Humphry Davy got drunk on St Michael’s Mount, fished in the gutters of Market Jew Street and wrote love letters on demand for friends. He stood outside the Star Inn of an evening, regaling his mates with improbable tales of exotic lands. Later, he came home from London, dazed and confused, after ‘overdoing it a bit’ with the toxic gases and demanded TLC and marinated pilchards from Mother. 

If Penzance’s most famous son is beginning to seem less like his imperious statue on Market Jew Street and more like a living, sweating, gifted and possibly difficult young man – all to the good. Because in the following article, we will throw some light on the man behind the myth by looking at Penzance places associated with the eminent Georgian scientist.

And make no mistake about it – Penzance’s most famous son was a great man. But as a statue will rarely reveal, he was a man, after all.

4 The Terrace, Market Jew Street

Looking up Market Jew Street, the site is on the Terrace just below the Humphry Davy statue.

It all started here. The national hero who created the life-saving Davy lamp, isolated several elements, invented electrochemistry, experimented with nitrous oxide, became president of the Royal Society and quite possibly proofread Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads was born at five o’clock in the morning on 17 December 1778 at No 4, The Terrace (now Market Jew Street). The house no longer stands, but a small plaque marks the spot, on the Terrace very close to the Humphry Davy statue.

Grace Davy, Davy’s mother, was the daughter of a local shopkeeper. His father inherited the lease on Varfell Farm, to the south of Ludgvan. Not rich, not poor, the family was probably somewhere in between. From around the age of six, Davy lived at Varfell Farm for several years, although later moved back into town.

A bit more about Davy’s environment. The Penzance of his childhood was not a shining light of eighteenth century market towns, by any means. At least it wasn’t according to his brother, John. Here’s what he had to say, no doubt holding his nose. Penzance, he remarked, was characterised by ‘an almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous … Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science … Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in.’

Some Davy observers suggest this commentary may have been cooked up a bit, to provide some rags-to-riches embellishment to his story.

Penhale House  

Going down Queen Street, near the bottom on the right-hand side.

This house in Queen Street was once the site of a grammar school attended by Davy. He was, by all accounts, not Penzance’s anointed one after all, but a very naughty boy. The Rev George Coryton is said to have beaten Davy’s hands to the tune of the following rhyme:

Now Master Davy

Now Sir I have ’ee

No-one shall save ‘ee

Good Master Davy

You probably had to witness the beating to really appreciate the metre.

Coryton was also a fan of ear twisting and, on one occasion, Davy played a joke by turning up at school with his ears covered in plasters, ‘to prevent mortification’. Hardly a showstopping gag, but you can understand his frustration.

Coryton himself was criticised by the Davy family as unfit for his office, but the consensus was that Davy was not much cop as a pupil. One commentator said, ‘I could not discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished.’ Davy himself wrote years later, ‘Learning naturally is a true pleasure; how unfortunate then it is that in most schools it is made a pain.’

And no wonder he said this. It all reeks of that deranged ‘How can you have your pudding…’ bullying episode from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

The Star Inn

Looking up Market Jew Street, on the left, directly opposite Humphry Davy Statue.

In his adult life, Davy beguiled the cream of Georgian England with his scientific lectures at the Royal Society. Said one observer, ‘The intellectuals, socialites and aristocrats of London flocked in droves in the early decades of the nineteenth century to his lectures at the Royal Institution. Such was the congestion caused by the numerous carriages that entered Albemarle Street in the heart of Mayfair… that it became the first one-way street in the metropolis.’

It’s delightful to think that his skills in oratory that so dazzled the nation were developed outside the Star Inn pub in Penzance, under a long-gone balcony. Davy said he was ‘seized by the desire to narrate’ and a town guidebook of 1845 noted that he had ‘often met his young companions [here] to recount those romantic and marvellous stories, in which when a boy he delighted, and these were so agreeable to his playfellows that he rarely lacked an audience.’

The spot is right opposite the Humphry Davy statue, where Penzance folk can still be found telling tall tales from time to time, some of whom – who knows? – may one day become scientists of international repute.

The Apothecary Shop

Looking up Market Jew Street, on the left, opposite Humphry Davy Statue and into New Street.

Says Michael Sagar-Fenton in his Penzance: The Biography, ‘[…] following his father’s death, he was apprenticed to Mr Bingham Borlase, an apothecary and surgeon, whose premises still stand at the top of New Street, narrowing the road past the market house.’

Again, this spot is, fittingly, very close to Humphry Davy Statue and some nice signage commemorates Davy’s time here. During this period, he began conducting the kind of dangerous and annoying experiments that would probably result in a visit to a young offenders’ institution today. His sister complained he was destroying her dresses. A friend said the ‘incorrigible’ Davy would eventually ‘blow us all into the air’.

Maybe Rev George Coryton was on to something after all…

Union Hotel, Chapel Street

Part way down historic Chapel Street on the left-hand side.

Like many Cornish émigrés, during his career Davy looked back with fond nostalgia at his home town but didn’t visit nearly enough. On one occasion, at the height of his fame, he did visit for a celebratory event in his honour.

The location, inevitably, was the Union Hotel, that lovely historic establishment in Chapel Street that has a Forrest Gump-ish prominence in so much Penzance history. On 27 December 1821, the cream of Penzance society trooped into the hotel where a sumptuous dinner was had and speeches and toasts proclaimed to the town’s greatest son.

As recounted in Linda Camidge’s Histories of Penzance: Landmarks and Legends, this dignified event was followed by a bit of a kerfuffle on his leaving Penzance a few days later. He’d left his dressing gown and stock of gunpowder behind (haven’t we all done that) and, naturally, blamed the servant (haven’t we all done that too).

It’s these lovely details about Davy that can remind us he’s more than a statue, but also a man who forgot his stuff.

Humphry Davy Statue

Market Jew Street. You can’t miss it.

Before turning to the Humphry Davy statue, cast your eyes up to one of Penzance’s highest points – Lescudjack Hill Fort, in the north east corner of the town. It was here that in the early 1860s a rather grand monument was planned for Davy: a memorial tower that would have included an observatory. The idea was that people would see the tower for miles around. Only they didn’t, because the plan was scuppered – probably by some sub-committee or other. (By the way, go and see the memorial that isn’t there – the views over Penzance are fantastic.)

Several years later, on 17 October 1872, the marble statue of Humphry Davy we all know and love was unveiled at the top of Market Jew Street. It was created by sculptors W & T Wills of London, and Davy is depicted carrying his miners’ lamp. Is it accurate? By all accounts, Davy was a proud and serious man, and there’s plenty of that in the statue. He was also fun-loving, irreverent and rather naughty at times, as we hope this article shows, and the statue also evokes that when there’s a seagull on his head.

A final detail. You’ll notice there’s a button missing on Davy’s waistcoat. According to Linda Camidge, it is often said this is a coded reference to a facial imperfection, something unlikely to have been depicted in a celebratory statue at the time. Is this true? Well, certainly Davy injured himself in a laboratory accident with nitrogen trichloride. He said, ‘It is not safe to experiment upon a globule larger than a pin’s head. I have been severely wounded by a piece scarcely bigger. My sight, however, I am informed, will not be injured.’

An intriguing detail, don’t you think?