Thomas Anderson – the eBook

This is a free eBook in PDF format about (mostly) my research into the death of Thomas Anderson in 1752. Anderson was the subject of an article for the Shrewsbury Folk Club magazine by the late Ron Nurse, which was the starting point for a song of mine that I’ve written about several times since, notably in my book So Sound You Sleep. Eventually that chapter became a series of articles for my Substack (Un)Selective Symmetry, and is now a short book in its own right. It also includes as appendices a couple of later songs with a tenuous connection to Kingsland, where Anderson was executed.

Image of book cover

Thomas Anderson eBook

Here’s the table of contents, just to give you the flavour.

Contents
Thomas Anderson………………………………………………1
Thomas Anderson…………………………………………..5
Thomas Anderson lyric ……………………………………7
Thomas Anderson Recording……………………………9
Historical Background……………………………………11
A Load of Cobblers (and Tanners and
Leatherworkers) ……………………………………….13
From the Guilds to the Flower Show ……………14
From House of Industry to Shrewsbury School
……………………………………………………………….18
The Arbour and the Old Show …………………….20
Death of a Rebel ……………………………………….25
Sources and References……………………………..30
Church Street and St. Alkmund’s…………………32
St Mary’s Church……………………………………….35
Admiral Benbow ……………………………………….35
Katherine Mary Harley……………………………….36
Robert Cadman…………………………………………38
Appendix 1: Black Velvet …………………………………..40
Appendix 2: from the Shropshire Gazetteer…………48
Appendix 3: Goose and Common ……………………….50
Goose And Common lyric ………………………………52
Another (later) version ………………………………….53
The Inclosure Acts…………………………………………54
Kingsland……………………………………………………..55
Harley’s Stone………………………………………………58
Goosed by The Commons………………………………61
Appendix 4: Jack in the Box ……………………………….63
Ida Gandy…………………………………………………….65
Lyric and Tune Links………………………………………66
A Bastille Soupçon ………………………………………..68
About David Harley…………………………………………..71

The Letitia Files

 

This is a collection of posts by or concerning the purely imaginary Ms Letitia Teaspoon, who ran a counselling service for the many irritating comment spammers who couldn’t resist posting to ESET’s WeLiveSecurity blog (and some of my personal blogs) when I was working with the company. Sadly, it turned out that comment spammers are impervious to satire, but I enjoyed writing the articles enough to rerun them as a series on my Substack (Un)Selective Symmetry. They’ve also appeared on Inspiration Point as a single post, but I thought I’d release the same post here as a free eBook in PDF format, in case anyone apart from Letitia wants their very own copy.

The Letitia Files

Keepsake Mill

My setting of a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. From the New Silver Jug Band’s first album Farewell Reunion. The poem is from ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’.

Link on recording on Bandcamp (you don’t have to buy it to listen). Keepsake Mill

Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
Down by the banks of the river we go.

Here is a mill with the humming of thunder,
Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running under—
Marvellous places, though handy to home!

Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.

Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.

Home from the Indies and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all will come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.

You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past.

Words by Robert Louis Stevenson: ‘Dublin Shop Window’ image, tune and vocal by David Harley. All instruments by David Harley and David Higgen.