have in place of the breakfast gruel.

Here’s the same sugar ration in a jam jar:

1oz of tea per week equates to the tea in approx 14 tea bags (had to add a bit as theirs would have been loose tea); that means approx 2 cups of tea/day. 5oz butter looks reasonable but it has to last a week. The sugar pile on the plate is 6ins (15cms) diameter, or roughly half a jam jar, but as they were not getting any other sweet food maybe that just had to do. Apart from sugar in tea what else would they use it for?

Bread weight works out at roughly 1 slice (modern day) = 1oz (on my bread anyway); that means men got the equivalent of 12 slices/day, (adding breakfast & supper together) which seems quite a bit more than I’d consume. Most days men got 2lbs (908g) of potatoes.

Here’s my plate with 1lb (454g) so half a day’s ration:

That’s 19 smallish potatoes so 38 for a day’s worth of 2lbs.

There were some other historical exhibits but not related to the workhouse or salt industry. Here’s one poster, advertising a concert at a local dance hall, in the early 1960s.

You could have seen the Beatles play for an entrance fee of 10/- (or 50p/80 cents). Notice you also got The Cadillacs and The Psychos on the same bill. The following week Gene Vincent was due to appear with “HMV Recording Stars” The Outlaws; tickets were only 7/6 (37.5p/60 cents) for that one. And you could dance for four hours (7.45-11.45pm) – if you had the energy. Ah, those were the days, eh?
Then I came across this one. It was quite a high toilet from the ground to seat level. I wondered why? The note on the top warned the reader not to use it in the corridor (as if anyone would in a public place!). You may be able to read that.

It also said to lift the lid to find out more info, so I did and here’s what it said inside:

Imagine that – no flush. You just leave the waste, which dropped down a long pipe, to be washed away by water from the kitchen. It didn’t say if the toilet was likely to be located upstairs or downstairs; if upstairs imagine the length of the pipe down to the ground floor where your number twos would wait for someone in the kitchen to empty the sink. Hmm…..(I understand some people pooh-poohed the idea of including this exhibit….haha.. See what I did there?)

The next exhibit was interesting because of why it was made: “the model of the canal boat Wren was presented to Rev R.V. Barker, at the end of his ministry, by the local boatmen and the address was signed by the captains of the canal boats – Wasp, Beagle, Bunbury & Wren – in recognition of his ministry to them in Nantwich in 1879.

After the museum I headed north of the town to sit by the canal and have my sandwiches.

What a lovely peaceful spot and, a few minutes later, just the chugging sound of a westbound narrow boat passing by.

Different pace of life on the canals! 4 mph speed limit though most go a bit slower to prevent damage to the banks caused by the waves the boat creates as it goes along. Soon it was home time and back to the hustle & bustle of city life. (Time also to remember that we today have much to be thankful for in state and government provision so that the poor don’t have to go to institutions like the old workhouse any more.) It had been a really interesting day out.