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A Shot that Failed

from Porter Songs by Rusts

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  • Porter Songs: LTD Edition CD 1 of 50
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    Limited Edition of 50 (25 remaining), Hand-made CD recording of Porter Songs 1: Shepherd Wheel to Forge Dam. In a lovely recycled card case and hand numbered.

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about

I first came across the name Maxfield when reading in ‘Water Power on the Sheffield Rivers’ that a Herbert Maxfield, ‘Showman’, is listed as running Forge Dam as a tea gardens with boating and skating. By Maxfield’s time In the late 19th Century, the wheels had long since stopped turning. Water power was largely obsolete, and industry had moved to more accessible areas of Sheffield. The sound of the heavy tilt forge hammers dropping were replaced by the soft lilt of music.

Maxfield appeared to be an interesting character. After a little digging in the newspaper archives you see a man of his name and age cropping up in a few sticky situations over the years. First, in 1869, a thirty year old Maxfield is up in court, accused of receiving stolen goods taken from his employer Spear and Jackson - anvils and steel. They were apparently discovered in his house in Middlewood. He was acquitted of the charge, but it was clearly enough to see him leave the town.

Decades later, he appears in reports on the town Brewster sessions, where he is applying for a ‘Beer On’ license for the Whiteley Wood Tea Gardens. He is described as a self-made man who recently returned from time in America to set up in business in Fulwood.












He is refused his application for drink and dancing not once, but three times – in September and October 1888 and 1896. Clearly, owing to a local petition brought by a Mr Clegg with 180 signatures, he was up against some influential opposition. “The collection there of people brought by the special attraction of public music and dancing. Is sure to be productive of evil.”
I’m told that Sheffield, and Fulwood in particular, did have a very active Temperance movement at that time.

Maxfield crops up again in 1907 in a peculiar report in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph where he and a friend apparently see an eagle flying over Fulwood, the metaphorical inspiration for the final song in the collection.

The final straw for Herbert was probably when, in 1915 (he would have been 75) it is reported in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph that he was again in court accused of attempting to poison his neighbours’ hens. The astonishing article was entitled ‘The Curious Case of the Fulwood hen Poisoning’ which I think justifies the trending of the new ‘hashtag’ #onlyinfulwood.

lyrics

He came to Forge Dam a self-made man
Reinvented after a fashion.
Once more the whispers began.
Eyed with suspicion,
met with petition.
A shot that failed
A chance that missed
A lie unveiled a life dismissed
Short of the mark, coming apart before falling.
If ‘not guilty’ was not enough
In trial what verdict would they like to give?
I took no anvil, nor steel, nor file.
There’s nothing I should forgive.

In all his 75 years
He’s struggled to survive
How can he prove his worth, while all Fulwood connive?

Three times applied, each time denied
Where’s the harm in indulging in a while
Music, drink and dancing, by the waterside
What is there to revile?

A shot that failed
A chance that missed
A lie unveiled a life dismissed
Short of the mark, coming apart before falling.

credits

from Porter Songs, released June 21, 2015

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Rusts Sheffield, UK

Rusts is a Sheffield-based musical entity, creating homespun homages to people, places and the past.

A new album of songs by 19th Century Sheffield optician Edward Darbyshire will be released and toured in Spring 2018.

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