Social History

A Herm tragedy: the drowning of the teenaged Walter St John, August 1597

Inscription from memorial at Lydiard Tregoze courtesy of Lydiard Tregoze house

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.

Elie Brevint on witchcraft

Detail of torment by touch, Perier 1724, Priaulx Library Collection

Elie Brevint (1587-1674) was minister of Sark from 1612. His father Cosmé, also a minister, was a Huguenot refugee from Angoulême who had accompanied Helier De Carteret from Jersey in his colonisation of Sark. Transcriptions and microfilm of Elie's 14 Notebooks, which were found in a loft in Sark in the 19th century, are held in the Priaulx Library. Elie appears to be a sensible and rational man with a curious and detached mind, until he turns to these sorts of subject: the Pousseresse, perturbateurs, and salamanders. The illustration is of the Tormento do Tacto, or Torture, from Alexander Périer's O Desengano dos Pecadores of 1724, in the Library.

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