Gossip

Gossip has become part of our social fabric but it is usually insidious and even dangerous. It has many definitions but is best described as idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts, views and slander but is usually ill-informed and, most importantly, trivial and frequently untrue, while errors and variations in the anecdotes discussed become more exaggerated as they are passed on.

The perfect example of this type of social contact occurred at Baston, near Bourne, almost 200 years ago, following the death of a local resident, George Norton, aged 56, who lived in a cottage in the village and had been buried in the churchyard after his funeral.

But within days, rumours had begun to circulate that he had been the victim of violence but there was no police force in those days to investigate such claims and so villagers had to take the law into their own hands. In an attempt to scotch the stories therefore, several of the more respectable parishioners called a public meeting in St John’s Church to investigate the circumstances of the fatality but after a lengthy hearing they decided that the rumours were groundless.

For a time, the investigation appeared to have lulled the suspicions of some although it increased those of others and the Stamford Mercury reported: “One narrative of the cause of the deceased’s death gave rise to another and by degrees, so many different rumours were current that to satisfy the country it became necessary to have recourse to the only legal mode of setting such matters at rest, namely a coroner’s inquest.”

A warrant was subsequently issued by the coroner instructing the vicar and parish officers to exhume the body and an inquest was convened on 14th July 1823 before the coroner, Samuel Edwards, sitting with a jury.

The hearing lasted for eight hours and the evidence surrounding the circumstances of Norton’s death was detailed and exhaustive but the result appeared to be conclusive and was returned by the jury accordingly: that he died of a disease called cholera morbus, and, in a natural way, by the visitation of God.

NOTE: Cholera morbus is severe gastroenteritis of unknown cause characterised by severe colic, vomiting and diarrhoea.