Leicestershire, May 1829: The crimes of horse, cattle and sheep-stealing having greatly increased…

How, in the days before a national police service, did communities like Shearsby in the early nineteenth-century respond to the threat of crime? One answer was to encourage mutual support through associations for the conviction of felons.

In May 1829 both Job and William Walker, of Shearsby, signed up to become founder members of the Leicestershire General Association for the Prosecution of Horse, Cattle and Sheep-Stealers. This organisation had been established as the “crimes of horse, cattle and sheep-stealing having greatly increased within the County of Leicester, and which the partial associations of small districts have proved inadequate to check, it has been thought that a general Association extending over the whole county, would, by providing a more effective means to detect offenders, materially tend to diminish the offences”.

Having decided to form this association, the organisers were keen to use the Social Media of the day; regional and local newspapers. Notices were placed in the Leicester Herald and Leicester Chronicle newspapers in the early Summer of 1829 that not only alerted the public to the existence of this association, but also highlighted an element of celebrity endorsement by listing the names of those members of the nobility and gentry already persuaded to sign up.

These included the Marquis of Hastings, Earl of Denbigh, Earl Howe and Lord Southampton; one Bart., twenty-four Esquires and a number of lesser ‘misters’. There were a number of people named as associated with places, like the Walkers of Shearsby. These seemed to form a network of South Leicestershire farmers, including R. Oldacres and J. Stevens of Arnesby, William Higgs of Mowesley; F. Breedon and J. Knight of Saddington; W. Hobill and J. Waldram of Bruntingthorpe; W. Hall and W. Wayte of Great Peatling among others.

There was, at this time, no national or even local police service covering the county. Prosecutions, such as that against the unfortunate Peberdy, had to be arranged and funded privately. It was also left to the Ross family themselves to raise a reward and appeal for information on the whereabouts of their absconding son George, who is presumed to have funded his plans to emigrate to America without the knowledge of his parents and employers.

Example of voluntarism and neighbourliness can be seen in the alert issued to readers of local newspapers about the impostor claiming to be the father of triplets.

References

The Leicester Chronicle: or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (Leicester, England), Saturday, May 30, 1829

Leicester Herald (Leicester, England), Wednesday, June 3, 1829

Koyama, M. (2012) “Prosecution Associations in Industrial Revolution England: Private Providers of Public Goods?”, The Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 95-130.

Koyama, M. (2014) “The law & economics of private prosecutions in industrial revolution England”, Public Choice, vol. 159, no. 1, pp. 277-298.

“England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” database, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JWZY-4JT : 11 February 2018, Job Walker, 03 Mar 1782); citing SHEARSBY,LEICESTER,ENGLAND, index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 585,287.

Shearsby, 14 April 1845: Mr Blockley leaves the farm

An auction was held at Thomas Blockley’s farm premises in Shearsby on 14 April 1845. The reason given for the sale was that Blockley was leaving the farm. The lists of lots for sale give an idea of the style of agriculture being practised in the parish in the mid-nineteenth century and the material conditions of farming life. They included:

• 40 ewes and lambs
• 55 lambhogs: 2nd year lambs
• 4 shearhogs: lamb between first and second shearing
• 1 dairy cow
• 1 superior in-calved cow
• 2 young cows (heifers), expecting their first calves
• 2 sturk heifers: one to two years old
• 5 2-year old steers: Defined by Baker (1854) as “a bullock, after it is one year old, till it enters its fourth year, when it is termed an ox”.
• 3 yearling calves
• 2 7-year old cart horses
• 1 5-year old superior harness horse
• 1 hackney mare
• 1 foal, sired by Mundig
• 2 pigs
• 2 4 1/2 inch carts
• Ploughs, harrows, horse tackle, etc.
• 60 acres of grass-keeping rented until the 10th October

There is a mix here of sheep for grazing and other animal to support domestic consumption. The foal “by Mundig” (a horse well known in fox-hunting circles) may be an indicator of the social pursuits of its owner.

There were no members of the Blockley family present in the village when the 1841 Census was taken. They may have arrived since that date or merely been visiting elsewhere at the time. Although the sale may have brought an end to Thomas Blockley’s time on that farm, he was still living in Shearsby in the following year, 1846. At least “Thomas Blockley, Shearsby” was called up as one of the jurors in a criminal case on Tuesday 7th April when the Rev. Edward Bullivant was one of the defendants.

One William Blockley, born in nearby Bruntingthorpe in 1830, would have been a teenager at the time of this move. He married Elizabeth Bottrell, 4 years his younger and from Shearsby, in August 1851. They brought up a family in Bruntingthorpe.

References

“Valuable live and dead stock”. The Leicester Chronicle: or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (Leicester, England), Saturday, April 05, 1845; pg. [1]

“Easter County Sessions”. The Leicester Chronicle: or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (Leicester, England), Saturday, April 11, 1846; Issue 1845.

Baker, Anne Elizabeth (1854) Glossary of Northamptonshire words and phrases · 1st edition, London: J.R. Smith

 

Featured image: taken from page 415 of ‘Angol-Skóthoni napló 1858 és 1859 évekről‘

Shearsby, 9 July 1844: Petticoat crimewave

Both Susannah Goode and Susannah Geary had found their petticoats stolen from their Tuesday washing lines, while neighbour Richard Highton (47), a wheelwright living on High Street, discovered the loss of a pan, a ladle and two stockings. These thefts were traced to one George Sutton (35). At the Leicestershire Midsummer Assizes the following month, George, having pleaded guilty, was sentenced to four months hard labour.

Susannah Goode lived with her family on Back Street. She had been born in High Cross in Leicester in 1823. This was the same family who had taken in the homeless boy, Emanuel Read. Later that year, on 3 November at the village church,  she married 24-year old Shearsby farmer James Williams.

Susannah Geary also lived on High Street and was in her late sixties. In the 1841 Census she was recorded as living alone but ‘independent’. The year  after these thefts she died and was buried in the churchyard on 26 May. She had, perhaps, been born Susannah Blackwell in June 1774 to parents Jonathan and Hannah. The notice of her death in the newspapers recorded that she was the widow of the late J. Geary, Gent.  of Higham, in Northamptonshire.

Ann Heighton, Richard’s wife, also had Northamptonshire connections as she had been born in Cottingham in 1793. Richard was 5 years younger and born in Shearsby. He described himself as a wheelwright in 1841 and carpenter 10 years later, when he lived in School Square with his son George, aged 20 and also a carpenter. Two older brothers Richard and William were not present for the 1851 census having been earlier apprenticed to their father. A young girl, Elizabeth Heighton, born in 1847, was staying with her grandfather Robert Chance, a grazier of Hill Street in 1851.

The perpetrator, George Sutton, from the evidence of the 1841 and 1851 censuses, seems not to have had strong Shearsby connections, there being no-one of this surname in the village on those occasions.

The Leicester Chronicle: or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (Leicester, England), Saturday, August 10, 1844; pg. [1]

The Leicester Chronicle: or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (Leicester, England), Saturday, June 07, 1845;