For the search for strawberry-related items in the Hampshire Chronicle I had to take out a subscription for the British Newspaper Archive (BNA). In the BNA you can, for example, pick a time frame of fifty years at a time (1750-1799) and then make a new filter for for just ten years (1800-1809). Whereas it was possible to use the 'find' function in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to locate words like 'strawberry' in downloaded pdf files from 17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection, BNA retains some kind of coding that makes it impossible to use the 'find' function in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. This means that looking over all one's downloaded BNA pdf files to locate an article containing the desired word takes an extra long time.

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I have supplied the web pages for the Bath newspapers and the Hampshire Chronicle with many examples. As this is very time consuming, this work will not be carried out for the other newspapers unless the example shows something remarkable.

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Please find the overview of the hits found while searching in the Hampshire Chronicle in BNA at the bottom of this web page.

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The Results

There are twenty-five results of which seven are concerned with horses; five of them deal with racing results and Mr Stacy’s four-year-old horse 'Strawberry' and are all from 1787; the last two are advertisements of loss describing horses which have either been stolen or strayed, and they are from 1782 and 1805 respectively. 'Stacy' is spelt differently from advertisement to advertisement.

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Six of the hits concern gardening, nurseries, advice on how to cultivate strawberries, prices of strawberries in England and abroad and even a patent for a new construction of the frames used in forcing cucumbers and strawberries etc. The advertisement addressed to the Curious in Fruit can also be found in other newspapers; see the examples for the Bath papers.

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Of all the twenty-five hits in the Hampshire Chronicle, the most interesting advertisement is found on Monday 09 April 1810; the newspaper

carried an article about Mr Knight, who describes in a report to the Horticultural Society an improved method of cultivating the Alpine Strawberry. Mr Knight concludes 'that this strawberry oaght [sic] always to be treated an annual plant.’[i] As there are no existing letters from Austen in 1810, it is not possible to know for certain if she was in Hampshire in April 1810. We know that she was living in Chawton from 1809 and as Chawton is situated in Hampshire, the chances are that she would have seen this newspaper and perhaps remembered it four years later.

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The next group consists of five related to Art and entertainment; there are two similar advertisement for 'The Housekeeper s [sic] Assistant, and Necessary Companion in the different Uses that Fruit, Flowers, Herbs &c. the Growth of this Kingdom, may be put to, such as [...] the Method of making Marmalades, Jellies, Conserves, &c. &c. particularly of the [...] Raisin, Strawberry, &c. &c. &c. Printed for R. Snagg, at No. 29, Pater-noster-Row, and sold by all the Booksellers. It is sewed in Marble Paper.'

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Of the last three advertisements, two relate to addresses at Strawberry-Hill, and the last is a poem or a tale of moral in which a Rose, which admires the beautiful strawberry, suggests that the strawberry should grow from the shade into the sun. However, the wise strawberry understands that there is safety in being anonymous and hidden.

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The last group contains hits in which strawberries are detected and made ready for eating; there are also stories of strawberries actually being consumed. None of the situations resembles the strawberry scene in Emma. 

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All in all, the best hit deriving from the Hampshire Chronicle is the advertisement combining 'Mr Knight' with the growing of strawberries.

 

[i] ‘Mr Knight Describes in a Report to the Horticultural Society an Improved Method of Cultivating the Alpine Strawberry’, 3.