The Blandford Express

Known as the ‘ Victoria Cross Pigeon’ , the heroic last flight of carrier pigeon 2709 is remembered in the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp. During World War I, the British Army used pigeons to carry messages. A miniature container would be attached to a bird’s foot in which a note with a message would be put. As pigeons can fly quite fast, the message could be delivered quite quickly. A bizarre feature of the time was the mobile pigeon loft. These were initially horse drawn but later London buses were converted into pigeon lofts. Quite a strange sight they were on the Western Front and some change from their previous role in the streets of London. Each vehicle could carry 60 to 75 birds in specially made coops on the upper deck with feed, stores and an office below. In October 1917, pigeon 2709 was given an important message to deliver from the Passchendaele front-line to the Divisional Headquarters. It left from the Menin Road area at around 1.30pm on the 4 th October 1917...

Thomas Hardy wrote of this Barley Wine style beer: ‘It was the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could deliver full of body yet brisk of as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset, free from streakiness of taste but fully rather heady.’ ( Trumpet Major) Named after the Dorset author and poet, it was created by Dorchester brewers, Eldridge Pope to mark the 40th anniversary of Hardy’s death. However production ceased when the brewery closed in 2003 following its sale to a property company. In 2013 the recipe was acquired by Italian  brewer, Interbrau and from time to time they arrange for special batches of Thomas Hardy Ale to be produced. It has been claimed that Thomas Hardy Ale will last for 25 years.

For stealing four and a half pints of milk, valued at eleven pence and a farthing (around 4.5p),  Adilene Blanche Plaister, a single woman, of Shillingstone was sentenced by Sturminster Newton Magistrates to four months in prison with hard labour. Witnesses had observed her crossing a field at around 5.15am with a bucket under her arm. She was then seen milking a cow which belonged to Shillingstone farmer Edwin Charles Tuffin - a charge she did not deny. The farmer claimed this was the sixth occasion his cow had been milked. The Court was told that Adilene Plaister had previously failed to appear at court stating she would definitely not go even for forty policemen. She was brought to Court under custody. Before Sturminster Newton Magistrates, Adilene Plaister pleaded not guilty but added: ‘I milked his cow but only did it for a bit of fun. I did it to get my own back.’ She alleged that Mr Tuffin had milked someone else’s cow.  On hearing the sentence, Adilene Plaister exclaim...

  From Dorset Gallows to Van Diemen’s Land is the unlikely but true story of political corruption, hangings and transportation in the small market town of Blandford in Southern England.  It is available as a paperback from  Amazon in the United Kingdom, Australia and the USA. The book uncovers the extraordinary tale of two ordinary men, George Long a shoemaker and Richard Bleathman a butcher. Driven by belief and dissatisfaction they are swept along by events. Sentenced to be hanged in Dorchester Gaol for their protests against political corruption they are instead, following clemency appeals,  transported to Van Diemen’s Land -  on the other side of the world. ‘A fascinatingly  good read.  This book entirely complements the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs - also transported to Australia.’ (Richard Holledge, newspaper editor, freelance journalist - London. As read in the Independent, New York Times & Financial Times. Author of   Voices of the M...

At one time members of the Dorset Constabulary were subject to regulations that today would not be acceptable and possibly illegal. A  Dorset police constable could not marry without obtaining the permission of the Chief Constable, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Symes Cox. He was worried that so many of his constables were married men that he issued the following instruction. ‘The number of married police constables being out of all reasonable proportion to the total strength of the Force so much as to be increasingly inconvenient to the efficient working of the police, No constable for the future will be allowed to marry until he has served at least twelve months and then permission will not be granted until he satisfies the Chief Constable he has saved a sufficient sum of money to enable him to start in life with respectability as a married man.’ (Dorset Constabulary General Orders – August 1864) When the Force had been established in 1856, it had been determined, unless there wer...