Publications

Volume XVIII [GO BACK]
Publication expected in May 2004

Volume XVIII (2002): Two Nineteenth-Century Hertfordshire Diaries, edited by Ms Judith Knight and Mr Frank Kilvington. (The diaries of Henry Lomas of Watford, 1822, 1825-27 and the Rev Thomas Newcombe, Rector of Shenley, 1830-1849.)

Narrative diaries and daybooks, especially those not intended for public viewing, can reveal to the social and local historian not only the attitudes of ordinary people to local, national and international events, but also the effects that these events had on the observers’ lives and therefore their relative importance to them.

The diaries of Henry Lomas, or “memorandums” as the writer called them, cover the periods January to December 1822 and November 1825 to February 1828. (It is most likely that he continued to write during the period January 1823 to October 1825 but those diaries have been lost.) Lomas, a literate and opinionated man, was in business as a painter and decorator in the Watford area. In the 1820s Watford was a small market town with a population of nearly 5000. Agriculture, brewing, and the local silk mill were the main industries. The diarist recorded what he considered to be significant local events such as the struggles over the workhouse and turnpike contracts, poaching, deaths in the silk mill machinery, the sickness of local dignitaries, transgressions against the Game Laws and unexpected climatic events that affected the harvest. He was interested in the numerous crashes of the country banks, and noted their repercussions on local tradesmen, and was sympathetic to the hardships endured by the weavers of Spitalfields and the ‘manufactoring towns’. He also had a taste for scandal, both local and further afield, and recorded the details of many a ‘most horrid murder’, and the desecration by Resurrectionists in Watford churchyard. He was also fascinated by political events and characters, and described various parliamentary matters with unexpected enthusiasm. His visit to London to the menagerie and the Panorama indicate the wonder that such entertainment must have provided for the intelligent provincial mind.

Local and family historians will find reference to many inhabitants of Watford and neighbouring villages; Lomas also carefully recorded local deaths at the end of every month, sometimes giving a cause of death, an occupation or a reference to relatives. The diaries also deserve a wide readership among social historians: this is a rare early 19th century record of contemporary local and national events. Its importance and significance lie in the juxtaposition of parish life and national political occurrences: to the diarist the corruption of local magistrates was at least as important as the corruption of the ‘Greek loan plunderers’ in parliament.

Thomas Newcombe’s diary (or, as he himself called it, his Family Register) describes in varying depth of detail the upbringing of his 10 children and their education. He also records his financial position which is badly affected by the depressed state of farming after the Napoleonic Wars. He was deeply in debt by the time of the last entry in his diary. However, his financial worries did not prevent him making many improvements to his parsonage and other properties that he purchased. However, he chiefly made his mark as a builder of chapels (in London Colney, Tottenham and Shenley) and schools (two in Shenley). In total these building projects represent a remarkable achievement and must dispose of any idea that Newcome was an idle clergyman, content to enjoy a comfortable living. He was also a Justice of the Peace (and as such comments on the social behaviour of the time in his diary) and was an Overseer of the Poor and Guardian at the Union.

Newcome too was interested in national and international affairs, recording matters that he considered of interest in his diary; although the bulk of the entries concern routine ecclesiastical matters, social life and the comings and going of his friends and family. These two diaries, written almost one after the other, provide an interesting view of life in south-west Hertfordshire in the early nineteenth century.

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