Farewell To Shields

[Scylax]

I've 'Googled' unsuccessfully to find a transcript of this poem by Hookey Walker.
The author was a past editor of the Shields Gazette, and the poem was written in, I think, 1852. Can anyone help, please ?

[plowter]

Oof! He'll never get a job with the tourist board, will he?

Farewell to Shields, the filthiest place
The coal hole of the British nation,
The fag end of the whole creation,
The jakes of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
The banquet house of dogs and swine,
The paradise of bugs and fleas,
And human vermin worse than these;
A mass of houses – not a town,-
On heaps of cinders squatted down,
Close to the river’s oozy edge,
Like moulting hens behind a hedge;

Try South Shields Museum - they seem to have an exhibit in their 'Changing Faces' exhibition with a transcript.

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/south-shields/visiting-us/access-information.html

Would love to read the full poem.

[Scylax]

You're magic, Plowter. My gratitude. So far as i remember, the 2nd. line is:
'On all Northumberland's dirty face'.
and following 'On heaps of cinders squatted down,
Streets ,, if the name can be applied,
To dingy lanes not 10 feet wide.
Bordered by wretched tenements,
Let to poor devils at high rents.
Houses on dean- and- chapter land


Which if not close-packed would not stand.

The rest is missing, but the poem ends:
Since Sodom and Gomorrah fel,
With blasts from heaven and fire from Hell,
Satan, with all the skill he wields
Has found no counterpart for Shields.

'Farewell to Shields, I shout again,
A long and glad farewell. Amen.
I never liked the place,
Nor did the place like me,
But God forbid that I bear false witness.
I've spoken the truth, and here attest it '

I will come come back to you, Plowter, with a transcript of the whole poem
as soon as I get it.

Incidentally, Hookey Walker didn't have to face the wrath of the denizens of Shields, as he wrote it on a ship bound for Australia, in 1852.

[Scylax]

Plowter, you are quite right. I e-mailed South Shields museum and the Asst. Curator was most obliging. By return he sent me a transcript, though it is an abridged version. Luckily, my memory supplied the missing stanzas. I'm sure you would be successful if you contacted the museum yourself.