Three new blue plaques

On Monday 24th October 2011 three blue plaques were unveiled:

The Body-snatchers by St Nicholas Church main gate – unveiled by Revd. James Stewart

The Guildhall by St Nicholas Church main gate – unveiled by Richard Packham, Chief Executive , GYBC

Replacement of Suspension Bridge Disaster at the Swan Public House, North Quay – unveiled by Revd. James Stewart

The Great Yarmouth Local History and Archeological Society organise the installation of blue plaques in the Borough.  For more information on the society click here.  Dr. Paul Davies gave a brief talk prior to each unveiling, providing context for each of the plaques.

The bodysnatcher Keith Vaughan was employed by the renowned surgeon Sir Astley Cooper to supply corpses for anatomical research.  Sir Astley Cooper’s father was vicar at Great Yarmouth, though the surgeon was practicing in London at that time and taught anatomy at Guy’s Hospital. Keith Vaughan hid the corpses in old houses on Row Six where he lived before crating them up for despatch to London. He was paid 10-12 guineas per body but this activity eventually got him arrested, being jailed for 6 mths on the first occasion and transported to Australia on the second.  The surgeons were given the bodies of hanged criminals for anatomical research but such a supply was inadequate for the industrious Astley Cooper and his like.  The Rev. James Stewart spoke in memory of those whose bodies had been stolen from graves at St. Nicholas. 

It was not possible to list all those who drowned in the Suspension Bridge disaster, as there were so many – too many of them being young children from the poorer families who lived in the area nearby. What should have been a happy occasion with the excitement of the event of a clown in a tub being towed up the Bure by four swans, turned out to be a disaster such as would have made national if not international news these days – the bridge collapsed thanks to a faulty weld in a chain link, and the crowd on the bridge was flung into the river.  Particularly moving was the record of a dead mother being hauled up out of the water, still clutching her baby and holding  her little girl by the hand with such a tight grasp that it was only with great difficulty that the bodies were separated.

Alf Hedges records in “Yarmouth is an antient Town” (1959, revised and expanded 2001 by Michael Boon and Frank Meers, printed by Blackwell John Buckle, ISBN 0-9541153-1-7) that the Guildhall ” stood on the left-hand side of the Gate of St. Nicholas and was built on arches so that people could walk to church underneath it.”  It was first used by the Guild of the Blessed Trinity, a merchant guild  formed as a result of privilages granted by King John in his Charter of 1209 but suppressed in the Reformation.  The Guildhall was then taken over by the Corporation.  The Guildhall became redundant and was pulled down when a new Town Hall was built by the river (on the site where the present Town Hall stands).  A new building was erected on the Guildhall site in 1723 to provide an Assembly Room and a  private chamber for the Council but this  building was demolished too in 1850.