—W. B. asks the meaning of the word stoke in the names of places; as Bishopstoke, Ulverstoke, &c. (Ulverstoke being, I presume, a miscopying or misprint of Alverstoke). I cannot at all concur in the derivation you quote from Bosworth, from stoc, "a place;" for then every place might be called stoke without distinction. But in all the stokes that I remember in England there is always and actually a kind of stockade or sluice, which dams up some watercourse to a certain level. Whether this explanation will apply to the local circumstances of all the stokes, I know not; but it certainly does to the cases of Bishopstoke and Alverstoke, and of at least half a dozen other stokes within my own observation.
C.
Eliza Fenning (Vol. v., p. 105.).
—Eliza Fenning was a maid servant convicted and executed for poisoning her master's family. I happened to be very intimate with some charitable and distinguished persons who had doubts of her guilt. I myself did not partake those doubts, but I assisted my friends in their benevolent inquiries, and was so frequently in communication with them both at the time, and long after, that I think I may venture to say that there can be no foundation for the statement that another person had confessed to the crime for which she suffered.
C.
On or about Christmas Day, 1833, there may be found in The Times newspaper a notice of the death of a man, who, after leading a dissolute life, ended his days in the workhouse of some town either in Suffolk or Essex. On his death-bed he confessed that he was the brother of the law-stationer, and that he had put the poison into the pudding, by the eating of which his brother and family died, and for which crime Eliza Fenning had suffered innocently.
F. HH.
With reference to the inquirer respecting Elizabeth Fenning, I would remark, that I well remember that it was inserted in a provincial paper, many years ago, that Turner, in whose family the poisoning took place, had confessed before his death that he himself was the guilty person. My impression is, that it was inserted in an Ipswich newspaper. There was great excitement in London at the time of Eliza Fenning's execution, and the house of Turner had to be protected from the fury of the populace. Mr. Hone had several pamphlets at his shop window on the circumstance. I have heard Mr. Richard Taylor say she was the last person condemned by Sir John Sylvester.
X. Y. Z.