Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

In Search of Enys Tregarthen: ‘The Little Cripple’ August 19, 2014

Imagine being born, in the winter of 1850, while your father is away at sea. You find yourself in a vulnerable but aspirational household, perhaps the worst nineteenth-century social gradient of them all in Britain. As you slowly emerge into consciousness you start to understand that your father, a seaman, is rarely present and by the time you are in your teens your mum is having to make ends meet as a charwoman; Dad seems to have vanished for good. Then at just around this time disaster. You are struck by some kind of degenerative disease that damages your spine. From your very early teens you are bedridden (note that some contradictory evidence places the spinal event in late teens) and you are now a ‘charity case’. Your mum has to swallow her pride and move in with her sister and a series of cousins. They play cards and knit downstairs while you look out of your bedroom window onto the brutal coast of Northern Cornwall. At least now you are in a wealthy household and your needs are tended to: and so they will be in your twenties, thirties and forties until your mother and aunt and eventually your uncle die and you move in with another cousin in your fifties, always being carried from place to place; the servants call you ‘the little cripple’. When the census-taker comes in 1901 he writes simply  ‘invalid spinal, bedridden forty years.’ You will struggle on for another twenty dying shortly after your seventieth birthday.

Not much of a life is it? But welcome to the world of Nellie Sloggett (1850-1923), a Cornish woman who dwelt for seventy years at Padstow.  Nellie (even her name lacked aesthetic punch) was condemned to physical travails and pains and what is worse, charity from her extended family. But the very little we know about her suggests that she used the few opportunities she was given and reached a world outside her bedroom in a way that would have been remarkable for a woman in full health in the late nineteenth century. She wrote, in fact, over a score of children’s books from 1885 to her death. Several works were published posthumously: I’ve tried to create a full bibliography below, the first serious effort along these lines? Nellie published her first book, as noted, in 1885, when she was 35 and she then continued to publish a book every year or every other year for a decade under the rather unimaginative name of Nellie Cornwall. She slowed down but re-emerged as an author in 1905 with a second pen-name, Enys Tregarthen. And the name change meant something. If Nellie had died in 1897 then no one would have cared: the Nellie Cornwall books are substandard Victorian children’s pulp, which can be reasonably classified as ‘cruelty to trees’. Sorry Nellie. But the Enys Tregarthen books, with their strong focus on Cornish folklore are something completely different. They are leaner and never sentimental, or only deceptively so, they also have a wit and humour: they are wonderful to read, above all, because it is so clear that their author has, at last, found her voice. These books are not just fun, though, they are also among the only serious sources for nineteenth-century Cornish folklore. Nellie, in fact, Beach drops to his knees, is the Holy Spirit of Cornish folklore next to Jesus (Robert Hunt) and the Father (William Bottrell, who still doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, we live in a Godless world!!!). So why this post? Well, it is a romantic story, ‘the little cripple’ who published with Patridge and Rebman (among others). But it is also a story that still needs to be written. So little is known about Nellie and she deserves  some biography to attach to the few books that have survived her, i.e. those on Cornish folklore, she certainly deserves more than the epithet ‘little cripple’ and how sad it is that for a picture Beach had to resort to a sketch from one of her books.

Now questions. Did she become ill when she was eleven (as one source) or when she was seventeen (as other sources)? What was the illness? When did her mother Sarah Sloggett die? Did she have contact with any other writer or for that matter person of culture? She had a cousin who taught music… What really led to the birth of Enys Tregarthen? What happened to her father? Then a crucial question. Elizabeth Yates brought out the last books (see phase three below) because she found a manuscript cache: in fact, for that alone, EY deserves to be made Chief Druid of Cornwall or whatever the Mebyon Kernow now do for their heroes. What happened to those manuscripts on EY’s death? Are they at Princeton or in an attic? They are fairy real estate, they deserve to be preserved! Can anyone help with any of these points? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

There are four phases of publication for Nellie. Will gladly put up any summary of any book as some are quite rare. On the suggestion of Bast I’ve linked these when there are three copies online.

1) As Nellie Cornwall she published in 1885 Daddy Longlegs and His White Heath Flower, Grannie Tresawna’s Story (1886), Hallvard Horlesen (1887), Twice Rescued (1888), Mad Margrete and Little Gunvald (1889), Sprattie and the Dwarf (1891), Tamsin Rosewarne and Her Burdens (1892), Little Buch’s Charge of True to Trust (1894), The Maid of the Storm (1897), Little Annie (1897), The Hill of Fire (1900), The Little Don of Oxford (1902), Little Gladwise the Story of a Waif (1909), Joyce’s Little Maid (1936 posthumous)

2) As Enys Tregarthen she published The Piskey Purse Legends and Tales of Northern Cornwall (1905); North Cornwall Fairies and Legends (1906); The House of the Sleeping Winds (1911)

3) In 1940 Elizabeth Yates edited Nellie’s work postumously and published the Piskey Folk: A Book of Cornish Legends then in (1944) The Doll Who Came Alive, then in 1949 Yates did the same with The White Ring. Note that the Piskey Folk was re-released in the 1990s as Pixie Folklore and Legends . 

4) As Sarah L. Enys Nellie edited Perpetual Calendar of Cornish Saints (1923), St Francis De Sales Every Day in the Year (1925, posthumous), Cornish Drolls compiled from Bottrell (1931 posthumous) [note the British library does not ascribe the last two to Nellkie but it seems likely?].

31 Aug 2014: First up, Lisa L. Has sorted out some of the basic records. Lisa writes ‘I had never heard of Nellie Sloggett until I read your post, but what an interesting woman she must have been! I hope you can find out more about her from your other readers. The one small way I may be able to help you in your search for more biographical information is about Sarah Sloggett’s death. I think this death record from 1894 might be that of Nellie’s mother.  This marriage record may be for Nellie’s parents.  Here’s the death record for Moses Sloggett (Nellie’s father?)  Sorry I can’t offer anything more. Good luck with your search!’ PCB writes ‘Two things: one, the Northern Cornwall book is available on Amazon for Kindle for free. The other, disability rights activist and author, Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer once told me that when she was a little girl, her father would call her, “little cripple.” He said that she would called that all her life and he wanted her to get used to the term. Her father confirmed the story and told me that it made him look like a bastard, but that he wanted her to hear it first from someone who loved her.’ Thanks to PCB and Lisa L