Recollections of the Late Mr. John Bishop: About 50 years ago when a little boy, I joined a huge procession of a rather motley crowd of men and boys to beat the bounds of the borough. The worshipful mayor of that year was, I think Willian Searle Bentall, and many of the officials of the corporation were present. The late Mr. Bishop and his colleague, Mr. Pinsent, the two town sergeants, headed the procession with long sticks or wands, and on arriving at the Mill Leat, near the entrance to the racecourse, money in silver and pence was thrown into the water to be dived for. The recovery of the money was briskly competed for and created great amusement. This and other incidents connected with this time honoured and useful custom gave me my first vivid recollection of Mr. Bishop. The Reform Bill passed in 1832, my impression is that Mr Bishop was town sergeant under the old corporation for very many years and if so, he was a borough official when Lord Courtney was last elected under the old regime, by the Freemen (?) of the borough, and was subsequently on walking through the town pelted with cabbage stumps. Often have I listened with rapt attention to the recital by the deceased of stories connected with the growing disaffection at the old borough mongering transactions, or to the tales of the yeomanry and volunteers of the time the first Napoleon. On one occasion when number of French prisoners, passing through Totnes on their route to Dartmouth prisons, were lodged for the night in the stables of the Prince Eugene Inn, a well-known shoemaker, Christopher Furneanx, was on looking in on the prisoners, apprehended by the guard and thrust in amongst them as deserter and, after being kept there for several hours, he was released. This practical joke greatly enraged Furneanx, and amused the bye-standers, Mr. Bishop is connected in my memory with the Reform Holiday in 1832, with the coronation festivities here of the crowning of William IV., with the Parliamentary elections of Parrott and Cornish, Lord Seymour and Baldwin, Mills, Earl Gifford, Alfred Seymour, Pender, and the rival and unsuccessful candidates, with the riots, hustings fights, pelting rotten eggs, processions of hired bullies and rowdies, with the accompanied drunkenness and corrupt influences … (continues) … …
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