Scrambling for biscuits at Trinity House, Deptford

57 days after Easter · Deptford, Kent

No longer kept

Kent

On Trinity Monday the master and brethren of Trinity House met at their Deptford hospital to elect their officers, and afterwards threw biscuits among the crowd. In 1825 Hone found the hall floor strewn with green rushes in the old manner; once Lord Liverpool had been chosen master, the brethren threw basket after basket of biscuits into the hall amid a general scramble. A fair had grown up at Deptford on the same day from the jingling matches and shows put on for the people who came to watch.

Lord Liverpool then rose, and throwing a biscuit into the middle of the hall, his example was followed by the rest of the brethren. Shouts of laughter arose, and a general scramble took place.

From Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. 1, cols. 724-726. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

The Lough Derg pilgrimage Still kept UlsterChambers tells the medieval legend of St Patrick's Purgatory, a cave on an island in Lough Derg where the knight Owen was said to have passed through the pains of purgatory and returned.
The clipping in St John’s Vale No longer kept CumberlandA Table Book reader who had lived four years near Keswick described the Cumberland clipping, or sheep-shearing.
The Lady of the Lamb at Kidlington No longer kept OxfordshireOn the Monday after Whitsun week the maidens of Kidlington, their thumbs tied behind them, chased a fat lamb, and the girl who caught it with her mouth became Lady of the Lamb.
The ministers’ whitebait dinner No longer kept KentNear the close of each parliamentary session the Cabinet dined together on whitebait at Greenwich, usually soon after Trinity Monday.

Scrambling for biscuits at Trinity House, Deptford

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