Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/456

This page needs to be proofread.

376


NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. vi. NOV. 9, 1912.


Dr. Burton was buried in or near the Church of Holy Trinity, Micklegate, York. A tablet on the south wall of the choir is

Sacred to the Memories

of John Burton M.D. P.A.S.

and

Mary his Wife

He 1 ,. T/ 19th January \ ,,-, , / 62. She / died \ 28th October ) llil a ^ ed \ 58.

Unless Dr. Burton were born before 1710, it is 346 chances to 19 that he died something short of being 62. ST. SWITHTN.

My copy of the ' D.N.B.' (vol. viii. p. 10, 1886), in which the errors of the first im- pression have evidently been corrected, reads as follows :

"John Burton, M.D. (1710-71). .. .son of John Burton, a London merchant, by Margaret, daughter of the Rev. J. Leake, was born at Colchester on 9 June, 1710, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at St. John's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated M.B. in 1733. He afterwards studied at Leyden." He died

" on 19 Jan., 1771 . . . .Burton married, on 2 Jan., 1734-5, in York Minster, Mary Henson. She survived him a few months, and was buried by his side in Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate."

A. R. BAYLEY.

A WINNOWER (11 S. vi. 309). The rotary hand winnowing-mill, the forerunner of the dressing-gig, is mentioned by writers as early as the seventeenth century. It was largely employed in the earlier years of the last century, together with the more primitive method of throwing the grain with a shovel ; the ancient winnowing basket or fan also continued in common use. A model of one of these machines, turned by a handle at one end, is figured in Miss Jekyll's ' Old West Surrey.' It would be interesting to know if the wheel - and -band arrangement, as described by F. W. M., was largely employed in the working of these " mills."

A home should certainly be found for this interesting " bygone " in a museum ; many would gladly house it.

" Bygones " i.e., objects in common use from 50 to 150 years ago, but which are now obsolete or obsolescent, or no longer made by hand possess much interest, and form valuable links with what has been so well called " the remoteness of the immediate past." I should always be most grateful for notes, photographs, &c., of any of these " late antiquities."

(Rev.) G. MONTAGU BENTON.

Saffron] Walden, Essex.


This winnower is certainly worth keeping where there is room for it, for such winnowing machines are now rarely to be met with. It is years since I saw one at work. It stood between the two doors of a great barn through which there was always a strong draught. Two men were required to drive the four flappers on the machine, which went round with a " Whoff, whoff, whoffing!" It stood at the back of a close -mesh wire frame, down which the wheat and chaff were poured, the flappers (with the draught they made) blowing the chaff out at the open door. The machine was kept in repair by home labour, except for what was done to it by a man who came round each year to the farms doing repairs to implements. I believe such machines were used for many years.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

It is a far cry from Biblical times to the present day, and yet it is only some half- century or so ago that the shovel and the fan mentioned by Isaiah (xxx. 24) made way for the winnowing machine. The writer remembers, when a child, having seen the shovel and fan in use for separating the corn from the chaff after it had been hand-threshed by flail. The fan was con- structed in the same manner as that .de- scribed by F. W. M. It was, however, some- what smaller, and the handle to which the endless strap was attached was turned by a man. Opposite the machine stood an- other man, who, with a huge wooden barn shovel, poured forth thin streams of threshed corn, the grains of which fell to the ground, while the chaff was whirled away by the wind created by the revolving fan.

Gleaners at that time used the still more primitive method of threshing their corn with a straight cudgel, and then, on a windy day, proceeding to some exposed spot, where the gale separated the chaff from the corn as it was poured forth from a small wooden bowl. JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

Miss INGALLS (11 S. vi. 148). Her maiden name was Frances Erskine Inglis (pronounced " Ingalls "). She is said to have been a great-granddaughter of Col. Gardiner of Prestonpans fame. I copy the following excerpt from Appleton's ' Cyclo- paedia of American Biography,' New York, 1898, under ' C'alderon de la Barca ' :

" Born in Scotland about 1818. Her youth was passed in Normandy, but she came to this country with her mother, and they established