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Showing posts from December, 2019

AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

A HIATUS AT THE HALL A century and a half ago, the summer of 1856 was reportedly an extremely good one in Melton Mowbray with dry and extended spells of languorous days and nights, a situation which was I am sure very much appreciated by the hard-working people of that town.  But the long warm days of that high summer were to be rudely interrupted by a series of dark events which would create grounds for grim anxiety amongst many of its inhabitants and perhaps even amusement for others.  Whilst an alleged murderer awaited trial for the vicious slaying of two people in the town and a local businessman was shot in the chest by a crazed young solicitor's clerk, members of the local high society were having domestic problems of their own in the form of an acrimonious domestic dispute in the nearby village of Goadby Marwood which would ensure that the town's magistrates were adequately engaged.   In its Saturday edition of August 30th, 1856, the Leicester Chronicle publish