1.--A match against time took place on Swaffham Racecourse. "Mr. B.
Land's celebrated chestnut mare Lady Jane was backed to do 20 miles in an
hour for 100 guineas." Odds of 5 to 4 were laid against the mare, "but
she accomplished the task with the greatest ease, having one minute and a
half to spare, and trotted in the last few yards."
6.--A meeting of the freemen of Norwich was held at St. Andrew's Hall,
for the purpose of petitioning Parliament "to repeal so much of the
Municipal Reform Act as debars freemen of the right to be enrolled as
burgesses under the same, and to confer on the freemen and burgesses of
all cities, boroughs, and towns corporate within the operation of the Act
the right to vote at all municipal elections." Mr. John Culley presided,
in the absence of the Mayor, and the petition was adopted. On May 4th
the freemen went in procession with a band of music and numerous flags
and banners, from the Pope's Head to the Greyhound Inn, Surrey Street,
where, through Col. Harvey, they presented the petition to the Marquis of
Douro, M.P., who promised to support it in the House of Commons. The
petition to the House of Lords was presented by Lord Mansfield, formerly
Lord Stormont, one of the members for Norwich.
17.--Died in St. George Colegate, Norwich, aged 41, Emily, eldest
daughter of John Crome, founder of the Norwich Society of Artists. "In
her pictures of fish, fruit, and flowers it may be justly said that no
one has represented these objects with greater fidelity to nature,
combined with a tasteful and picturesque manner of grouping them."
18.*--"Children who are sickly are taken to a woman living in St.
Lawrence, Norwich, for the purpose of being cut for a supposed disease
called the spinnage. The infants are on a Monday morning taken to this
woman's, who, for threepence, with a pair of scissors cuts through the
lobe of the right ear, then makes a cross with the blood upon the
forehead and breast of the child. On the following Monday the same
barbarous and superstitious ceremony is performed upon the left ear, and
on the succeeding Monday the right ear is again condemned to undergo the
same ceremony, and in some cases it is deemed necessary to perform the
ridiculous operation nine times."