Diary of Rev Edward Stevens

5th Trinity. St John Baptist day. Miss Sottick’s Birthday. I have a cold on the chest and am very hoarse. Mrs Fred Milburn and Marion Shelswell were at church. Their mother is somewhat better.

Dull, but warm and dry. Very hoarse with cough. Wrote to Rev F Kendall, Vicarage Great Tew, saying I feared I should be unable to attend meeting of B.C.S. at his home next Wednesday.

Took Kitty Rogers and Miss Sottick for a walk this evening to Colony and John Barnes’s. We saw him in the road with Mrs Isaac Padbury with whom he had been spending the day. He asked us to go and see his flowers which we did. His daughter Amelia was at home and was much pleased to see us. We waited till her father arrived and after a quarter of an hour’s talk we left, walked through Temple Mill when I saw and spoke to Mrs Daniel Sabin. We went on through Woodway Farm to Sibford Ferris and home across the fields.

Mrs Harriet Sabin wished to speak with me. She wanted my advice and to give her a letter to get her daughter Sarah into the workhouse as she had come home from a situation which she had only 3 weeks, far gone in the family way. She has been a very bad girl to her mother. The evil occurred when she was in service at Tadmarton Rectory. The man is one of the Greens of Swalcliffe who has since enlisted as a soldier. I told the mother she had better ask the doctor (Routh) if he could give her an order for the workhouse. The poor woman was in great trouble. She is perfectly unable to keep her andprovide for her confinement. I told her the girl (she is 25 years old) should have gone to the workhouse on Saturday by the carrier, or today.

Dull and warm all day. Drove Rosa, Kitty Rogers and Miss Sottick to Banbury.

M. Carnot, president of the French Republic, was assassinated at Lyons Sunday night last.

Received letter from Emma Woolcock. She and he have been appointed to one of the Almshouses of the Clothworkers’ Company of which he has been a Freeman for 53 years. She asks me to send her some eggs and some roots.

A real summer day. Spoke with F. Inns about work being done at Heliwell Spring in the Church Close under orders of Rural Sanitary Authority. He asked my permission to put a drain to improve the footpath which I gave.

Visited Mary Sabin, Miss Sabin, Mrs C Barnes and Mrs Shelswell. Sophie and Maud Smith came to tea. I walked as far as Galley Hill with them on their return. Kitty and Miss Sottick with me.