Diary of Rev Edward Stevens

Good Friday. Divine Service at 10.30 a.m. and 7 p.m. There was a very good congregation in the evening, nearly 200 I should think; but it was not what it ought to have been in the morning.

Fine and bright, but sharp frost. Divine Service at 9:15.

Eli Webb’s wife came and asked me if I could send her husband to the Horton Infirmary, as the Doctor said he had better go. I therefore filled up a letter for him. She told me her daughter Laura had got a situation to go to on Thursday week but she was very badly off for clothing. I therefore gave her 5/- towards providing her with necessaries.

I enquired about her husband she told me that he could neither read nor write, as his mother died when he was 3 years old and his father did not give him any schooling. He is only 53 years of age. She cannot write but she can manage to read her bible – though she never went to school more than three weeks in her life.

“How did you learn to read then?”

“From the children as did go to School, Sir.”

“When we used to play together on the grave stones in the Churchyard I used to ask them the letters and then what they spelt and so got on by degrees.”

…. Paid Bishop £1. 4. 2. for 1 ton of coals. The carriage is 6/8 per ton. The coals cost 17/6 which makes a very serious addition to one’s expenses. The cost of living in a place like this is very much in excess of what it would be even in what is commonly considered an expensive town.

Received ½ year’s stipend from New College. The amount should be £75 but £2. 10. was deducted for Income Tax 8d in the £. Last September it was only 5d.

George Messenger died, aged about 96. He remembered going to church on a donkey to be christened. Name entered February 9, 1792.

Attended Board of Guardians meeting at Banbury Workhouse.

A boy was birched by the Master in the presence of Mr. Cartwright, the Chairman, and several other Guardians including myself for absconding from the House.

…. Old James Hone tells me he is a teetotaller but “I takes no pledge” “I takes a pledge every mornin’ and evenin’ when I pray the blessed Lord to keep me from Sin and danger, and He does so.”