Crime in Bourne

IN THE EARLY 19th CENTURY

The level of crime in England today bears little comparison to the law-breaking of past times, particularly in the early years of the 19th century which was a black spot in our history.

Bourne did not get its first policeman until 1843 following the passing of the County Police Act in 1839, but until then  crime, particularly theft, was rampant, with bands of miscreants roaming the countryside stealing whatever they could lay their hands on, usually food because hunger was widespread. More serious offences were also common from highway robbery, cattle and sheep rustling to horse stealing and burglary.

In February 1819, for instance, the Stamford Mercury reported that the Bourne district was "infested by a horde of thieves" who had become involved in a series of petty crimes, frauds and misdemeanours, poaching, obtaining money in dishonest habits under false pretences, clearing onion beds, breaking trees and snipping them of the fruit, pilfering wood yards and suchlike. The report went on: "Not a single week, and scarcely a night, elapsed without some depredations, more or less, upon the poultry and sheep, generally by cutting off the limbs of the latter, sometimes by driving them entirely away. As wickedness is, for the most part, progressive, so, in the depth of winter, they advanced to more alarming modes of spoilation, entering shops under cover of the evening and carrying away whatever was at hand. Several loose characters, reputed rogues and poachers, are suspected and measures are adopted which encourage the inhabitants generally to hope that the offenders will be brought to speedy justice."

Retribution was therefore swift and severe for those who were caught and in 1824, a teenager, Thomas Allam, pleaded guilty at the Kesteven Quarter Sessions held at the Town Hall to a charge of stealing a gold sovereign and a one pound note, the property of Benjamin Lenton, and was sentenced to be publicly whipped before being sent to Folkingham Gaol for two months with hard labour while the following year, Robert Woolley and John Bycroft, who had pleaded guilty to stealing a sheep, were both sentenced to death although Bycroft was later reprieved and sent to Folkingham Gaol for one year with hard labour.

The archives are filled with similar tales of harsh punishments for what might be regarded today as petty crimes but the landed gentry and businessmen who occupied the magistrates’ benches were determined to keep the working classes in order and to ensure that respected other people’s property which, in most cases, was their own.

One of the most graphic accounts of the threat posed to society by these wrongdoers comes from Kesteven Quarter Sessions held at the Town Hall on 30th December 1844 when Edward Ward, aged 22, was indicted for breaking into a shop at Toft and stealing half a pound of tea, a pound of raisins, some apples and a quantity of Lucifer matches.

Ward, said the prosecuting counsel, was one of that class of persons, trampers about the country and strangers to the locality, whose crimes usually occupied so much of the time of the court at Bourne sessions and brought such a heavy expense upon the county. He went on: “It is not by the native population that the majority of depredations are committed but by those wretches who prowled about from one county to another seeking what they could lay their hands upon and careless as to whom they wronged so that they could manage to live without applying themselves to honest industry.”

Ward said in his defence that he had been in employment, serving his apprenticeship as a chimney sweeper but had over-grown his trade as a climber and not having the money to buy a machine he was obliged to get a living as best he could. He was found guilty of theft and sentenced to twelve months with hard labour in Folkingham Gaol.

Much of the crime centred around the public houses, a magnet for low life lured there by the prospect of alcohol and money. At the same court hearing in 1844, a young woman named Mary Warren, aged 20, was arraigned on a charge of stealing three and a half sovereigns from John Dawson, a farmer, while he was leaving the Nag’s Head one night with a friend. She was described as “a remarkably plain, dirty-looking little woman, barely four and a half feet high” who was alleged to have taken the money from his pocket. “But for the repulsive looks of the accused”, reported the Stamford Mercury, “and judging by the manner in which the money was extracted from Mr Dawson’s pocket, the case might have been supposed to arise from certain love passages between them. A single glance at the woman, however, unless on a dark night and potations pottle deep [from the bottom of a tankard] levelled all distinctions, would render such a conclusion not all within the bounds of reason.”

The court was told that Mary, accompanied by another woman, accosted the two men and put her arms round him while the other made similar approaches to his friend. Dawson resisted and called the town’s police constable who was also subjected to Mary’s familiarity although he eventually managed to disperse the group without further bother. But on his way home, Dawson realised that his money was missing and together with the constable they tracked down Mary to a lodging house in West Street where she was arrested and taken into custody.

Mary at first denied the robbery but then took the constable to the garden of the Nag’s Head where she had buried a sovereign and a half wrapped up in a piece of rag under a gooseberry bush which she claimed was her own and not stolen. “I was frightened because the constable told me that a person had been hanged for a similar offence”, she told the court. “He said that if I returned half the money I would get off and so I gave my own money to get out of trouble.”

The jury found Mary Warren guilty of theft but in passing sentence the bench decided that as she had been offered inducements to confess, the punishment would be more moderate and she was sent to Folkingham Gaol for six months with hard labour.

The creation of a uniformed presence had a dramatic effect on wrongdoing in Bourne, particularly the petty offences that plagued society in past times, and also serves as a reminder that despite the shortcomings that are frequently the subject of public criticism today we should not take our police force for granted.

WRITTEN FEBRUARY 2014