March 2016 - Page 2 of 3 - Northumberland Archives

William Pugmire – Blyth Man who died of self-inflicted gun shot wounds.

08/03/201814/03/2016 by Northumberland Archives

A few weeks ago we re-tweeted and posted a BBC story on our Twitter and FaceBook feeds the story of Cpl. Arthur Cecil Rawson from Whittlesey who was the first soldier killed by ‘Friendly Fire’ in the First World World. There was a small list at the end of this story which included the names of 5 other servicemen one of which was Private Pugmire of Blyth.

Further research has located an account of Private Pugmire’s last days running up to his death and the coroners report which was printed in the ‘Evening Chronicle’ Newspaper on Friday 28 August 1914.

SOLDIER SHOT AT – BLYTH

Death from Self-inflicted Wound

Coroner H. T. Rutherford held an inquest at Blyth this morning on the body of William Pugmire, 24, a member of the Northumberland Fusiliers, stationed at Blyth.

Jane Pugmire, of 1, Plummer Street, Newcastle, deceased’s wife said her husband was an engine-fitter and turner. She last saw him on Sunday night at Blyth, and he was then very happy. He asked witness to come back again on Sunday first, as he would have some time off. She had no reason to think that he would take his life. He was quite healthy.

Edward Ratcliff Bowdon, Lieutenant in the Northumberland Fusiliers, said deceased was at Blyth with the Company. They were located at the Skating Rink. Deceased was arrested for a serious military offence, and brought before the commanding officer on August 6. They went to Blyth on the 7^th. On the 6^th they were stationed at the Central Station, Newcastle, where the deceased was placed on sentry duty. He was drunk in charge of one of the bridges. He was taken before the commanding officer, and was given the choice of being brought before a court martial or being reduced from sergeant to private. Deceased chose the latter. On Tuesday night last there was another offence against him, and he was brought before witness.The second offence was not so serious as the first. Witness remanded deceased to the commanding officer.

Corporal Joseph Longstaff Porter said he was on the relief guard at Blyth at 9.45 on Wednesday morning. Deceased was in the cell. Shortly afterwards the deceased asked witnessed to take him to the latrine. A posted letter was put into deceased hand. This he put into his pocket without reading it. On returning witness put him into the cell. He asked witness a few minutes later to let him have some exercise. Witness let him out and marched up and down the corridor twice with him. Then they stood at the door of the cell. Deceased then said he wanted a book out of the guard-room, and witness let him go into the guard-room. He sat on a kit and commenced turning pages over. There was one man in the room writing a letter, with his back to Pugmire. At that time witness was standing at the door of the guard-room watching deceased. Someone asked witness for a match, and while his back was turned for a moment he heard a shot go off. Witness thought the report came from the main hall, and ran there. Everybody was rushing towards the guard-room, and he afterwards went there and found Pugmire had been found shot. The guns belonged to the relief guard, but they were not loaded. Someone had gone to the latrine and had hung his equipment up in the guard-room. It contained 80 cartridges. Several unloaded rifles were hung up a few yards from deceased.

Harry Rutherford said he was writing a letter in the guard-room when the last witness brought the deceased in. Deceased spoke to him, and about half a minute later witness heard the report of a gun, and found deceased lying on the floor. A gun was lying beside him. Deceased was lying face downwards with the rifle at his right side and the muzzle towards his head. There were about six rifles hanging on the pegs and this rifle seemed to be nearest to him. The man’s equipment that was hanging up was one cartridge short.

Dr. Newstead said there was a punctured bullet-wound in the lower part of the front of the abdomen and a similar wound in the back part of him. The bullet had gone right through. Pugmire died on Thursday from shock following the injury.

The jury found that the deceased died from shock consequent upon wounds self-inflicted with a rifle, and that there was no evidence to show the state of his mind.

We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Maggie Neary for transcribing this article for the Northumberland At War Project.

We would also like to thank Dimitrios Corcodilos for supplying the image used in this post, along with a number of other digital images of military headstones found within the Blyth Links Cemetery, Cowpen Cemetery and Cowpen (Saint Cuthbert’s) Roman Catholic Burial Ground.

Domestic pigs and dusty feet: the smaller courts of Pannage, Woodmote and Piepowder.

14/03/2016 by Northumberland Archives

The Manorial Documents Register (MDR) records documents produced in the honour courts. An honour is an administrative unit based on a number of manors, the tenants of which owed suit to an honour court in addition to, or in place of, the normal manor court. As explained in one of our earlier blogs the two main types of manor court are the Court Baron and the Court Leet. However there were other smaller courts dealing with specific types of business, these are not recorded on the MDR but it is useful to be aware of their function.

The Forest Court had jurisdiction over woodland and was sometimes called the Woodmote or Swainmote Court. The Court of Pannage dealt with the business of releasing domestic pigs into the forests to feed on acorns, beech mast and chestnuts. This was often a right or privilege given to local people or in some places pigs were customarily presented to the lord of the manor. In some areas of the country a unit of administration existed between the shire and parish, this was called a Hundred and had its own court. In Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire the Hundred Court was referred to as the Wapentake Court.

ZHE 2/2, reference to the Piepowder court highlighted.

The Court of Piepowders was held in a borough on the occasion of a fair or market.

This document from the Allendale papers mentions a Court of Piepowder in 1685. The court had unlimited jurisdiction over events taking place in the market and tended to deal with disputes between merchants, theft, and acts of violence. The court was held in front of the mayor and bailiffs of the borough or the steward, if the market or fair was held by a lord. The jury comprised of three or four men and punishment ranged from a fine to the pillory. Trials were short and informal. If the court ruled against the defendant and the defendant could not pay his property could be seized and sold to cover the costs.

These courts existed to administer speedy justice over people who were not permanent residents of the place where the market was held. The name referred to the dusty feet (in French, pieds poudrés) of travelers and vagabonds, and was only later applied to the courts which dealt with such people. Court members themselves also wandered around the fair rather than sitting on a bench often getting their feet dusty in the process. In modern French, the word pied-poudreux is still occasionally used for travelling beggars.

Digitising the Stannington Sanatorium patient files

21/12/202010/03/2016 by Northumberland Archives

As the Stannington Sanatorium Digitisation Assistant I am responsible for digitising over 4,000 patient case files and their contents, redacting personal identifiable information from these and uploading digital copies of the core documents to our publicly accessible, searchable, online catalogue. Before I can do this, my colleague, the Project Assistant has already sorted the forms, charts and various other items contained in each file into core and non-core documents and repackaged them in acid free folders for long term preservation. You can read more about this here.

A file ready to be digitised — The documents of patient file HOSP-STAN 07/01/01/2261 prior to digitisation

Before being digitised the pages in each file are checked to make sure they are in the correct order and any dog eared corners or folds are straightened out. The pages in the folder are then photographed on both the front and reverse sides to make sure that all the information in each folder is captured. The number of images captured varies from file to file and can be from just a few up to around fifty. Most files have around 10 to 15 pages, but the largest digitised to date contains over 140 pages!

We digitise the files using a high specification digital SLR camera connected to a computer. This allows us to take high resolution photographs of each page and is much quicker than digitising each page separately on a flatbed scanner. Using a flatbed would be the normal approach however the time constraints on the project mean we are digitising over 1,500 pages every week so this approach isn’t feasible.

Camera stand and laptop — The camera stand and laptop used to digitise each file.

The images are then processed and saved to nationally recognised standards set by The National Archives. Each file is saved in Tiff and Jpeg formats. The Tiff format creates files of a large size, but ensures that all the original information from the photograph is retained. Because of this and the sensitive nature of information in the un-redacted files they are stored on DVD in the Northumberland Archives strong rooms for security and long term preservation. The smaller Jpeg format allows us to keep these digital files on our own servers and readily accessible to staff and researchers if required.
The core documents from each folder (cover, case notes, x-ray card and discharge report) then have any information which could identify patients or is considered sensitive removed. This process involves using photo editing software on a computer, and reading each page to check for information such as names, addresses and dates of birth, and redacting it. This is a time consuming process not made easier by having to read a lot of hand written doctors’ notes!

Core documents being redacted in Adobe Photoshop — Adobe Photoshop is used to redact sensitive information from the core documents.

The final stage of the process is to upload the images to the relevant records on our online catalogue. Once this has been done a selection of pages from each file are publicly viewable along with each file’s catalogue entry and the digitisation process is complete. Currently over 18,000 pages have been digitised from over 1,400 patient files. Over 6,000 core documents are already viewable online via our catalogue in addition to a large number of radiographs and early patient files which were digitised during the first phase of the project.
A typical set of core documents from the file of a patient suffering from tuberculosis admitted to Stannington Sanatorium in the early 1950s can be seen below.

The front cover of a file — HOSP-STAN 07/01/01/2261/01

Inside the cover of a patient file — HOSP-STAN 07/01/01/2261/02

HOSP-STAN 07/01/01/2261/07 - — HOSP-STAN 07/01/01/2261/03

Pages from a patient file incuding discharge report — HOSP-STAN 07/01/01/2261/07

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