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Bridgnorth Beacon Articles

Below is a list of all the articles and advertisements which appeared in the first issue of the Bridgnorth Beacon, dated 1st October 1852. The transcriptions can be viewed by clicking on the titles.

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Articles:

1. Notice to Advertisers.
2. Advertisement - Stationery
3. Advertisement - Publication
4. Advertisement - Drapery
5. Advertisement - Bookseller
6. Births, Marriages and Deaths.
7. Notice to readers and correspondents.
8. Bridgnorth Beacon - Our Title
9. Bridgnorth Beacon - Our Objects
10. Report on the Morfe Flower Show.
11. Opinion on emigration for gold-hunting.

    The Diggings.

    "Off to the Diggins"—To how many enquiries about missing individuals is this the answer. Old and young, high and low, men and women, masters and servants, all seem infected with that Auri sacra fames which inspires us much more effectually than muses or music, love or logic. One may see children leaving their parents, parents their children, men their trades and occupations, and even love-sick swains their "ladye loves," all for gold. People now-a-days change the reading of the excellent advice contained in the proverb "with all thy getting, get understanding" into the more attractive though certainly less profitable one "with all thy getting, get gold"! It is now become agreeable and becoming to suffer, not for one’s country kith or kin, but for the precious metal which is to afford us the means of affluence and luxury for the rest of our lives. Men who would have talked of a voyage to Australia under other circumstances as an impossible thing, are now ready and eager to sing to the tune of "packing up and going away." Women who would previously have made their wills before crossing the Thames or the Severn, who looked upon a coach as a sure and certain road to crushed bonnets and broken bones, and who regarded a Railway porter as a sort of grim messenger of death and destruction, paid by the dozen of mishaps in his respective district, now leave their knitting & spinning, puddings and pies, muffins and crumpets, for the purpose of accompanying their better halves (we beg the ladies’ pardon) across the wide sea, in search of the wherewithal to make more puddings and pies and muffins and crumpets, without the trouble of working for them. And all this is very natural if not very excusable. We much question, or rather we do not question at all whether, if a "diggin" were discovered in this good town of Bridgnorth, we should not throw down our pen and join in the heartcheering occupation of digging up houses and lands and titles and honors, by means of the glittering poison (pleasant poison!) revealed to our eager glances in the streets and lanes of our time honored Borough.

    But what we are aiming at is this. The Gold regions are to be regarded in no other light than as a lottery, in which the number of blanks largely—very largely predominates. Therefore no possible end can be gained by emigrating for gold, which could not have been gained without a voyage to the antipodes. Not that we are advocating lotteries, or depreciating emigration generally. The latter, in method and system, appears to be an outlet appointed by Providence for our superabundant population. But gold hunting is as a rule profitless, laborious, vexatious, degrading. Every end can be gained in England, that you aim at in going to Australia. Granted that fortunes are made by the fortunate excavators. So are fortunes made in large towns by lotteries without the labor of digging. And yet few would be found so foolish and vicious as to leave husband and wife, father and child, every domestic and other tie for the chance of a "prize" at one of these lotteries. This however is what the gold hunters do. We have before us, letters from "The Diggings" which bear out our assertions. The perils attending the search and the chances of being murdered on the attainment of one’s aim, may be very charming and romantic, but will hardly afford sufficient attractions for prudent hard-working men, who are comfortably settled in Fatherland. We repeat; we are not speaking of emigration. On that subject we shall have somewhat to say hereafter, but we are alluding to the fearful risks to body and soul attending the goldfinder’s search.

12. Report on the harvest.
13. Local Information - Grammar School, Choral Society and Philharmonic Society
14. Local Information - School-masters' Association
15. Local Information - Quatt School
16. Local Information - Religious & Useful Knowledge Society, Mechanics Institution
17. Local Information - Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, etc.
18. Local Information - Sanitory state of the town.
19. Local Information - Militia
20. Local Information - Cholera, and the Fair
21. Petty Sessions - Conviction of Hawker
22. Police Reports - Non-payment of poor rate calls.
23. Police Reports - Drunkenness
24. Letter to the Editor
25. Letter to the Editor
26. Letter to the Editor
27. General Information - England - Politics and the death of the Iron Duke
28. General Information - England - the Advantages of Free Trade.
29. General Information - England - A Royal Teacher.
30. General Information - England - Proposals for new ocean vessels.
31. General Information - Ireland - Erin go Bragh
32. General Information - Ireland - Tenant right.
33. General Information - Ireland - An Irish Mother (a pig tale).
34. General Information - Scotland
35. General Information - America
36. General Information - America - Christianity among the Jews
37. General Information - America - Drinking pact.
38. Ecclesiastical Information
39. Ecclesiastical Information - Methodism, Convocation and the Vicarage of Shiffnal
40. The Press - The Duke of Wellington
41. Literary Extracts - Advice to Theologians
42. Literary Extracts - Fasting Extraordinary (An account of the process for electing new Bailiffs)
43. Literary Extracts - Habits of a Man of Business.
44. Poetry - Introduction.
45. Poetry - The Buried Flower
46. Poetry - The Nightingale
47. Serapiana - Random facts and information.
48. Serapiana - Prescriptions for moods and fits.
49. Serapiana - Anecdote on annexation.
50. Serapiana - Anecdote on the rewards of honesty.
51. Serapiana - An unfinished ode, and printer's notes.

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