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Updated: June 17, 2025
Dodgson was thinking anxiously that the party would be back in Stokebridge long before the feast was over. Suddenly a great pair of curtains across the end of the tent drew aside and a regular stage was seen. Mr.
Therefore when in the pit think over other subjects, history, geography, what you will, but leave calculations alone except when you have your books before you." It was Saturday afternoon, a time at which Stokebridge was generally lively.
A gig came rapidly along containing two young bagmen, as commercial travellers were still called in Stokebridge. The driver, seeing a child with two dogs, conceived that this was a favourable opportunity for a display of that sense of playful humour whose point lies in the infliction of pain on others, without any danger of personal consequences to the inflictor.
A messenger was despatched to the Vaughan, for the police force stationed there to come up at once to keep back the excited crowd, and with orders that the stretchers and blankets in readiness should be brought on; while another went into Stokebridge for a surgeon, and for a supply of wine, brandy, and food, and two or three vehicles. No sooner were the men sent off than Mr.
Jack Simpson's craze for learning, as it was regarded by the other lads of Stokebridge, was the subject of much joking and chaff among them. Had he been a shy and retiring boy, holding himself aloof from the sports of his mates, ridicule would have taken the place of joking, and persecution of chaff.
Among the men, who were, however, disposed to view the matter as a boys' fancy which would soon die away, the movement met with slight approval. Newfangled notions were held in but low estimation among the miners of Stokebridge. They had got on wi'out larning, and saw no reason why t' lads could not do as they had done.
Even among the mining villages of the Black Country Stokebridge had a reputation for roughness; and hardened topers of the place would boast that in no village in the county was there so much beer drunk per head. Stokebridge feast was frequented by the dwellers of the mining villages for miles round, and the place was for the day a scene of disgraceful drunkenness and riot.
Very long did the remembrance of "The Black Feast," as it came to be called, linger in the memories of the people of Stokebridge and the surrounding district. Great as was the grief and suffering caused alike to the friends of those injured and of those upon whom fell punishment and disgrace, the ultimate effect of the riot was, however, most beneficial to Stokebridge.
The cheers of the lads, silent at first, rose louder with each round, and culminated in a yell of triumph when, at the end of fifty-five minutes, Tom Walker, having for the third time in succession been knocked down, was absolutely unable to rise at the call of "time" to renew the fight. Never had an event created such a sensation in Stokebridge.
You young men, lads and lasses, will in a few years have a paramount influence in Stokebridge; upon you it depends whether that place is to be, as it used to be, like other colliery villages in Staffordshire, or to be a place inhabited by decent and civilized people.
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