A rural pastime called the “skimmerton,” occasions much mirth, particularly in villages, has it had a good effect on many who richly deserved to be publicly exposed.It consists of two men riding on one horse; the one dressed as a woman; they sit back to back, and having panniers on the horse filled with grains, from a brewery, they proceed to the house of any man who has flogged his wife. On their arrival, they begin to quarrel, and throw the grains at each other, which is followed by a sham fight between the man and wife. The novelty of the sight, of course, occasions a great number of persons to assemble. The man who leads the horse on this occasion generally collects a few pence from the bystanders. An old servant of my father’s (John Hurst) was often selected for this rustic admonition. Sometimes, two or three parties have been thus publicly exposed on the same day.
Written by John Mockett in Thanet in 1828.
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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.