La Manie des sobriquets: late 18th century nicknames
From Edith Carey's Scrapbooks, Vol. I.; the Lukis MSS.
Social History
A Herm tragedy: the drowning of the teenaged Walter St John, August 1597
An inquest into the death of the eldest son of Sir John St John, of Lydiard Tregoze, in Wiltshire, and his young tutor, who died trying to rescue his charge. They were swept away by the current, probably off Belvoir Bay, 18 August, 1597. Walter St John was under the protection of the Governor, Sir Thomas Leighton, and living at Castle Cornet. It is extremely unusual for evidence in a case like this to survive; this was retained because Walter's family connections meant an account of the inquest had to be sent to Chancery. The French text is given in the Second Report of the Commissioners into Criminal Law in the Channel Islands of 1848.
Bread and hot cross buns
From the History of the Guernsey Churches scrapbook.
Thomas Andros' Commonplace Book
Thomas Andros' Commonplace Book, by the Seigneur of Saumarez Manor, from a family 'whose penmanship was far from good;' a handwritten pamphlet of herbal medicine and fruit-growing, dated 1589, Guernsey, and an exploration of other texts quoted in it.
Execution and the gallows: les Fourques
Guernsey had many different locations for dealing out doom.
Guernsey in 1775 and in 1837
By Ferdinand Brock Tupper, in Duncan's The Guernsey and Jersey Magazine III (1837), pp. 233 ff.
Deutsche Guernsey Zeitung
Deutsche Guernsey Zeitung, The Guernsey Press, Guernsey, 1942-45; Deutsches Leben, Guernsey, 1943; and other materials produced by or for the occupying forces, 1940-45. [By Dinah Bott]
The Guernsey workman, by Charles Hugo
The decoration of the salle à manger, or dining room, at Hauteville-House, Victor Hugo's residence in Guernsey, was finished in May 1857. Charles Hugo wrote of it:
Victor Hugo in Guernsey, by Henri Boland
From Boland's Les Iles de la Manche, 1904, pp. 145-6, including a note attached to the pages by Edith Carey. [By Dinah Bott]
A Farmer's Vacation, 1873
Guernsey, from an article in the influential American publication, Scribner's Monthly Magazine, September 1873; the article is one of a series eventually brought together as a book, A Farmer's Vacation, by George Wearing, published in the same year. Interest in the exportation of Guernsey cattle to North America and their management was bringing significant numbers of US farmers or their agents to Guernsey in this period. Wearing had first visited Jersey, to compare their agricultural procedures. Below is the Couture Water Lane in St Peter Port, admired by the author.