by Graham Seal
We do not know if Myra was at home during these conversations, though with four children to tend it is most likely that she was. Overhearing the raised voices, the angry swearing and the recriminations of the poachers she must have become increasingly concerned. As her later letters to William reveal, she was a worrier. She had plenty to worry about. We also know from her letters that William was not a husband who communicated often or well. In matters of such seriousness he would have been especially inclined to keep his own counsel.
While the police pursued their investigations and the poachers argued and worried, larger events were unfolding that would rapidly take control of the affair and the consequences of one moonlit night’s misadventure. The consortium of gentlemen who owned the shooting rights in Silver Wood had, after Lilley’s death, almost immediately posted the substantial reward of £250 for information leading to the conviction of the killer, an amount to be raised by private subscription. They also wrote to the Home Secretary requesting an additional reward be offered by the government as well as a free pardon for anyone giving information about the fight, as long as the informer was not the one who had committed the murder.
The inquest resumed on 25 October. By now the broad outlines of the incident and of the submerged local tensions beneath it were emerging. Despite some intense questioning, the keepers continued to be indifferent witnesses and were evasive in identifying the poachers: ‘several of the parties concerned appear to have displayed considerable reluctance in giving any information’, as the Sheffield Daily Telegraph put it.4
One inquest juryman wanted to know of the police witness if Lilley’s pistol had been capped and loaded. It had been, the witness confirmed. The same juror also asked if any skin had been found on the hair attached to the hedge stake that had presumably been the murder weapon. ‘No’, the Constable replied stolidly, adding that the ‘Coroner said he could see no traces of hair’.
Another juryman asked for the contents of the pistol to be ‘drawn’. This showed that it was loaded with 70 corns of shot and only a light charge of powder, the implication being that the weapon had been loaded with the intent of causing serious damage if discharged at close range.
The head keeper, John Hawkins, appeared and stated that the keepers had ‘expected poachers, because it was a likely night, and we had them before’. He was quick to point out, as did the other keepers questioned, that ‘We did not know they were coming’. Hawkins also said that although he, too, had been armed with a pistol, it was only for signalling and that he did not usually carry such a weapon.
Hawkins’s evidence revealed that Lilley had been a frequent associate of his and a keeper for a considerable time. There was also no love lost between the two sides of the game wars. Upon seeing the keepers that night near Silver Wood, a poacher had cried out, ‘Hey up, chaps, the b——s are here.’ As a local reporter observed, ‘It appears that Lilley was a marked man amongst the poaching fraternity. He was the Ishmael of his calling, against whom every poacher was ready to raise his hand.’5
The coroner questioned Hawkins about the identity of the poachers. Despite intensive interrogation Hawkins was reluctant to name the poachers even though, as would be established at the later trial, he had grown up with Teale and known him for almost 20 years.6 A clearly frustrated coroner declared the head keeper’s answers to be unsatisfactory.
As well as their testimony, the actions of the keepers during the affray also came in for considerable scrutiny, especially those of Hawkins. A juryman asked, ‘Do you really think Lilley would have been killed if you had gone to assist him?’ Hawkins replied, ‘He was killed before we got into the field, it is my opinion.’ This, together with his perception that ‘there was such a number of them’, was all the defence the head keeper could muster as to why he had not gone to the assistance of the dying man. The inaccurate belief – or perhaps the convenient fabrication – that there had been between 12 or 15 poachers in the field that night was parroted in keeper Machin’s evidence when it was his turn to take the stand.
Machin was also reluctant to identify the poachers. He described the man who hit Lilley as tall and stout and powerful ‘in a middling way’. But if the keepers did not know who the poachers were, they certainly knew the keepers. The poacher who was hitting Lilley had said to Machin, ‘It’s thee, thou b——y Sheffield b——r. We have heard a deal of talk about thee, and thah shall have it nah tha has come.’
At the conclusion of his summation, Coroner John Webster handed down the verdict of ‘wilful murder by several persons at present unknown’. He observed that the situation was an unhappy one and forthrightly recorded his dislike of the game laws and, presumably, of the system of privilege that brought them into being and kept them in place: ‘I think it is a pity that any man should lose his life for the sake of game.’ But, as he went on to say, ‘Nevertheless, the game law is the law of the land’. When reminded by the lawyer for the murdered man’s relations that such matters were the concern of the legislature, the coroner replied, ‘Laws which cannot be maintained in their integrity, nor carried out except at the risk of killing either poachers or gamekeepers, cannot be very good laws.’
Webster echoed the views of a growing number of middle-class citizens regarding the negative consequences of the country’s extensive and often draconian game laws. His distaste for his duty in this case echoed other concerns about poaching, the law and the character of those whose interests the game laws protected.
These lofty opinions also meshed closely with those held by many of the more lowly members of the local community. Poaching was not considered a crime by most of those who practised it and those who benefited from it. As one of the local newspapers pointed out, ‘The police complain of the apathy on the part of the country people and tell us that the moral sense of the villagers is deadened where matters of poaching are concerned.’7 The death of the keeper was unfortunate, of course, but he and his companions were disliked and distrusted locally and so most were inclined to treat the death as an accident or, perhaps less charitably given Lilley’s reputation, as good riddance. Certainly violent death by beating and kicking was common and unremarkable in this brutal time and place, being frequently cited in cases of manslaughter and murder.
Possibly concerned that these sentiments would work against anyone being arrested for Lilley’s murder, Jubb and his associates, two days after the inquest, increased the reward to the very large sum of £350, which they advertised in the newspapers and in handbills distributed through the Rotherham area.8 The following day, the aggressive defenders of their property rights, Henry Jubb and his ‘gentlemen’ friends were, surprisingly, castigated along with the poachers and the keepers in the conservative Sheffield Daily Telegraph. There was little doubt what the Telegraph thought about the actions of the keepers. They should have ‘gone in like men to save their gallant comrade from death, instead of sneaking away to hide in the thicket like so many pitiful curs, while the horrid work of death was going on’.
The paper pointed out that Jubb had been only too quick to post a large reward while ignoring the plight of the murdered gamekeeper’s widow and seven children. With no other means of support, Mrs Lilley had been forced to seek relief from the parish. The Telegraph concluded with a ringing echo of what was no doubt the popular sentiment that ‘The only man who behaved well in the business was the man who suffered, and as for the rest, what can we say of them except that the behaviour has been un-English on all sides – the poachers acting like savages – the keepers like hares – and the employer like a snob.’9
Apparently stung by such violent adverse publicity,10 especially coming from the section of the press that could generally be relied upon to support the game laws, Jubb and his associates hastily arranged a small annual allowance for Lilley’s widow and children. With all this publicity and official action of one kind and another, the case generated passionate local speculation, rumour and gossip, a good deal of which surfaced in the local newspapers, add
ing fuel to what the affrighted poachers were hearing from friends and relations.
As the police gradually tightened their net around the poachers, Woodhouse, Bone, Savage and Bentcliffe left the district, hoping to avoid capture. But William stayed at home with Myra and the children, relying perhaps on his earlier argument that the keepers could not identify the poachers with any certainty. But this was wishful thinking. Early in the morning of 31 October, the police pounded on the door of the Sykes home with a warrant for William’s arrest. They searched the house, discovering, as they had anticipated they would, the implements of the poacher’s trade, a large number of nets and pegs, sticks, a ferret and wire for fashioning snares, all stupidly stored by Sykes. But there was no murder weapon. Saying only, ‘It’s a bad job’, the characteristically taciturn William was taken into custody amidst the tears of 11-year-old Ann and the despairing looks of Myra, young William, Alfred and Thirza.
That night and the next, in a coordinated series of raids around Sheffield, Rotherham and further afield, Bone was taken at Wakefield and Bentcliffe at Rawmarsh, where, according to the press, he was living with a woman of notorious character. Teale was lodging in Kimberworth and Booth at home in the village of New York. All were found with various incriminating items of the poaching trade. Woodhouse, the poacher with the most serious criminal record, was again detained by police but again released. It would soon be clear why.
On 2 November all the papers were able to report that the seven suspects were in custody. Woodhouse was described as about 40 years of age and ‘powerful looking’. Teale, an unemployed labourer and bachelor from Cantley, was said to have harboured a grudge against Lilley because the dead keeper had once been responsible for having Teale’s father convicted of some minor offence. Bone was the father of five children. Sykes was a forgeman but had not worked ‘for some months’. Bentcliffe had appeared in court before. The oldest man, David Booth, was 54 and worked as a railway navvy.11 At this stage, the police had not yet caught up with Ginger Savage.
The accused were kept in separate cells until 3 November when, dressed by the police in their poaching apparel, ‘the worthy watchers of game’, as they were described in the press, picked three of them out of an identification parade. Wondering why Woodhouse was not among their number, one of the poachers remarked, ‘There was another to come yet.’
But there was not. The seventh poacher, Woodhouse, had turned ‘approver’, betraying his companions to the police. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph confirmed ‘the pretty generally admitted fact that Woodhouse is the chief approver, or rather the approver, as only one can, we believe, be allowed to claim the pardon offered by the Secretary of State’.12
It was now clear that only six of the seven poachers would be examined for the murder of Lilley. A few days later the press reported that ‘The friends of Teale, Sykes and Bone … have displayed a rather hostile feeling towards the friends of Woodhouse, Booth and Bentcliffe, and of the first mentioned they speak in terms of almost unmeasured hatred and contempt.’13 The same day the police rounded up Ginger Savage – aka Shaw, Shoden and Boden – who had legged it to his home village near Nottingham. He was drunk at the time.
On 7 November all the poachers were arraigned at Rotherham Court House. A large crowd gathered around the building. The reporter described the prisoners and was particularly struck by William Sykes, rendering his appearance in near-heroic terms that would have been surprising to most people. Sykes was good-looking, the journalist thought, though in a military way. His features were sharp, his complexion bright and he had a hard and fierce expression and an acute and restless eye. ‘It is not often that a face so fitted to express endurance and scornful courage and so thoroughly martial could be found for the sculptor, and it seems a pity that a man whom nature fitted for a soldier, and whom Lord Byron would have been delighted with as an ideal corsair, should have drifted into the position of a poacher.’
Sykes was clearly edgy, but this did not prevent the journalist discerning his ‘small, tightly-compressed mouth, the sharp chin, the knife-like nose, the cheekbones overhanging the lower face in a graceful curve like beetling cliffs, and the eyes peering like a pair of keen falcons from their recess beneath the arched eyebrows …’. The poetic reporter thought that William Sykes ‘appeared to feel the humiliation of his position’ and that he was ‘as little at his ease as a caged eagle’.13
The Rotherham and Masbrough Advertiser was far more prosaic. After referring to the poachers as a group ‘rather of a low type’, the writer went on to say: ‘Sykes is of moderate stature and pretty stoutly built. He is on the whole not bad looking, though his features are lowering bad and he assumes a rather mysterious and thoughtful air … His general demeanour seems to indicate some little shyness or furtiveness.’ The Advertiser also republished the Telegraph’s Byronic homily on the same page.15
The effusions of the unidentified Telegraph journalist continued in contrasting Sykes to his companions. Teale was ‘long and wiry’ and had ‘the head of a weasel’ that he ‘carried on a neck which for length might be called a gizzard’. Bone was ‘broad across the chest’ but ‘short and vulgar looking in the extreme, sallow-complexioned, pock-marked … with a peculiarly cock-sparrowy kind of strut and possessed of little sinister eyes’. In describing the keepers Hawkins and Butler, the journalist wrote that ‘Neither of the men are persons from whose look we should infer any lack of courage, though neither have that appearance of muscular strength possessed by some of the prisoners, nor yet that air of defiant belligerence and that intense power of will which distinguish Sykes.’16
The proceedings at this appearance were brief. The Crown pleaded the recent arrest of Savage as cause for extra preparation time and the poachers were remanded to appear again on 15 November. Then the full presentation of the prisoners would determine whether there were further, more serious, charges to answer.
The prosecution was at pains to paint Woodhouse as relatively little implicated and to show William Sykes as the man who had savagely murdered Lilley. In his opening address the prosecutor brushed aside any consideration of the inequity of the game laws as a factor in the case. Such issues would simply cloud the substance of the matters before the court. A large number of witnesses were called by the prosecution. The finding of the court was that all seven prisoners should be ‘fully committed for trial at the ensuing Leeds assizes for murder’.17
Next morning, still in the clothes they wore on the night of the murder, the prisoners were removed from the police station. They took their leave of wives and children at the courthouse where most of the men broke down, certain they would never see their loved ones again. They were then driven by omnibus through the streets to Masborough Station as ‘eager crowds congregated and displayed an ardent desire to catch a glimpse of them’. At the station a large crowd gathered to farewell the local men. The poachers were chained together, although Woodhouse was kept carefully separate from the companions he had betrayed, but together with Booth who had by then also made a statement. As they waited on the platform ‘Sykes was visited by one of his little girls, who wept in a very distressing manner as she threw herself into the arms of her father’.18 This must have been Thirza, though it was her older sister Ann who would come to feel her father’s absence most keenly in the coming years. As Myra would later write to William in Western Australia:
Ann is the worst of them all about it and She is bothered greatly About it every day in hir life …
That day the newspaper also reported that Mr Jubb and ‘one or two gentlemen’ had raised ‘a small sum’ to be given to Booth’s wife and large family of youngsters. This would allow her to buy ‘a basket of smallware for hawking, that having been a pursuit she followed previous to her marriage, or if sufficient funds are raised a small shop may be stocked’.
Lilley’s murder and the subsequent proceedings were exciting intense speculation. Local newspapers devoted columns and columns of finely-spaced newsprint to the particulars of the c
ase, reporting in detail on what was said, what was done and what was rumoured. On a number of occasions two to three broadsheet-page summaries of events were published, keeping readers abreast of the news as well as keeping them in anticipation of the upcoming trial at the Leeds winter assizes in late December.
It would be almost two months before the case was heard in court. During that time the politics and prejudices of local class conflict ground on. There was gossip among the red-brick rows, in the ironworks, down the mines and in the pubs about who had struck the blow or blows that killed Lilley. William Sykes’s family mostly followed the lead of his elder brother John, a well-to-do carpenter. Like him, they had moved into more exalted social settings and were torn between concern for their youngest member and the stigma that his actions and the consequences of them might bring. Myra’s family, the less economically resilient Wilcocks, shrugged their shoulders and maintained a sympathetic distance.
That, at least, is the impression that comes through the lines of Myra’s letters and what little is told in the official records. The Henry Jubbs of the world were keen to see justice done so that their ‘rights’ were publicly vindicated, while the increasing numbers of middle-class opponents of the game laws hoped that the trial would provide yet another example – should one be needed – of the absurdity and inequity of usurping the ownership of wild animals.
3 Common Folk and Common Rights
