Diary of Thomas Turner 1765

Diary of Thomas Turner 1765 by Turner, Thomas. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780952451600.

Thomas Turner (1729-93) was a key figure in the village of East Hoathly, Sussex, where he was a shopkeeper, undertaker, schoolmaster, tax-gatherer, churchwarden, overseer of the poor, and much besides. In his diary he recorded eleven colourful years of daily life in a Georgian village. Here are boisterous parties (after one of these the rectors wife helped pull Turner from his bed in the early hours and made him dance in his wifes petticoat), cricket matches, cockfighting, horse-racing, unexpected windfalls of confiscated brandy... Here too are vivid and memorable portraits of those whose lives and deaths would otherwise only be fodder for the statisticians.