Tip – Anna’s dog – was a cross between a Smithfield sheepdog and a greyhound. Not handsome but very efficient, they were crossed to combine the speed of a sight dog with the intelligence of the sheepdog. Their coats took on the characteristics of either breed, but looks were not important, ability was what counted. Smithfields are no longer a distinct breed but the lurcher, another favourite of the poaching fraternity, is still much prized in East Anglia. Their biddable nature and high intelligence mean they are easy to train.
In I Walked by Night, Fred gives a detailed explanation of the training methods used to get the ideal poacher’s dog. Gamekeepers reckoned it took a poacher a year to train up a good dog so to deprive one of his dog gave the keepers some respite. The methods used were brutal and cruel. Fred mentions sweeping the yard around where his dogs were chained up to stop the keepers leaving poisoned meat unnoticed. Gamekeepers also used a vicious device called a dog spear. An iron spear, about 3 in long and usually barbed, was placed over a hare run. If the dog chased a hare, the hare was able to pass under the spear, but the dog was impaled upon it, often with fatal results. To teach a young dog not to maul game, their trainers inserted two spikes diagonally through the carcass into a newly dead bird: this was supposed to instantly cure any desire the dog had to eat the game.
If a poacher lost his dog it was not unknown for him to ‘borrow’ one. It would be found, exhausted, back in its usual place in the morning. In addition, poachers certainly ‘borrowed’ dogs they liked the look of and mated them with their bitches.
In his autobiography, Fourscore Years (1943), G.G. Coulton – who was raised in Pentney during the 1870s and 80s – made two references to Fred:
Mr Paul, the gentleman farmer under whom Rolfe the poacher worked as a boy, to whose kind treatment he pays a tribute, but from whose pigeon cote later on, he took as heavy toll as from my mother’s peahens. . . .
Rolfe, who deserves international fame, for his freak biography is a precious human document, which I am able to verify in every important particular.
I Walked by Night links these two stories:
Then something hapened wich made them verry careful how they handled me. A Farmer lost some Turkeys, and they took me and my pall and locked us up on suspicion. They took me first and then they went after him, and said that I had told them everything. Wen he came to the lock up he asked me what I had told them. Of corse I said nothing as I knew nothing about the Turkeys.
Well they took us befor the Magerstrates and remanded us for eight days to se what they could make out. Just befor we were to apear again they found the Turkeys under a straw stack that had fallen over. They let us out with a lot of Apologies but that did not sute me. I went to a Lawyer to know what redress I could get. I put the case in his hands and he got £5 each for us for rongful arrest.
That tale had a finish to it. A Game Dealer at Lynn wanted to know if I could get some Pea Fowl, or eggs. I had noticed this same Lawyer had a lot of them Birds – they used to sit and lay about the place. I took a dark lantern one night, and hunted round and came acros a bird sitten on some eggs. I put the old bird in a bag and the eggs in my shirt. Then I come acros another bird with young ones, they too went in the bag, and I got them safley to the Dealers and made a good days work out of them.
The lawyer was J.J. Coulton, father of G.G. Coulton, the author.
J.J. Coulton was an eminent King’s Lynn solicitor, who moved to Little Ketlam, Pentney, in 1871 with his wife and five children. Coulton relished the austere, declining to wear a coat in the coldest weather and becoming a vegetarian. Clerk to the Guardians and Rural Sanitary Authority, King’s Lynn Union, he was also superintendant registrar and gave a great deal of his time to local charities and societies around Pentney.
In his book, Coulton tells of another Pentney poacher who lived in a cabin on some wild land at the edge of the village called Bradmoor. He had no job, but always carried a half crown in his pocket lest any policeman charge him with having no visible means of subsistence. A common crime in those times, a fine was usually imposed which of course could not be paid, so the accused was punished with a week in prison with hard labour in lieu.
Coulton also wrote that at some time in the 1880s, in a hard frost on King’s Lynn High Street on market day, a man fell heavily. A poacher, he had left his gun hidden within his clothes in such a way that the force of his fall activated it, discharging both barrels into his body.
Another instance he remembered from further afield involved a fight between poachers and gamekeepers. In the scuffle a gun went off and shot one of the poachers in the thigh. The police being summoned, they followed a trail of blood until they found the poacher holed up in a barn, where his comrades had carried him and plugged the gaping wound with straw. He survived and as he was carried on a litter into his trial at the Assizes, looking at the double row of policemen, he remarked, ‘I should like to get a day’s shootin’ among ye all.’ His sentence is not recorded.
Coulton also recounts in his book that as children, he and his sister were invited by Benjamin Young, their farmer neighbour, to go into his garden and help themselves to the fruit he grew there. It was a sad indictment of the time that the farmer would indulge the middle-class children next door, but let the labourer’s children in the cottages close by exist half-starved, denying them even a rabbit. This is illustrated by the following press report.
Game Trespass – Frederick Roofe [sic]
Labourer Pentney was charged on remand with trespassing in search of game on Land at Pentney on 31st August 1884 since which time the defendant had absconded. Hardiman Morton said he saw the defendant on Mr Benjamin Young’s land between 6 and 7 o’clock on the Sunday morning in question. He was beating a turnip field and fired a gun.
Witness was behind a high hedge and could not see what defendant shot. Witness got over the fence and ran after defendant who crossed the plank over the river and pulled it after him thus preventing witness from following. Defendant was further charged with a like offence on land of Mr G. Goddard on the 13th September 1884. Morton stated that about 6.30a.m. that day he saw defendant shoot some birds; he was not more than 10 yards from the defendant.
Grimston Petty Sessions report by the Lynn News, 2 July 1888
Village constable Hardiman Morton was a neighbour of Fred’s when he lived at Greys Cottages. The land on which Fred was caught was within a mile of home. He seemed to have no thought as to whether he would be caught – perhaps the excitement of pitting his wits against officialdom had made him careless, for clearly he would be recognised and easily found:
I had got such a liken for the Game I was past stoppin. Poaching is something like drug taking, – once begun no goen back, it get hold of you. The life of a Poacher is anything but a happy one, still it is exciting at times, and the excitement go a long way to sothe his concience if it trubble him.
Cornered and unable to flee one night, Fred was badly beaten up by four keepers:
. . . they got a cart from the farm near by, and took me to the lock up and left me.
The next morning I was nearly Dead, so bad that the Police had to send for the Doctor, and wen he had looked at me he ordered me to be taken to Lynn Ospitall. I had a verry bad cut head and a Brused Boddy.
I stayed there for a fortnight . . .
Charges for the crimes committed in 1884 were laid against Fred in 1888, although they took place four years earlier. On a later occasion in 1884, Fred – having just
