Last updated 13:46, Tuesday, 16 September 2008

TO NAME or not to name? It’s a problem I’m faced with from time to time when I’m producing this column.

Let’s take the case of John Smith (not a real person) who committed some trifling offence in his teenage years, whenever they were.

Perhaps he was had up for being drunk and disorderly, for street fighting or even smashing a shop window. And let’s say that it happened in the Fifties. Or, even further back, in the Thirties.

However long ago, is there really any need to name the individual concerned? Especially in so small a part of the world as West Cumbria.

He might nowadays be a well-respected member of society. He might, of course, be dead but there might well be children or grandchildren living in the area.

Now it could be that some of them might well be intrigued to find out what grandfather got up to in his youth.

A little bit of youthful horseplay, cycling in the dark without lights, playing pitch and toss, chucking stones at lamp posts – or some such minor social transgression.

But what if it was theft, wife-beating, running a brothel or, to employ the usual local euphemism, trespassing upon the docks?

Perhaps they wouldn’t be so keen on the idea, even though these all took place way back in the 1880s. Memories are long in this part of the world. If names were named, I suspect someone might complain.

In passing, I did come across a report of a female who was had up, some time before the Great War, for being drunk, for the umpteenth time, and “rude upon the Cloffocks”. No names. No pack drill. It’s an offence now lost in the mists of time. Dead and buried!

You would think. But that was before the age of computers and the trend to create digital, and searchable, records of many newspapers.

Big Brother will soon be able to watch you retrospectively. It’s a chilling thought.

But for the present, the identity of the “female Fagin of Workington” from 1900 will remain unknown.

A mother, lodging in a Derwent Street lodging house, had received from her 12-year-old daughter a purse, belonging to the landlady, which contained over two half sovereigns. The young girl spilled the beans in court; her mother, who was charged with knowingly receiving the money, according to the report, “preserved a stony demeanour, except when speaking. Then her utterances were somewhat Pecksniffian in tone”.

Pecksniffian? I had to look this up. My dictionary tells me that Pecksniff was a character in “Martin Chuzzlewit” – who was “an unctuous hypocrite.” I’ve not read the book, but then I’ve never cared too much for Dickens.

Anyway, the girl was dismissed and the mother fined 40 shillings – with the option of a month in prison.

Then we have the “human interest” stories, which might just distress descendants. When we read about people being found in their houses who have been dead for weeks without anyone noticing, there’s always an implied criticism of today’s lack of neighbourliness. As though it never happened in the old days. But it did, often.

Take the case of a 62-year-old bachelor who, in 1889, lived in a one roomed tenement just outside Carlisle.

He lived on his own, with his cats. He’d been seen, through the window, sitting in his chair. Days passed and he was not seen out. When a load of freshly delivered coals lay undisturbed, his neighbours grew suspicious. When they peered through his window, what they saw turned their stomachs. He was lying on his bed, obviously dead – with his three cats, perched on his chest, hungrily devouring what was left of his face.

His death was initially unnoticed. Our interest lies in the fact that such a thing could happen, even back in “the old days”. It’s a distressing tale – but would I really want to name him? For the reasons I’ve given above, I don’t think so.

If he was your great-grandfather, would you want him named?