Local inventor Durwood ‘Doc’ Pigeon may be no stranger to these pages (Observer, May 3), but few now remember his
once-celebrated great-grandfather Hieronymous.
Born in 1857 to George, a purblind bone setter, and his wife Cora,
Hieronymous Pigeon was the fourth of five children. A weak and sickly boy, his
parents took the decision to educate him at home rather than send him to
boarding school. He grew into an intelligent and inquisitive child, devising
gadgets as varied as the cantilevered tea caddy, the self-winching corset and
the oscillating blackhead extractor by the time he was nine years old.
Hieronymous won a scholarship to study structural engineering at Keble
College, Oxford, but was sent down in April 1876, following a scandal involving
a local barmaid, an anvil, a quantity of damson jam and two dozen live whelks.
Back in the parental home, the disgraced former student became a virtual
recluse, emerging from his room only to eat or to perform experiments on the
family goldfish. However, it was during this period that Hieronymous was to build
the invention that made – and ultimately, ruined – him.
Had you peered through the window of Abercrombie and Sons of Froghill in
early December 1876, you would have beheld a Christmas cake, the like of which
had never been seen before. Flawlessly decorated, it boasted a log cabin, a
spruce tree, two children riding a sled and the words ‘Yuletide Blessings’, piped
across the top in flowing pink script. The cake inside was ordinary enough – it
was the finely crafted iced decoration that made it the toast of the season.
The
festive delicacy was purchased by industrialist Josiah Catchpenny, who would go
on to take a keen interest in its reclusive young creator.
Under Catchpenny’s watchful eye, Hieronymous took his first steps into the
manufacturing business. Success followed success and, before the decade was
out, his Patented Steam-Powered Cake Icer was not only selling faster than hot
cakes, it was decorating them too. No self-respecting Victorian home was complete
without one and orders flooded in from all corners of the Empire. From Calcutta
to Kirkcaldy, from Lagos to Leicester, if it was an icer, it had to be a
Pigeon.
By 1892, Hieronymous had become an eminent and wealthy man in his own
right. He married local debutante Effie Stringfellow and the couple had two
sons, Alonzo and Orville. Unanimously elected Executive Director of the
Froghill Chamber of Commerce, he was awarded the OBE in that year’s birthday
honours and granted the freedom of the City of London soon after.
Yet just when
it seemed that Hieronymous Pigeon had ascended to the very pinnacle of success,
Fate was to step in and deal him a cruel blow.
In February, 1893, a trainee pastrycook in Harrogate lost an eye, both
ears, five teeth and her reputation after a cake icer malfunctioned. The national
press got wind of the story and whipped up a perfect storm of outrage. Cake
icers were denounced from every pulpit and Heironymous hanged in effigy on
street corners up and down the country.
Orders dwindled to nothing and his licence to manufacture was revoked. He was dismissed
from the Chamber of Commerce and stripped of his OBE. With his income drying up
and his name dragged through the mud, Hieronymous was left with no option but to
file for bankruptcy.
In the spring of 1894, his beloved Effie left him, taking both their sons
with her.
Shunned and alone, Hieronymous fled Froghill, eventually taking a room on
the top floor of a boarding house in St. Leonards-on-Sea. It was here, on the
26th of October, 1894, that he was found dead by his landlady. By the side of a
rubber tube leading from the body to the gas tap was a lavishly decorated cake.
In shaky but legible curlicue across the top, the iced inscription read:
I took on Fate and tried to beat it
But ambition became my death knell
I strove to have my cake and to eat it
But the icing was not enticing – so farewell
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