Snowy. Tim Harris
also told him tales of smugglers, who like poachers worked as a defiance and a necessity. His Grandfather recalled boats coming in from Holland and Germany with cargoes of spirits and silks. Large quantities of contraband were moved under the cover of darkness. In November 1829, a 39 ft galley was captured at Breydon, with a cargo of 283 half ambers of proof brandy and about 6,000 lb tobacco. November 1832 saw 5,565 lb tobacco and about 650 gallons brandy and geneva (gin) seized from a large tub-boat and lodged in the Custom House at Wells next-the Sea.
These boats were met by luggers out in the Wash and some of the contraband brought across Terrington Marshes to Marham Fen, where the goods were hidden until they could be moved on down the Green roads for dispersal. Undoubtedly, these tales must have coloured Fred’s views on breaking the law.
In 1871, Rebecca, John’s second daughter and Fred’s stepsister, left her employment at Church Farm, Pentney as she was pregnant. John George was born on 2 November 1871 in Gayton, possibly at the Workhouse. On 17 September 1872, the baby died of chronic diarrhoea and exhaustion. Hustler Shaftoe was present at his death. Another illegitimate child and another infant death, it was common at that time but nonetheless very sad.
It may be that Rebecca went home to her father and Elizabeth to have her baby because in the 1871 census they were living in Back Street, Gayton, where John’s occupation is listed as farm bailiff, although Fred recounts in I Walked by Night that his father:
worked forty year on one farm as a Labourer, and never got any higher.
There does not appear to be anyone farming in both Pentney and Gayton, so why was John there, and why, ten years later on the 1881 census, was he back in Greys Cottages, Pentney, listed as an agricultural labourer? At every census John and Elizabeth had moved, so presumably John was not in tied accommodation.
The Census Act was passed in 1800 and the first official census held on 10 March 1801. Held every ten years since, except in 1941 when World War II was taking place, it was the first recording of the English population since the Doomsday Book in 1086. The census becomes open for public perusal after 100 years.
This country had previously resisted a formal count with churchgoers believing it to be sacrilegious, quoting the terrible plague that struck in Biblical times when a census was ordered by King David.
An 1827 map of Gayton shows that the layout of the cottages and the shape of the village are surprisingly similar to how the village is now, but it is not possible to work out which cottage might have been John and Elizabeth’s, as the census does not appear to run logically. Also, as recently as 1906, half of Back Street was called Willow Lane.
Interestingly, Harrods Directory notes that in 1871 a Petty Sessions was held in the Crown Inn on the first Monday of every month. Presumably this ceased when the courthouse in Grimston, the next village, was built in 1881 – a place with which 9-year-old Fred would later become familiar. In those days, he would almost certainly have attended the school in Gayton that was built in 1851, although his name does not appear in the Minutes or Punishment Book.
Sadly, the records for Pentney School are missing for the period when Fred was there, after the family returned, but he recounts in I Walked by Night how he was always up to mischief as a child:
So one day we turned the Master out of school and locked him out. The School was maniged by two of the Farmers and the Clergyman. They came down and stood outside, and promised to lett us off and forgiv us if we would come out. We would not at first, but of cors we had to come out in the end to go home, and wen we did they began on us and we on them. We had aranged to get out by the back way, so we got to the road befor they knew that we were there. There were plenty of stones in the Road, and we verry sone shewed that we could throw them all rite.
Well the end of that was that they turned about six of the worst of us out of school for good, and forbid us to go there anymore, so that was the end of my lerning. A lot we cared as there was plenty of work for Boys in them days.
1870 saw the first legislation about school attendance. At the time, all children were forced to go school, but it was not free. The 1880 School Act compelled education until 14 unless pupils could pass the Labour certificate earlier, proving they had reached an acceptable standard of education. Sadly this meant that bright children who would have enjoyed and benefited from school left early, leaving their duller friends to struggle on until 14.
The introduction of the Act placed schoolteachers in a terrible dilemma. Farmers, who were often on the Board of Managers at the school, were keen to pay low wages because of the Agricultural Depression and this they could do to children, who were capable of stone picking, beet thinning, bird scaring, potato planting, etc. Parents were desperately poor, so they were eager for their children to work and so the schoolmaster had to allow the law to be broken. After the harvest, parents also kept the children home for gleaning (the gathering of stray ears of corn) and what they collected became an important supplement to the winter larder. Children also stayed at home to pick acorns, which they sold to the gamekeeper as feed for his pheasants. Girls particularly were kept at home to look after younger siblings while their mother had yet more, or went out to work to supplement the family income.
In I Walked by Night Fred tells of a young vicar who came to the parish and took a great interest in the village lads, organising a night school and games to keep them occupied. He himself was reluctant to go, fearing he might be preached at:
But I did go in the end and I do not think he ever gave me a word of that sort, just treated me kindly. True he wold some times talk to me for my good, and some People thought I was getten better and quieter, but I am sorry to say I was some thing like the Smugglers and the Self rightus People; I was working in the dark as much as possible.
The vicar was John Samuel Broad, MA, who took over from the Revd. St John Mitchell in 1875, when Fred would have been 13. A new man, full of zeal to win over his flock, it was with his encouragement that Fred gained a love of reading and writing.
Fred’s first job at the age of 13 was with farmer Thomas Paul, of Ashwood Lodge, Pentney, as the ‘copper hole Jack’ or ‘back’ us [back house] boy’. Paul owned 850 acres and employed twenty-six labourers and nine boys on the land. Fred’s role was to light fires, carry wood and generally run errands issued from the back door. Paul was churchwarden at Pentney for fifty-six years; his wife and daughters were regular worshippers and pillars of the community. Fred was sure he got the job (perhaps the vicar asked Paul and his family to take him under their wing?), so they could keep an eye on him, but mostly his eyes were elsewhere.
He had been poaching since the age of 9. Despite a flogging from his father when he showed him a hare that he had snared, he had caught the bug. Now he poached whenever he could, selling hares to the fish hawker, who took them through to Lynn Market that he attended twice a week.
But Fred was unable to settle to the life that many of his fellow villagers were content with, staying all their lives in the same place with one job, marrying locally and perhaps venturing to King’s Lynn only once or twice a year. He wanted excitement and soon tired of being under the watchful eyes of Farmer Paul’s spinster daughters, so he took a job as pageboy to a shepherd. This was much more to his liking, for there he could poach to his heart’s content. During times when he was not required by the shepherd, he was put to work cutting turnips and working in the fields; there he watched and listened, and perfected the art of poaching. Whether he became cocksure or careless is debatable, but inevitably the long arm of the law eventually caught up with him.
CHAPTER 3
1882 Prison
Game Trespass – Frederick Rolfe labourer, Pentney was summonsed by John Bell, Gamekeeper, Narborough with trespassing in the day time on Pentney middle common, in search of game, on 21st October. – Bell stated that he saw defendant on the common with a pair of rabbits, each of which had a snare round its neck. Some snares had been set near to where defendant was standing. Defendant threw the rabbits away upon p.c. Flint approaching him, and also ran away, but was caught by the officer. – Flint stated that at 5.45 a.m. on the day in question