Snowy. Tim Harris

three months befor her time. She had to give up going out with me as she always had done, as she could not get about as well as she used because of the child that was comen. So I went out alone one night and took Tip with me and lost him. Of corse I did not pay much regard to that, as dogs often miss there Master at night, but are shure to find him or go home on there owen.

      Wen I got home to her in the morning time the first thing she said to me was ‘Where is Tip, you have not brought him back with you?’ I said no, and told her that I had missed him some were, but she need not fret as he would be home on his owen befor long. Then she said ‘No, he will not come home any more, he is dead and lay on Narborough park at the foot of a tree – I saw him hit the tree’.

      Well of corse I pooed that and told her she must have been dreaming, but she said no, she had never been asleep all night but lyen and waiting for me to come home.

      Well as the dog did not come back I went to look for him, and shure enough after a bit I found him as she had said layen at the foot of a large oak Tree. He had made to kill at a rabbitt and struck his head on the bole of the tree, and broke his neck.

      After military service, local man Les Harrison came to Narborough (the next village to Pentney) in about 1953, when he must have been in his early 20s. He lived in a cottage on the Narborough Hall Park. One day, while sheltering from the rain under a large oak tree in the park, he was joined by Albert Coggles, the elderly gamekeeper for the estate then owned by the Ash family. As they stood beneath the dripping leaves, Mr Coggles remarked that they were under the tree where the Norfolk Poacher had hanged his dog.

      Mr Harrison recalls, ‘I think it was only when it was mentioned this summer, when a friend and I were talking in the cricket pavilion and someone brought up the poacher who used to take game from the park where the pavilion now stands, that I thought of it again. I have never spoken to anyone, not even my wife and children, about the incident. I remember I thought it awful at the time.’ He has never read I Walked by Night, so he has no knowledge of the facts in the book.

      When told that Fred had said his dog broke its neck on the tree chasing a rabbit, Harrison said, ‘I know dogs – I can’t believe a dog would do that. I think what the gamekeeper told me, that the dog was hanged, is more likely right. Whether the dog was no good, or Fred lost his temper, I don’t know.’ He also recollects hearing, though he can’t remember the source, that one night the poacher took pheasants home and hid them under his pregnant wife’s bed. When police arrived to search the house, the dog indicated the pheasants’ whereabouts by sniffing round the bed and this led to Fred being charged with poaching. It was suggested this might have been his motivation in killing the dog. ‘That does not tie up,’ said Harrison, ‘he would have been taken straight off to the lock-up, not left to take out his ill humour on the dog.’

      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