The Blandford Express

Charles Edgar Brine (20) was, on the face of it, a quite respectable agent for the Prudential Insurance Company and had recently moved from Blandford to Wimborne. However, he also had a duplicitous sideline involving the sale of bicycles.       In June 1891, Charles Edgar Brine appeared before Wimborne magistrates charged with stealing two bicycles valued at nineteen pounds. The first bicycle he had ‘borrowed’ from Frank King, a Wimborne machinist, to go on a ride with a friend. He said his friend was so impressed with the machine that he had kept it for a period and would probably offer to buy it. Brine said he would send King a telegram when he heard from the friend. None was received but Brine insisted he had sent one. In fact he had already sold the bicycle for just three pounds. He told the buyer he had sold it for a friend who was short of money. The second bicycle he had bought himself on hire purchase having paid a deposit of two pounds, Eleven pounds & eleven...

‘Pas possible’ were the words spoken by Napoleon Bonaparte when, according to Dorset folk-lore, he stepped ashore in 1804 at Lulworth Cove. Translating as ‘it’s not possible’ this was said to be a judgment on the suitability of Lulworth as a landing-point for a French invasion of England. Author Thomas Hardy would later write a short story A Tradition of 1804 which would be loosely based on this report. Legend has it that the French emperor was recognised by a Dorset farmer’s wife, Mrs Voss who was able to speak a little French. It was a language scarcely ever learned in England in those days but her father was a pottery merchant who had many dealings with France and she had helped him with the paperwork. She was able to recognise his distinctive features from the many caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte published at the time. It was feared that some 160,000 men and 15,000 horses would make the Channel crossing in a French fleet of flat bottomed boats. Her  husband was too close to t...

Charles Weeks, like many men and women in Dorset in the early 1700s, was deeply enmeshed in the smuggling trade. He operated at Lulworth and all along the Dorset coast and would land goods like brandy, tea and tobacco to evade paying heavy taxes. The rugged coastline provided secretive landing spots that were difficult for customs officials to patrol. Charles Weeks’s house was described as ‘a general magazine of snuff, pepper, cocoa nuts (beans), coffee and other goods.’ Weeks acted also as an organising agent for other smuggling merchants. He lived at Winfrith and recruited most of the village to work for him in the smuggling trade. He had a particularly crafty method of evading customs officials. He would mix seized contraband goods, which he bought at auction, with his own illicit smuggled items. When challenged, he was able to produce legitimate receipts. If this was not accepted, he would threaten litigation knowing that custom officials would be unlikely to follow up as they were...

In times gone by, Poole was notorious for its fearsome pirates. Among the most terrifying was Poole born Eric Cobham. In his first act of piracy he stole £40,000 worth of gold and goods from a French vessel. From his base in Newfoundland in Canada, he practised piracy on the high seas. It is said he operated out of Sandy Point on the island’s west coast. Throughout his ventures between 1740 and 1760, he was accompanied by his wife, the formidable Maria whom he met in a Plymouth tavern. It was a time when piracy was an all male club and Maria was one of the few exceptions. Both were notorious for their cruelty and for sparing no quarter. Captured crews were murdered with some survivors even used for target practice. This left no witnesses. Then, their vessels were sunk to the bottom of the sea. Chillingly and frighteningly, Maria has been described as Canada’s Pirate Queen . She was definitely not a lady with which to tangle. By all accounts, Maria did not play second fiddle to her husb...

Harry Page, also known as Harry Paye, was a notorious pirate, smuggler and adventurer from Poole. Scourge of the Spaniards and the French, they nicknamed him ‘Arripay’. Operating in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, he would attack Spanish and French vessels and bring their cargoes of gold, wine and exotic goods back to Poole. It has been claimed that he liberated so much alcohol on one occasion that it kept the whole of Poole drunk for a month. Harry was given permission by King Henry IV to inflict as much damage as he could to the King’s enemies. Harry led raids on the French and Spanish coasts from Normandy right down to the Bay of Biscay. To the people of Poole, he was an adventurer and a hero but to the Spaniards and French he was a criminal. In his home town, Harry was regarded as a maritime Robin Hood. In 1398, he sacked the town of Gijon in Northern Spain and stole a famous cross from a church in Finisterre. Six centuries later, Poole sent a replacement wooden cross over ...

Thanks to an administrative blunder, Eleanor Dixon of Holton, near Wareham became the first woman in Dorset to vote in a Parliamentary election. When she voted in the 1910 East Dorset election, she was nearly 20 years ahead of the time. For it was not until 1928 that all women over the age of 21 were granted the right to vote - irrespective of property rights. Eleanor must have voted for the Conservative candidate, Colonel John Sanctuary Nicholson as the Liberal/Radical Agent raised an objection against her vote. After stating he had checked relevant legislation, the Presiding Officer allowed her vote. Eleanor Dixon was not the first woman to vote in a British Parliamentary election because of an administrative error. Lily Maxwell did so in 1867 in a Manchester by-election when her name was erroneously placed on the registered list of voters. Lily was a shopkeeper born in Scotland around 1800.