“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,
