Departures of note

James Guidney, known as Jemmy the Rock Man, spent his later years as a street pedlar in Birmingham, selling medicated toffee advertised as 'good for cough or cold'. His life story, published anonymously as 'Some particulars of the life and adventures of James Guidney', claimed he captured a mermaid and that a lamb had assumed human form to instruct him to grow a beard. The biography, written from his own account, contained many demonstrably incorrect dates, but it ran to at least four editions.

Born in Norwich in 1779 or 1782, Guidney received five years of part-time education and worked as an errand boy before joining the 48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment in 1797 as a drummer boy. He served in Gibraltar and then Malta, where he lost his right eye to ophthalmia. Around 1809 he transferred to the First Royal Veteran Battalion, claiming to have eventually been promoted to 'Sergeant and Drum Major to the Battalion'.

Several artists painted Guidney, including a watercolour portrait by John Church Dempsey, now in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and three oil paintings and a watercolour in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The museum also holds a silver-plated relief and the tin from which he sold his toffee. Guidney died on 28 September 1866 and is buried in Birmingham's Witton Cemetery.