By Sir Charles HobJwuse, Bart. 



215 



" Some gentlemen shooting- in a wood near Kingsdown found a 

 man l} T mg motionless. Finding some symptoms of life in him they 

 had him conveyed to an house. His name is John Lockyer, and he 

 is well known in Bath. Being on his way home on Tuesday evening, 

 the 19th of August, during the tremendous thunderstorm, he was 

 struck senseless by lightning. How long he remained in that state 

 he has no conception, but, on recovering his recollection, he was 

 incapable of standing. 



" That a human being should exist 20 days without any sub- 

 sistence but the little rain water he was able to catch in his shaving 

 cup and by chewing the surrounding grass, will appear incredible, 

 but it is a fact, and will be clearly substantiated. His senses would 

 appear to have recovered much sooner than his power of speech or 

 the use of his limbs. He was conscious of his situation before he 

 had the ability to speak or move. 



" The medical men who attend him expect he will recover the 

 partial use of his limbs. The following are the memoranda he 

 minuted on the slate leaves of a black letter case, and which book 

 is bent and cockled up, evidently appearing to have been soaked 

 through by the wet. 



" 1 1 am just able to pencil this. I believe the fatal thunderstorm 

 (to me) was on the 18th of August. [It was on the 19th.] I 

 should not have known how the time went on only by hearing the 

 guns go off for the Partridge shooting Sept. 1st, and it is now the 

 4th I am pencilling this — from the above time until now I have 

 not had anything to put into my mouth/ 



" On another leaf he had written on the day he was found : — c As 



I was going across the wood to Farleigh I was struck down 



by a violent clap of thunder — where I lay senseless for God knows 

 how long. When ( I came to myself my hands and my feet were 

 swelled very much, so that I could not stand, nor have I eat or drank 

 any thing for three weeks past/ He has since undergone the am- 

 putation of one of his feet." 



This is the account in the magazine, and to this I may add that 

 Tom Sweetland tells me that his father used often to talk of the 

 occurrence, that it happened in Ashley Wood, that he saw Lockyer 



