I cannot omit here to notice, among the inhabitants who have done credit to Penzance, my late respected relation Mr. Thomas Giddy, as a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of unblemished reputation. He came to Penzance in the year 1774, was chosen Mayor ten different times, and in his last mayoralty mainly assisted in carrying into execution a great improvement of the town, by removing the Coinage Hall from a place adjoining the Market House, to a proper situation near the quay, permission for which the Editor had the good fortune to obtain from the Lord Warden and the Duchy Officers. Mr. Giddy died July the 26th, 1825, having nearly completed his eighty-fourth year, and having somewhat more than completed the sixtieth year of his marriage. His widow survived him about five years.
Dr. Stephen Luke was also from Penzance. He practised with much success and reputation at Falmouth, Exeter, and London, where he died on the 30th of March 1829.
Finally, I may state that the intrepid and successful Admiral Pellew, although not a native of Penzance, received his nautical education in this town.
A grammar school has long been endowed by the Corporation; and the master used formerly to hold in addition the lecturership of the chapel.
The Reverend James Parkin, afterwards Rector of Okeford in Devonshire, held both offices for a considerable time; and under his care, for about eighteen months, the Editor received the only instruction for which he is indebted to a stranger.
The school is now presided over by the Reverend Mr. Morris, M.A. from Balliol College, Oxford; and Mr. Le-Grice having resigned the lecturership, after holding it above twenty years, has been succeeded by the Reverend Mr. Vyvyan, of Trelowarren.
Penzance has become, in the last half century, a considerable resort of invalids; and much benefit has been received in pulmonary cases from the mildness and comparatively even temperature of the climate, which has been most satisfactorily established by the observations of Mr. Edward Giddy, printed in the Journal of Philosophy. For a detailed account of Penzance and of the Mount’s Bay, in a medical point of view, the reader is referred to the works of Dr. Paris, who resided some years in the town, till he left it to acquire one of the most extensive fields of practice in London.
An event occurred at Penzance in the year 1760, of a nature so curious as to be well worthy of remembrance. This country was then deeply engaged in what has since been termed the seven years’ war; and, notwithstanding the splendid successes of 1759, the nation still felt alarm from the always threatened invasion by France, and from the fear of predatory excursions, when in the night following the 29th of September the town was roused by the firing of guns, and soon after by the intelligence of a large ship of a strange appearance having run on shore on the beach towards Newlyn. Great numbers of persons crowded to the spot, where they were still more astonished and shocked by the sight of men still stranger than their vessel, each armed with a scymetar and with pistols. It was now obvious that they were Moslems; and a vague fear of Turkish ferocity, of massacre and plunder, seised the unarmed inhabitants, just awakened from their sleep in the middle of the night. A volunteer company obeyed, however, with alacrity the beat to arms, and 172 men were conducted or driven into a spacious building which then stood on the Western Green, and for some reason or other
was called the Folly. Eight men were found to be drowned. Before morning it was ascertained from themselves, by some who understood the lingua Franca, that the ship was an Algerine corsair, carrying 24 guns, from nine to six pounders, and that the Captain had steered his vessel into the Mount’s Bay, and run it against the shore under a full conviction that he was safe in the Atlantic Ocean, at about the latitude of Cadiz, thus committing an error of thirteen degrees in latitude. The instant it was known that the sailors were Algerines, a fear seized the town and neighbourhood scarcely less formidable than the other of massacre and plunder—namely, of the plague. The volunteers, however, kept watch and ward to prevent all intercourse. Intelligence was conveyed to the government, and orders are said to have been issued for troops to march from Plymouth for surrounding the whole district; but most fortunately the local authorities ascertained that no cause whatever existed for such a precaution, and the orders were countermanded.
When it was found safe to visit the strangers, curiosity attracted the whole neighbourhood. Their Asiatic dress, long beards and mustachios, with turbans, the absence of all covering from their feet and legs, the dark complexion and harsh features of a piratical band, made them objects of terror and of surprise.