A notebook kept at the town weighbridge, by Cornelius Fairclough

An original notebook written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this notebook, kept in 1876, the keeper of a market town’s public weighbridge, where loaded carts were weighed so that goods could be sold fairly by weight, records a week’s work.

Monday, 6th March. Fifty-three carts over the machine today, which is the most on a market day since I took the keeping of it. The charge is twopence a load, and a printed ticket goes with every cart, so that a buyer may know he is paying for coal and not for the cart. Took eight shillings and tenpence and wrote every load in the book.

Tuesday. Mr Gotobed’s hay came over at seventeen hundredweight, which is one more than such a load ought to be. I asked him to stand away from the cart while I weighed it again, and out from under the hay crawled his boy Dunstan, who had been lying flat in it the whole way from the farm. The load came out at sixteen. Mr Gotobed said the boy must have fallen asleep there. I wrote both weights in the book.

Wednesday. Weighed the new fire engine for the Town Board. The makers swore it was under two tons. It is not.

Friday. A widow brought her donkey to be weighed before she sells it, and would not believe the figure until I had weighed it twice. I charged her nothing. Mr Gotobed came by at dusk and asked, very civil, whether I meant to mention Tuesday to the Board. I told him the book would speak for itself, and so it shall.

(a) How much did the writer charge to weigh a load? (b) Who was found hidden in Mr Gotobed’s hay? (c) What does the writer’s reply to Mr Gotobed on Friday suggest about him?