A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall

by S. Baring-Gould

Then I told him my experience.

“Why,” said he, “a neighbour, a German baron, has his children ill in the same way.”

At once he ran into the baron’s house and told him what I had said. Both proceeded immediately to the public analyst with specimens of the papers from the rooms in which the children slept. The papers were found to be heavily laden with arsenic.

Unhappily, in spite of all precautions, the work at the arsenic mine and manufactory is prejudicial to health. The workers are disabled permanently at an average age of forty. Of deaths in the district, eighty-three per cent. are due to respiratory diseases, while sixty-six per cent. are due to bronchitis alone. For the last three years, out of every hundred deaths among persons of all ages in the parish of Calstock twenty-six have been due to diseases of the respiratory organs, but out of every hundred employés at the arsenic works who have died or become disabled eighty-three deaths have been due to respiratory diseases. It is evident that with such an unusual proportion of one particular disease in the most able-bodied portion of the community there must be a definite existing cause.

No doubt that a very minute amount of arsenic may pass through the nostrils and down the throat, but what is far more prejudicial than that is the sulphurous acid which cannot be excluded by the handkerchief and lint, but passes freely through both. This is extremely irritating to the mucous membrane. But the fact of working for hours with the breathing impeded by the wraps about mouth and nose is probably the leading cause of the mischief.

Suggestions of remedies have been made, but none practical. A mask has been proposed, but this does not answer, as it causes sores, and is difficult to keep clean.

Devon Consols produces about 150 tons of arsenic per month; Gawlor, 100 tons; Greenhill, 50; Coombe, 25; and Devon Friendship about the same. In all about 350 tons per month. This to the workers is worth £10 per ton, or a revenue to the neighbourhood of £42,000 per annum.

In S. Mellion parish, on the Tamar, finely situated, is Pentillie Castle.

The original name of the place was Pillaton, but it was bought by a man of the name of Tillie in the reign of James II., who called it after his own name. He was a self-made man, who was knighted, and not having any right to arms of his own, assumed those of Count Tilly, of the Holy Roman empire. But this came to the ears of the Herald’s College, and an inquisition into the matter was made, and Sir James was fined, and his assumed arms were defaced and torn down.

He died in 1712, and by will required his adopted heir, one Woolley, his sister’s son, not only to assume his name, but also not to inter his body in the earth, but to set it up in the chair in which he died, in hat, wig, rings, gloves, and his best apparel, shoes and stockings, and surround him with his books and papers, with pen and ink ready; and for the reception of his body to erect a walled chamber on a height, with a room above it in which his portrait was to be hung; and the whole was to be surmounted by a tower and spire.