Published in Windlesora 26 (2010)
© WLHG
26 June 1830
A pauper who had lived in Windsor, but had neither food nor lodging appealed for poor relief. He was told to go to his parish of birth, which was Langley, to apply for help. There he had no success. Returning to Windsor he told the magistrate:
‘I even gone so far as to break the church windows, thinking that they would surely put me in prison for the offence’.
But he was sorry to say that they would not take the hint.
‘They only pushed me about and attempted to rob me of my walking stick’.
At this the Windsor magistrate relented and told the overseer of the poor to give this old pauper some assistance.
24 April 1830
As King George IV lay dying at Windsor Castle, a tall respectable gentleman staying at the Castle Inn endeavoured to get an interview with the King. He said he would ‘administer a nostrum which had the effect of restoring the King to the youth and freshness of his twentieth year’. The gentleman’s movements, the paper reported, were closely watched by two Bow Street officers ‘who are in constant attendance on him, whenever he makes an appearance in public’.
Four weeks later, on 22 May the paper reported: ‘The mysterious visitor at Windsor who tried to see the King and restore him not only to health but make him young again, has transferred his attention to the Duke of Wellington with offers to make him immortal’. Nothing more was heard of the gentleman.
The King died at 3am on 26 June 1830 at Windsor Castle. The Windsor newspaper carried the announcement of his death on that very same day.
26 June 1830
When sailor Robert Ingle was paid off from the Asia, a 74 gun ship, he came to Windsor to find himself a wife. He soon fell in with the gipsies and found Poll, whom he took a fancy to. So he bought her ‘a tent and all her sticks’ for £15. Before they set off for London, he gave her his purchase money, almost £70 [a small fortune then] to ‘rig herself out’.
On the way to London the coach stopped at the White Horse where Robert got off to have a grog or two, but on his return his Poll had disappeared with all the luggage.
His unfeeling and highly amused fellow passengers only advised him to go back to Windsor to look for her.
Windsor Local History Group 