Plymouthhistory

Children were often the victims of their parent’s alcoholism, sometimes from violence, but more
often from neglect. Plymouth’s Superintendent Gibbons, whilst acting on information given to him,
visited the dilapidated eighteenth-century home of a naval officer’s widow in 1851. He found the
wretched-looking woman downstairs and two children, a fourteen year old girl and twelve year old
boy, in another room. The children were reportedly covered in filth and vermin, and the girl was
literally naked. What Gibbons found upstairs though disturbed him most of all. In a bedroom was
the eldest daughter, aged twenty-two, holding her new-born baby, both of whom were in a state of
malnourishment. No food was found in the house. Even though it was claimed by the widow she
had a pension of ninety-four pounds a year, it was almost entirely spent on drink.
But the epitome of Plymouth’s drinking problem can be exemplified with a study of a particular
infamous local man and his decline.
Robert “Bob” Cowley was a Plymouth-born fisherman and regularly found himself waking up
in the police cells with no knowledge of the previous night. By the mid-1850s he was known
throughout Plymouth as “Notorious Bob” due to his increasing visits to the courts and regular
appearance in the stocks in Plymouth market. In 1856 he appeared before magistrates almost
once a month and sometimes more. One magistrate even ordered that Cowley was to just be
imprisoned in the cells when found intoxicated and released when sober so as to not “waste” the
court’s time. In 1858 he was found drunk and brought before the magistrates. He declared he had
not drank for sixteen months, and only just relapsed. The magistrate discharged him on the
promise he would make another attempt to give up the drink. But less than a week later, he was
back for his usual offence, but this time things were different. The court correspondent reported
that the defendant looked very ill and that he shook involuntarily. It was also shown by the police
that a landlady took all his money and valuables in return for drink, allowing him to stay in her
public house for six weeks. The court magistrates took a dim view of the landlady and the charge
was dismissed.