Fair Game
There was plenty of fresh meat available in the Duke’s Market Hall, but if you couldn’t afford it, or fancied something different, there was plenty of game in the fields around. You didn’t need a gun, or even a dog; if you had a net, and a ferret, in a bag stuffed down your trouser pocket, you could take rabbits.
However the Duke, then from 1852 his second son Lord Howard, owned the rights to the game, and employed a small army of keepers to protect it. This was not just because of its value to himself or his tenant farmers; as his agent, Francis Hawke, explained to the magistrates in 1861, poachers caused damage. “What with trespasses in the woods and destruction of the young trees, and taking game, the estate is suffering most materially, and it is really time something should be done.”
What could be done, though, was limited by the size of fines, which could easily be recouped through back-door sales, so poaching was a viable business and the result was a war of attrition in which poachers, keepers and magistrates got to know one another very well. The poachers often went mob-handed – in October 1867 Matthew Cooper told the bench that he had challenged four men at Gamesley, one of whom had a bag in his pocket “and he perceived something scratching at the top of the pocket which he thought was a ferret” but “I did not search them, as I thought four to one were rather too many.” Their Worships convicted them anyway.
Sometimes there was violence. In August 1887 John Fletcher, waller of Chunal, “an old poacher against whom there are previous convictions”, threw a large stone at a keeper, “which struck him on the head and caused a wound 2 ½ inches long.” He then ran away, “but was subsequently captured with two rabbits, a quantity of netting, and other poaching requirements in his possession.”
He got 4 months hard labour, but was back in court at the Town Hall 12 years later having been “seen by two keepers trespassing and had a lurcher dog with him”. The prosecution “pressed for a heavy penalty as there were six previous convictions” but the bench could only impose the maximum of £2 for “being in pursuit of game”.
Lord Howard also had to protect his grouse, the shoots being a valuable source of income to the estate and also the reason why his extended family, including the Duke, descended on him every August, forcing him to build an enormous and ruinously expensive house. In October 1878 a keeper claimed that he had seen Henry Hardman of Hurst, former chemist in the Town Hall Buildings but now freehold “gentleman farmer”, shoot a grouse from his own land then jump over the wall onto His Lordship’s moor to retrieve it.
Mr Hardman’s defence was that the bird was “fair game” as when he fired, it was actually over his land, and therefore “he had a perfect right to possess the game, because the birds were the property of those over whose land they flew, and the breeder had not an exclusive right in them.” The bench, who were more likely to have been friends of Mr Hardman than of Lord Howard, gave him the benefit of the doubt.
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