Baby Farming in Newton

In the Victorian era infant mortality was very high; of the 800,000 births recorded in England in 1880, about 120,000 died before their first Birthday. Of these deaths about 60,000 were due to inadequate starch-based diets, cornflower and water etc. 20,000 from diseases, such...

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1858 the Year of the Great Stink – Newton Style

The Great Stink was the elegant name given to terrible smell that pervaded central London, during   July and August 1858. It had been a particularly hot summer, which exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent present on the banks of...

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Reminiscences of Old Newton Abbot

Info for this article taken from East and South Devon Advertiser 3rd October 1896 In August 1896 a certain Mr W Roberts on his retirement as an Assistant Overseer, was invited to relate his memories of Newton Abbot. He was especially interesting, due to having...

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The Miner’s Lamp

Di Nicholls wished that the Miners Lamp presented to her in 1985 by the Miners of the Treharris Deep Navigation Mine, should be donated to the Newton Abbot & GWR Museum. This is the story behind the Miner’s Lamp. In 1983 Ian MacGregor was appointed...

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A New Notable Newtonian Discovered! Olympic Gold Medallist, Actor, Singer and More…

This gentleman is Charles Kay, also known as Charles Beachcroft Kay, C B K Beachcroft, and even Jack Trent. As his many aliases may suggest, he was quite a character: famous (some would say infamous) within the West Country and further afield. A man-about-town...

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