Bill Johnson – The History of Bodmin Jail (New Edition: 2009)
Local History – 250 pages – my copy (hardback; 2009), a present at Xmas, 2009
- 2 nods
Local histories can produce vastly contrasting impressions on the reader: some are small, mere pamphlets based on a church; others run for meandering page after page on conflicts that remain bewildering to ninety-nine per cent of the population; and then, there are those behemoths that are heavily referenced and confusing to the very locals that live there (a preserve of the academic!). So, when opening a local history book, there is that slice of trepidation upon the Worm's fingertips.
Bill Johnson’s history on Bodmin Jail (or Gaol), a town that once stood as the capital of Cornwall, is full of wonderful facts and figures. Much painstaking research has been undertaken, as shown in the mass of tables and columns ranging from percentages of prisoners convicted for misdemeanours to the diets of prisoners in 1874. There are building plans, photographs of the cells, family trees of the prison wardens, and even a detailed drawing of the warming and ventilation system used in 1847; while the appendages are enough to make the reader either smile with joy or bring tears to his eyes, such is their thoroughness and loving attention to detail.
In the preface the author notes his academic background in chemistry and in taking up a challenge issued to him ‘that the education of British scientists was too narrow and that scientists were not able to talk or write about non-scientific issues’ (p.2). In so many ways, Johnson succeeds at going against type: his history has many positive qualities. However, facts and figures do not make a book complete; his book has too many narrative flaws and his prose is too dry to keep the reader’s eyes alive and open. Furthermore, the inconsistency of the formatting of the text annoyed the Worm as he turned page after page. Yes, such mistakes seem to be a mainstay of the local history book: however, they are mistakes that could be easily eradicated.
For the reader who wants to know about Bodmin life in the past – and indeed, Cornish life as a whole – Johnson’s history is the book for them: comprehensive and intriguing. But again, to other readers beyond the boundary of the Tamar, The History of Bodmin Jail will remain a quaint, parochial oddity with a lust for fact and figure.
