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Chap. XIX.] . " Bedford" Well. 215
having fallen into the well, and being drowned there. The story runs "that he was a sheep-stealer, and was on a nocturnal raid when the accident happened.
Ladies at Public Dinners.
Mr. G. A. Wallis, at his first Mayoral Banquet on December 20, 1883, set an example which I am sorry none of his successors ever followed. He invited the gentlemen to bring their wives or a daughter. I insisted on the same thing at the 2 "House of Commons" Dinners over which I presided. I think a Dinner of men only is a dull function. It is more than that, for it is made an excuse for pipes and "baccy," which I loathe.
East-Bourne Printers.
East-Bourne had no resident printer until about 1850, when a man named William Mott set up in a little shop at the entrance to School-Yard from Church Street, now occupied by a cobbler. Mott remained in business for I think 5 years. I knew him and frequently amused myself by watching him at work, but more than that, he printed my first publication—a 4-page commentary on the Lord's Prayer ! Up till the time of Mott's arrival, all the East-Bourne printing had been done at Hailsham, first by George Breads, followed by his son Stephen Breads and his grandsons Alfred and Morgan Breads. Alfred died and Morgan took to the turf with the usual results of doing so. The Hailsham business is still in the hands of the Breads' family under another name. The foundation of the business goes back to the beginning of the 19th Century.
After Mott, the next East-Bourne printer was Cyrus Clark, who, in July 1859, added the printing of a newspaper, the East-Bourne Gazette, to his ordinary business. He was followed by a very cantankerous man \V. S. Doeg, who, judging by his character quite as much as by his name, must have been a relation of Doeg the Edomite, of whom we read in Scripture. Doeg sold his business and paper to one, Samuel Hayward, who |
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