Hewitt's History Files

Another tale has him remarking on a little girl in Midhurst who was crying after being beaten for having been naughty.

Blaker was firmly of the opinion that she had got what she deserved.

Blaker's world was a grim one, it seems, but it was also a fascinating one.

The man was given to writing essays, probably to record the way the world was changing, and in 1906 he brought those essays together in a book.

Now, 101 years later, Bakewell-based publisher Dick Richardson has reissued that book, and chuckles freely about the man he has brought back to life.

"I had had a copy of his book for quite a few years, and it's just such a nice book. It's very quaint in its way," Dick says. "The contents are very mixed."

Nathaniel Paine Blaker was born at Mays, in Selmeston, East Sussex, in 1835, a farm was owned by his maternal grandfather, Joseph Fuller.

His father was a farmer, a member of a family which, for 300 years, had been owners of land and agriculturists at Portslade, Kingston and Shoreham.

During Nathaniel's first year, the family moved to Perching in Edburton. He was sent to a school run by Miss Lee in Lewes when he was eight, and a year later he went to Steyning Grammar School, where he developed a love of shooting.

Leaving school at 16, he began learning farming, but after a year he asked his father to place him as a pupil at the Sussex County Hospital.

He was apprenticed for five years to the house surgeon, the last two to at Guy's Hospital, London. In 1859, he was appointed assistant surgeon to the Convict Hospital in Lewes. In 1860, he became house surgeon at Brighton and Hove Dispensary, becoming house surgeon to the Sussex County Hospital in 1864.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette May 30