King of the Norfolk Poachers, The: His Life and Times E-Book

Charlotte Paton

• Herausgeber: Old Pond Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Seitenzahl: 388

Beschreibung

In the early 1930s an elderly mole catcher became the subject of one of East Anglia's best-loved tales of country life: "I Walked by Night". Over sixty years later, Norfolk writer Charlotte Paton became fascinated by this man and set out to find the truth about him, beginning with his name: Frederick Rolfe. Charlotte conducted exhaustive research provide a vibrant account with plenty of social history. This book is the biography of a difficult man who could inspire devotion but came to a tragic end.

Leseprobe

The King of the Norfolk PoachersHis Life & Times

A Biography of the AuthorofI Walked by Night

The King of the Norfolk PoachersHis Life and Times

A Biography of the AuthorofI Walked by Night

CHARLOTTE PATON

Old Pond Publishing is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

First published 2009. This ebook edition published 2020

Copyright © Charlotte Paton 2009, 2020

The moral rights of the author in this publication have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishers, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

The author has made every effort to trace all copyright-holders of material in this book. Any copyright queries or further claims copyright should be addressed to Old Pond Publishing.

ISBN: 978-1-905523-89-4 (hardback)978-1-913618-08-7 (ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Fox Chapel Publishing 903 Square Street Mount Joy, PA 17552, U.S.A.

Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd. 7 Danefield Road, Selsey (Chichester), West Sussex, PO20 9DA, U.K.

www.oldpond.com

Cover design by Liz WhatlingMaps and family tree by John Gilkes

To all my familypast, present and those still to come

Acknowledgements

My very grateful thanks to the following: Bertram Akhurst, Saul Arnold, Andrew Baldry, Fred Bayfield, Toby Beadle, Arthur Bedwell, Margaret Benson, Mandy Bilverstone, Mr and Mrs Clifford Bird, Robin Bix, David Blakesley, Alec Boast, Mike Bott, Boydell and Brewer Group Ltd., Allan Bradley, John Bromily, Pauline Brunton, Mr and Mrs Colin Buck, Gordon Buckley, Brian Bulman, Val Byatt, David Carter, Peter Catling, Barry Colvin, Terry Coppin, Charles Cunningham, Richard Denyer, Geoffrey Earl, Liz Fenwick, Taff Gillingham, John Gray, David Grimes, Colin Haney, Tony Haney, Les Harrison, Mrs Hart, Frank Honeywood, Keith and Shirley Howell, Ivan Howlett, the staff at King’s Lynn Library, Pam Kirby, Les Knowles, Gwen Luker, David Mason, Bob Moulton, Stuart Nairn, Lawrie Nicholls, Rita Norton, Nick Patrick, Charles Patrick, John Pearson, Kim Puyenbroek, Terry Reeve, Mr and Mrs Herbert Revell, Cath Rolfe, Mr and Mrs David Rolfe and family, Kay Rose, Harry Skipper, Keith Skipper, Sue Smalley, Nell Steele, Steele & Co., Diss, John Timpson, Greta Towler, Elsie Treanor, University of Reading Library Archive, Madelaine Watson, Paulette Webb, Ian Whittle, Derek Whyte, Joy Williams, Sue and Andy Willis, J.J. Wright (photographer) and David Wing.

In particular I thank Nada Cheyne for permission to reproduce extracts from I Walked by Night and the Trustees of the Bungay Museum for allowing me free use of Emily’s manuscript. Also, Peter Billingham, John Mason and Peter Pilgram, curators of the Norfolk Constabulary Historical Collection.

Special thanks go to Brian who bore it all very patiently, and to Chris Reeve and Steve Caple whose encouragement kept me going. Without the help of these three, this book would never have been completed.

Illustration section sources and acknowledgements

(1) author; (2) King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council; (4) Mandy Bilverstone; (5) Norfolk Museum and Archaeology Service; (7) author; (8) Barbara Taylor and Lynn Library; (9) Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service; (10) Barry Colvin; (11) Shirley Howell; (12) Geoffrey Earl; (13) Brian Bulman; (14) Dr Barnardo’s; (15) Catherine Rolfe; (16) author; (17) Bungay Museum; (18) author; (19) Pauline Brunton and family; (20) Frank Honeywood; (21) John Reeve; (22) Bungay Museum; (23) Bungay Museum; (26) Bungay Museum; (27) Richard Denyer ; (29) photo by Peter Hodges; (30) Boydell and Brewer Group Ltd, University of Reading Archive; (31) Mr and Mrs C Buck; (32) Photo by Peter Hodges.

The front cover painting was photographed by Robert Fuller:www.robertfullerassociates.co.uk

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Maps:

Pentney and surrounding area

Bungay and surrounding area

Family tree

  1  1862 Birth and before

  2  1862–82 Growing up

  3  1882 Prison

  4  1882–86 Anna

  5  1886–88 Manchester

  6  1888 Fred marries again

  7  1888–94 West Norfolk

  8  1894–96 Gamekeeper, West Bilney

  9  1896–1904 Back to his old tricks

10  The agricultural reformers

11  1903–16 The lost years

12  1917–18 Keepering again – briefly

13  1918 Fred’s war

14  1918–25 Bungay with Kitty

15  1925–38 After Kitty

16  1934–37 The books

17  1938 A sorry end

Afterthoughts

Bibliography

Index

Introduction

In 2002, when my husband Brian and I finally paid off the mortgage on our West Norfolk cottage, a fat bundle of deeds arrived from the bank, which looked intriguing. After supper we settled down on the floor in front of the fire and started to read through them. They informed us that the West Bilney Estate, of which our cottage was a part, had covered over 2,366 acres and was described in the particulars when it was sold in 1924 as a typical Norfolk Sporting Property, ‘. . . comprising of extensive woods and a warren with a capital trout stream and marshlands where first-class shooting may be enjoyed over the property in great variety’. At that time it was being sold by a syndicate, one of whom was Marianne Catherine Cabrera de Morelia of Wentworth – very posh!

We had always understood that our cottage was the gatehouse to West Bilney Hall, but lot 25 in the sales particulars, our property, was described as an attractive bungalow villa, erected of carrstone under a slate roof, and now in the ownership of Mr Boddy, a gamekeeper. We had never realised that it had been a gamekeeper’s cottage, and as we chatted about our finds I was reminded of a book called I Walked by Night by The King of The Norfolk Poachers. Edited by Lilias Rider Haggard and published in 1935, it is an autobiography. I remembered, among other things, it telling of poaching, the countryside, rural deprivation, love and the poacher’s determination not to be beholden to the gentry.

I went to the bookshelves and pulled it down, dusty and untouched since Christmas 1976 when, according to the note on the fly leaf, Mum had given it to me because she thought it might be of interest to me as it was in part about Bungay, Suffolk where I grew up. It was edited by Lilias Rider Haggard and published in 1935.

I poured myself a glass of wine and started to reread it. My memory had been correct; the poacher did say he lived in a lodge when he was, for a short period, a gamekeeper:

When I was Keepering I lived in a lodge

I read on, and completed the book and the bottle of wine in one sitting. I Walked By Night is much as he originally wrote it, with Lilias Rider Haggard revising the manuscript as little as possible when she edited it. I was completely spellbound – it is a wonderful book, and he was an intriguing man; I wondered if he still had relatives living locally and whether I could find out anything else about him.

There were lots of clues in the book which led me to believe that he really might have lived in our house and I was determined to see if I could find out if it was true. However, the poacher never reveals his real name, and without knowing that I felt I could make no progress.

By happy coincidence, soon afterwards I heard the Radio 4 programme, ‘Making History’, where listeners write in about historical matters that puzzle them, or to discover more about the past. I decided to get in touch to see if they could tell me the name of my poacher. While I waited for their response, I started to ferret about. The author had also written:

Were I was Keeper we had a verry large Warren beside the road running from Wormagay. One day the warriners were digging at the botom of a large hill were Oliver Cromwell was suposed to have planted his guns wen he destroyed Pentney Abby

I started by researching what Cromwell was doing in Pentney and also the history of the abbey. Established by Robert de Vaux in the twelfth century, it became a large and prestigious Augustinian priory. After a turbulent period of squabbling between Clerical and Secular, the monks settled down to good works and in 1492 were visited by Archdeacon Goldwell, who seems to have been the Inspector of Priories. He gave them a glowing report. Other inspections followed but then in 1514, the Prior’s slackness was complained of. In 1520, after further complaints, the residents were spoken to separately, but all was found to be well. However, by 1532 the abbey was in a state of disrepair and then in 1536 the Prior and five canons admitted to affairs with the nuns from Marham Nunnery. The Abbess was subsequently fined and the nunnery closed.

In 1535, the dissolution of the monasteries had begun and by the end of 1536 the abbey was stripped and empty. What a disaster this must have been for the local community. The monks had run a school and offered hospitality to travellers and pilgrims crossing the river on their way to Walsingham. In addition, a large number of people were employed to feed and care for the monks and their guests.

Then Oliver Cromwell came and almost completely flattened the abbey. As M. de Bootman says in his pamphlet about the abbey:

Cromwell sometime in the Civil War floated fiat-bottomed sloops from King’s Lynn to Pentney, where he and his men had a bit of target practice at the Priory buildings reducing them to rubble. The remains were then used as a convenient quarry for building material. Priory stone can be seen in many old houses in Pentney.

I have tried unsuccessfully to find out why Cromwell was at King’s Lynn. The Fen people were some of the first to take his side, so perhaps he simply felt safe enough to come here for an ‘away’ day and a spot of laddish behaviour!

‘Making History’ got in contact to tell me that the poacher’s name was Frederick Rolfe. They invited me to appear on Radio 4 to talk about what I was trying to do, and this led to several offers of help in my quest for more information. I spoke to a very interesting man, who told me that Fred (how familiar of me) lived in Nethergate Street, Bungay, about a quarter of a mile from where I was brought up. He told me that he understood that Fred had come to an unhappy end and that there had been disturbing gossip over the years about why he had. I hoped what he said was not true and it was at this point that I realised I might be uncovering a hornets’ nest.

From then on, I became completely obsessed with finding out all I could about The King of the Norfolk Poachers and six years later, to my amazement I have gathered enough information to write this book. Intriguingly, much of what I discovered was at variance with the tale told by The Poacher himself.

CHARLOTTE PATONThe Old LodgeWest Bilney2009

CHAPTER 1

1862 Birth and Before

Frederick Rolfe was born in Pentney, a poor rural parish deep in the heart of the Norfolk countryside, on 28 February 1862. He was the only child of John and Elizabeth Rolfe. Beside the entry in the Pentney Parish Records showing he was baptised on 18 March 1862 are the words, ‘Brought into Church the 6th April 1862’, so it would seem likely that he had been baptised at home. Perhaps this meant he was a sickly child and thought unlikely to survive. Mortality rates for infants in West Norfolk were 143 in 1,000 at the time, so this was a common occurrence.

Both of Fred’s parents had been married before. His mother had already lost two children in infancy during her first marriage. After her husband’s death she was reduced to living as a pauper with her surviving daughter, Maria aged 7. Being classified a pauper meant that she and Maria depended on the parish for support. The Relieving Officer from the Workhouse decided she could survive in the community with an allowance – an option much favoured by the Board of Guardians for the Poor House because it was cheaper than taking the destitute in as inmates. It was a grim existence. George Ewart Evans (1909–88), who travelled East Anglia recording oral histories, wrote of a conversation with James Seeley about his impoverished childhood in Norfolk. Although Seeley recalls a time later in the nineteenth century, he tells of the tough time had by those reliant on handouts.

James Seeley was the eldest of five and aged about 9 when his father died. His mother would turn her hand to anything to earn money, including taking in washing, to keep her children, he recalled. Every morning before school, the older children had to pump sufficient water for their mother to do the day’s laundry. The children all took bread and jam to school to eat at dinnertime, but to supplement this, they would scramble into the fields to steal a turnip or swede. This, they would nibble on raw as they walked the mile and a half to school. Sheep were sometimes fed locust beans, which the children also stole, thinking them a great treat.

Despite her hard work, Mrs Seeley was still forced to turn to the parish for help. The Board of Guardians allowed her 3/6d a week (an agricultural labourer earned about 12/- a week at that time). The Board said she was fit and able, so she could work to support her family. To make sure she did not keep her three eldest children away from school to work, each Saturday morning they had to present their school attendance record to the Relieving Officer to prove they had been at school all week. James remembered that they were always hungry, but that was normal – everyone who was part of a large family struggled to find enough to eat and sometimes there was nothing to eat at all.

Elizabeth may have been able to raise a little extra cash using the skills picked up from her mother. Later, Fred devoted a whole chapter of I Walked by Night to the witchcraft, cures and hedgerow remedies that he heard his grandmother talking about.

My old Granny was a bit of a quack Doctor, and the People used to come to her with all there ills. She was a mid Wife beside, and one to help with the layen out of Boddies. She told me all the Charms and such like that I know . . .

Then there was a charm for anyone trubbled with bleeding from the nose. They should get a skein of silk, and get nine Maids each to tie a knot in the skein, and then the sufferer must wear it round his neck. That was a shure cure for Nose bleed. The cure for Head acke was to get the skin of the Viper and sew it in to the lining of the hat. . .

Born in Pentney, Elizabeth was baptised on 24 June 1827, the third of the eight children born to Thomas and Ursula Shafto (sometimes recorded on documents as Shaftoe). In 1792, Thomas was born in Castle Acre, Norfolk, while Ursula Barrett was born in Setchey, Norfolk, in 1804. They married in Pentney church on 18 November 1821.

Only one of their children appears to have died young. Baptismal records show that at least four of Elizabeth’s siblings married in Pentney and lived locally. Between them, they had a large number of children, but Fred never mentions his aunts, uncles and cousins in I Walked by Night.

The 26-year-old Elizabeth married her first husband, George Powley of West Bilney, Norfolk, at Pentney church on 20 November 1853. He was 24 and his trade was listed as husbandman. They had three children, two of whom died young. Maria was born before their marriage, on 4 October 1853, and registered as Maria Shaftoe. However, following her baptism in Pentney church, on 1 February 1854, she was named Maria Powley, for by then Elizabeth and George had married. Hannah was baptised at Pentney on 27 June 1855. At 7 weeks old she died, having had ‘debility’ from birth. Robert was born in 1856 and died shortly after his birth. He was buried at Pentney church on 29 August 1856.

After just seven years of marriage, George died of pneumonia in Pentney aged 31. His death certificate records that he suffered for nine days and endured pulmonary apoplexy for an hour before he died. Elizabeth was present at his death on 27 September 1860. He was then listed as an agricultural labourer.

Workhouse records do not reveal whether Elizabeth was ever admitted, or appealed for out relief while George was alive. If he was too ill to support them, she may have done so. Many men struggled on, trying to keep their families long after they were far too ill to do so.

Research into the Powley family proved difficult. Their names appeared in Church records, but no name could be found in secular documents. Common sense led to the belief that they would have remained in the area, but research into the surrounding villages and workhouses shed no light on the whereabouts of Elizabeth and her daughter after George’s death. However, the 1861 census revealed that living next to John Rolfe was a widowed pauper, Elizabeth Stacey, and her 7-year-old daughter Maria, whose details exactly matched those of Elizabeth and Maria Powley.

Further investigation revealed Elizabeth’s first husband was born in 1829 to a Miss Mary Powley and christened George Powley. In 1831, Mary married John Stacey. Thereafter George was known as George Stacey (sometimes Stacy), although the Church did not recognise the change in name. John and Mary Stacey went on to have seven more children and lived at Magpie Cottages, West Bilney.

When George came to marry Elizabeth, he had to marry her in the name he was christened with (Powley), but they called themselves Mr and Mrs Stacey. This was confirmed by the discovery of a birth certificate for their daughter Hannah, who was entered into the baptismal register as Hannah Powley, although her birth certificate is in the name of Stacy. The dates match and the mother is listed as Elizabeth Stacey, formerly Shaftoe. Three years before George and Elizabeth married, they were witnesses at Elizabeth’s brother James’s marriage to Eliza Warren, signing the register George Stacy and Elizabeth Shafto. This leads to the assumption that they were courting for some years and Maria was George’s daughter, although his name does not appear on her birth certificate.

Fred’s Father, John, was born in 1813, almost certainly in Bradenham, a village about eight miles east of Pentney. He was the son of Jonathan and Ann Rolfe. The squire at the time was William Meybolm Rider. A flamboyant barrister and forceful, opinionated man, for many years he sat as a Justice on the Swaffham bench. His eighth child, Henry Rider Haggard, was born in 1856. William was convinced Henry wouldn’t amount to much. Despairing of his academic ability and lack of ambition, he sent him to Africa – a move that proved an enormous inspiration for his upcoming literary career. By the end of the nineteenth century he became a successful writer, penning such popular works as King Solomon’s Mines and She. Henry married Marianna Louisa Margitson (always referred to as Louisa) and lived at Ditchingham House on the Norfolk and Suffolk border. His fourth child was Lilias Rider Haggard.

It would have been impossible for young John Rolfe, an illiterate labourer, to imagine that his son and the squire’s granddaughter would one day collaborate on the much-loved I Walked by Night.

What motivates people can be quite strange. Fred’s grandfather Jonathan was always prepared to give up a day’s work to watch a hanging. Later, with the advent of the railways, special trains were laid on at excursion rates for such events:

The harts of the People were much more callous than to day – my Grandfather walked from my home to Norwich, a distance of thirty miles to see Bloomfield Rush the Murderer hung on Castle Hill, and there were thousands of people there. I think it was the last time any one were hung in Publick at the Castle. They had been tryen him for days and days, and the whole County wanted to se the end of him, and most of them as could do so got there one way and another, even if they had to walk.

The background to this particular case was that 59-year-old Isaac Jermy, a Recorder in the Court at Norwich, his son Isaac Junior and daughter-in-law Sophia, and Isaac’s 13-year-old daughter Isabella had just finished dinner in their Elizabethan home, Stanfield Hall near Wymondham, on 28 November 1848 when Isaac and his son were shot dead by an intruder. Sophia was maimed for life and her maid crippled; only Isabella was spared, following the quick actions of the cook. Despite his disguise of a mask and a woman’s wig, the culprit was recognised by the servants.

James Blomfield Rush was arrested and found to have a motive. In a complex and slightly shady deal, Isaac Jermy had lent him money to purchase a farm and it transpired that Jermy was set to foreclose on the £5,000 mortgage in two days’ time.

On 29 March 1849, Rush defended himself at the trial by trying to lay the blame on others who had brushed with Jermy in financial dealings. The Victorians hung onto every word of the case, which was reported at length, and caused a sensation. Even Charles Dickens visited the scene of the crime. Drama increased when Sophia’s crippled maid was carried into court on a specially devised bed to give evidence. Rush’s mistress Emily Sandford, governess to his nine children, gave evidence for the prosecution, heightening the excitement. It took fourteen hours for Rush to sum up and just ten minutes for the jury to find him guilty.

Passing the death sentence, the judge remarked that he ‘saw the hand of God at work’ in an act of retribution for Rush’s failure to make an honest woman of his mistress: ‘If you had performed to that unfortunate girl the promises you made her, to make her your wife, the policy of the law which seals the lips of a wife in any proceedings against her husband would have permitted you to go unpunished.’

Protesting his innocence to the last, Rush was hanged on 21 April 1849, on the bridge over the moat at Norwich Castle. Thousands flocking there found stalls selling pottery figures of the principle characters, which were bought in large numbers. There were food stalls and drink flowed. A good time was had by all, except Rush. In fact, gala – a festive occasion – comes from the word gallows because everyone went on a jolly to see a hanging!

In Pentney church, Fred’s father John (25) married his first wife Susan Wing (33) on 5 March 1839. Susan was born to James and Mary Wing from Pentney in 1804. The couple had four children: Mary Ann (1839), Rebecca (1841), Maria (1842) and James (1845). It was confusing to read in the 1851 census that John and Susan had four daughters, the youngest being Jane, but by the 1861 census Jane had reverted to James. Presumably the enumerator must have misheard in 1851 and as neither John nor Susan could read or write (both marked their marriage certificate with a cross), they would never have known. In the 1861 census only Mary Ann (21) and James (16) were still at home. Rebecca (20) was a servant at Church Farmhouse, Pentney, while Maria (19) was at the nearby village of Middleton, working as housemaid to Thomas Mathews, a farmer.

Mary Ann was acting housekeeper for John, because on 17 February 1861, Susan had died aged 57. She suffered gastric fever for four weeks and dysenteric diarrhoea for three weeks. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Stacey and her only surviving child, Maria, were living next door.

CHAPTER 2

1862–82 Growing Up

Elizabeth married John Rolfe on 30 April 1861, just 71 days after Susan’s death, when she was 34 and John was 48. I Walked by Night describes Fred’s father as a difficult, bigoted man, so one wonders what the attraction was. Did she marry him to keep a roof over her head, because life as a widow with a daughter to care for was a terrible struggle? Perhaps Mary Ann did not want to continue living at home with her peppery father, so he needed a housekeeper, for men in those days did not fend for themselves.

The author Flora Thompson (1876–1947) wrote in her book, Lark Rise to Candleford:

Patty was not a native of these parts but had come there only a few years before as housekeeper to an elderly man whose wife had died. As was the custom when no relative was available, he applied to the board of Guardians for a housekeeper, and Patty had been selected as the most suitable inmate of the Workhouse at the time.

In Arcady for Better or Worse, a book written by a clergyman, Augustus Jessopp, about rural Norfolk in the late nineteenth century, the following tale is related:

An habitual drunk, Dick’s first wife died and left him with two children, the eldest three years old. Dick had such a bad character that no one would be his housekeeper, the neighbours ‘did for the children’. Within ten days of his wife’s death Dick’s patience was exhausted. Off he walked to the Workhouse, got admission on some pretext to the women’s ward, and gave out that he wanted a wife and wouldn’t go until he got one. An eager crowd of females offered themselves. He picked out the prettiest.

“What’s your name?”

“Polly Beck.”

“How many children?”

“Three!”

“Who’s the father?”

“Don’t know! I had two by Jack the butcher, they died. T’other three ain’t so big.”

In less than an hour Dick, Polly and the three little ones marched out together happily. At the Registrars office, within a month, Polly became Mrs Styles and turned out not such a bad wife.

Whatever their reasons, John and Elizabeth married, and ten months later Fred was born. The children of John’s first marriage were almost off his hands. James is listed in the 1861 census as a 16-year-agricultural labourer and would probably have been on half wages as a half man, but he would still have been bringing money in. With only Fred and Maria to bring up, the family would have been better off than most.

In the mid-1800s village life in England was hard, the average wage being 10/- (about 50p) and the well fed bought about a stone of flour for two each week, each stone costing 2/6d. The principal groceries were cheese, yeast, sugar, paraffin wax candles (used from mid-1800s), tea, tobacco for the head of the household, with a few coppers left over for beer. Groceries were purchased from John Sare, the Pentney grocer, or from the post office, which also served as a butchers and general shop. Meat was rarely eaten, while herrings and fat bacon (when families could afford them) were saved for father and any working boys so they had the strength to work, as it was imperative to keep the wage earners well. Prosperity was seen as the ability to have one meal that included meat a day.

In 1880 a loaf weighing a pound cost 1d, milk was a penny a pint (skimmed, a farthing). Tea was an expensive luxury, coal cost 25/- a ton, sheep’s heads were a penny and doctor’s fees ranged between 2/- and 6/6d. The average number of children in a family was between five and six. They survived largely on bread and dripping, porridge and root crops boiled into a stew.

Sadly, any happiness the Rolfes shared must have been short-lived, for while Fred was a toddler, his step-brother James died in King’s Lynn Hospital on 19 December 1863 of General Deposit of Tubercular Exhaustion.

Known as the ‘White Plague’, tuberculosis killed almost everyone who caught it. It was found in the bones of Egyptian mummies and there was no hope of a cure until the germ was identified in 1882. The disease reached epidemic proportions in the 1600s when one in five died of it and there was a real fear it would wipe out whole cities.

1. The Old Lodge, West Bilney, in 2009.

2. The Bridge over the Nar at Pentney Mill, by Walter Dexter R.B.A. (1878-1958).

3. Grimston Court House built in 1881, where Fred often found himself.

4. Grey’s Cottage, where Fred and his family were living in the 1881 census. This photograph was taken in 1911.

5. Norwich Prison while it was still located in the castle, as it would have looked when Fred served his first term of imprisonment.

6. Record of Fred’s first offence (top entry) from Docking Court Record, Grimston Court being in the Docking division.

7. The Oak tree in Narborough Park where Fred hanged his dog.

8. The Lodge in West Bilney, taken by Mr Arthur Taylor on 10 May 1892.

9. George Edwards, preaching from a wagon in East Rudham in 1918.

10. The isolated Freebridge Union Workhouse in Gayton.

11. Stibbard Memorial Cross, with the cottages where Fred lived with his family on the left. This photograph was taken in the 1920s.

12. Fred Rolfe (right) as Regimental Rat Catcher, holding a ratting stick and gin trap.

13. Roy Bulman and Emily Rolfe on their wedding day, 3 April 1919, at All Saints Church, Battersea.

14. David Rolfe, taken when he entered Barnardo’s on 20 April, 1920.

15. Bertha Rolfe, Fred’s granddaughter, who lived with Fred and Kitty from birth.

16. Shipmeadow Workhouse, where Kitty died in 1925. It is now apartments.

17. Bridge Street in Bungay, as it would have been in Fred’s time. His home at no. 7 is just behind the van at the end of the street. Nethergate Street is immediately to the right of the van.

18. 7 Bridge Street; the yellow cottage where the family lived in the 1920s.

19. Mrs Jessie Redgrave.

20. Clark’s Yard, as it would have been when Fred lived there with Mrs Redgrave after Kitty’s death.

21. Fred’s home at Grammers Green, Mettingham. He lived in the lean-to with the tall chimney, originally the brew house, when he left Mrs Redgrave’s home in the early 1930s. Painted by John Reeve.

22. Lilias Rider Haggard (left) with her sister Angela.

23. The first page of Fred’s book, I Walked by Night.

24. Frederick Rolfe in 1935, when he was about 73.

25. Frederick Rolfe. This was probably taken as a publicity photograph when the book was first published.

26. The letter which accompanied Emily’s book about Kitty’s life.

27. 1 Nethergate Street, Bungay. Fred died here on Wednesday 23 March, 1938.

28. Some of Bungay’s Best Snares.

29. Les Knowles, who came across Fred’s body, standing with the author in front of the restored 1 Nethergate Street.

30. The document which Lilias Rider Haggard drew up for Fred to sign, giving him £20 in lieu of royalties.

31. Reverend Francis Kahn.

32. Author with David Rolfe, Fred’s great-grandson, and his granddaughter Holly.

Following an outbreak of cholera in 1833, the good men of King’s Lynn decided the town must have a hospital and so they purchased Gallows Pasture, a meadow where criminals and pirates had been hanged in the 1600s. King’s Lynn Hospital was opened in 1835 and extended twice more, due to the generosity of two local benefactors, so by the time poor James arrived, there were beds for fifty-two patients. The downstairs wards were reserved for patients who had had accidents, a common occurrence in a rural port. This was to spare them the ordeal of the stairs. Upstairs, the acute surgical and medical wards were mixed. Every care and comfort was given. Great importance was attached to the need for lots of fresh air – ‘bad air’ was thought to harbour germs. The wards were heated with open fires, which must have made cleaning difficult, for everything was scrubbed each day. It was not at all Spartan, though: there were fresh flowers and pictures on the walls, plus toys for child patients.

In 1863, the year James died, the hospital admitted 344, mostly accidents, with a high rate of recovery after surgery. A year later, B.W. Richardson, MA MD, an authority on pulmonary tuberculosis, came to King’s Lynn. He found a ‘fine hospital giving free treatment to the poor’. The locals dug deep into their pockets and gave generously to support the hospital and feed good nourishing food to the patients. Richardson’s only criticism was of the food – too much carbohydrate and not enough protein (he made no mention of the need for fruit and vegetables).

There is no record of how long James Rolfe was a patient, but it is doubtful he would have had many visitors. The ten miles into King’s Lynn was a long way to walk, particularly in winter, even if the family could afford a day off work, assuming their employer would allow this. Trains would have been expensive and presumably they did not know how long James would linger. Postal services had been running for about twenty years (Robinson Crusoe was Postmaster at Lynn). Would someone from the hospital have written or used the Telegraph system, which began in 1845, to send a telegram to John and Elizabeth to tell them the sad news? As neither could read, who would have read it out to them?

However his parents received the news, James’s body must have been borne back to the village by train or over the muddy roads by cart in the late December half-light. What followed must have been a pitiful but common sight as the little funeral procession made its way to Pentney churchyard, either on foot as a ‘walking funeral’, or possibly in a cart lent by a generous farmer, washed down and filled with straw. James and his father are both listed in the census as agricultural workers, but it is not known on which farms. Not for James the plumed horses, the family dressed in black, the draped crepe, the mutes and all the outward signs of grief beloved by the Victorians.

James’s funeral would have been very much as described in Candleford Green by Flora Thompson:

The women would follow the coffin, in decent if shabby and unfashionable mourning often borrowed in parts from neighbours, and men with black crepe bands around their hats and sleeves. The village carpenter, who had made the coffin, acted as undertaker, but £3 or £4 was covered by life insurance. Flowers were often placed inside the coffin, but there were seldom wreaths, the fashion for those came later.

A meal to follow the funeral was almost certainly provided, and the food then consumed was the best the bereaved could obtain. These funeral meals for the poor have been much misunderstood and misrepresented. By the country poor and probably for the majority of the poor in towns they were not provided in any spirit of ostentation, but because it was an urgent necessity that a meal should be partaken of by the mourners as soon as possible after a funeral. Very little food could be eaten in a tiny cottage while the dead remained there; evidence of human mortality would be too near and too pervasive. Married children and other relatives coming from a distance might have eaten nothing since breakfast. So a ham or part of a ham was provided, not in order to be able to boast ‘we buried ’im with ’am’, but because it was a ready prepared dish which was both easily obtained and appetising.

These funeral meals have appeared to some more pathetic than amusing. The return of the mourners after the final parting and their immediate outbursts of pent-up grief, then, as they grew calmer, the gentle persuasion of those less afflicted than the widow or widower or the bereaved parents, for the sake of the living still left to them, should take some nourishment. Then their gradual revival as they ate and drank. Tears would still be wiped away furtively, but a few sad smiles would break through, until, at the table a sober cheerfulness would prevail.

For John and Elizabeth this sad tableau would have been enacted all too frequently, both their spouses having made the final journey to the churchyard at Pentney within recent years.

As a child Fred loved to spend time with his maternal grandparents, who lived close by:

They were a dear old cupple, and I was verry fond of them and they of me, and would never hear any thing rong of me.

. . . and I used to sit and listen by the hour. I never herd any thing like that at home from my Father, even if he knew any thing. He would never tell me a tale except about religon, I got plenty of that – much good it done.

Wen my Father got to hear that he was tellen me those tales he forbid me goen to see the Old People, but I always managed to get to them some way or another.

. . . I used to hear a lot about the horrors of tranceportation. I often think that the old People of the Eighteen Centuary, used the tales of tranceportation as a Bogey man to frighten there sons. The young generationn now would not even know what it means to be tranceported.

I had an Uncle tranceported some where round about that time for Sheep Stealing, and Grandfather have told me many a time about it. He was a Shepperd and lived at West Acre. It was the time that Amerricca was asken for Emergrants to go out, and he stole the sheep to get the money to go there. They told me he got twenty years sentence, and was sent as a convict to Australia.

After a few years of working for the Government, Fred’s uncle was released. He was then free to work where he liked, so long as he did not leave the country. I Walked by Night goes on to describe how he carried on his trade as a shepherd, saved money, married and settled. When he died, he owned eleven square miles of land, and 40,000 sheep. Certainly, he was able to send money home to his parents. Lilias Rider Haggard added a footnote to the book to say Transportation was looked on as a terrible fate, mainly because the lack of communication and very isolated nature of English villages made the distance even more terrifying.

She also recorded that a bottle of the prisoner’s urine was corked securely and hung up in his old home, then anyone would know how he was getting on. If the urine got cloudy, he was ill; if it wasted, he was dead and the family went into mourning.

Prisons at that time were not for holding convicted prisoners and periods of imprisonment were not a sentencing option; they were used solely to hold those on remand. Once their case was heard, either they were sent to the gallows, transported, whipped, pilloried, put in the stocks or fined. There were Houses of Correction, such as the Bridewell at Walsingham that housed tramps and vagabonds, if they were not considered to be the deserving poor. Originally intended to train inmates to lead useful lives and learn a trade, they became prisons in all but name. Magistrates decided whether the tramps should be aided or punished, and punishment was harsh: they would do the most unpleasant of tasks to earn food, and could be whipped or be pierced through the ears with a red-hot iron.

Juries were beginning to feel uncomfortable about passing the death sentence for less serious offences and so fewer verdicts of guilty were passed. One way round this was to offer a pardon to criminals if they agreed to enter the Army or Navy, or to order transportation.

When transportation to America ceased in 1776, serious overcrowding in prisons led to the use of hulks as floating prisons. To ease this problem, a fleet of convict ships left for New South Wales in 1787. The first ships were desperately overcrowded and the prisoner treatment and conditions appalling; many died on the journey. Inhumane treatment continued while they served their sentence but once free, they could carve out new lives for themselves, or find a way to return home.

With the introduction of punishment by imprisonment in 1853, transportations lessened and by 1868 it had ceased altogether. Between 1787 and 1868, 160,000 convicts were transported to Australia. Four thousand were from Norfolk and most of these were held in Norwich Castle until they left. Men and women were not segregated. While in prison, Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes had a child. Sadly, by the time the baby was born the rules were tightened and the sexes separated, so Henry rarely saw his child, though he was said to have developed a remarkable fondness for it. Eventually transported in the first fleet to go to Australia, all three were reunited and became one of the colony’s founding families.

Fred’s grandparents 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.