The Wrath of Lady Dashwood
The pheasants are out so I have stopped doing my favourite walk over to Cookshall Farm. My dog hunts ‘with intent’ (crucial words) and I’m nervous about meeting the gamekeeper.
Folks did not have had such scruples 150 years ago, when no love was lost between Lady Dashwood’s gamekeepers and the locals. This enmity was widespread and included anyone living on or adjacent to West Wycombe Estate land, as well as the chairmakers of Wycombe. The Game Laws lay behind it: anyone apprehended poaching, or trespassing ‘with intent’ to poach, was prosecuted, and the Dashwood game keepers were assiduous when it came to detecting poachers.
However, they were often thwarted in their prosecutions: people provided alibis and ‘witnesses’ denied seeing anything. The reason for this was probably twofold. Firstly, guilty verdicts incurred harsh punishments and no one wanted family or friends to suffer. In 1864, for example, a destitute Eliza Collins of Downley, aged 24 and with three children, applied for ‘out-relief’ because she had no means to feed her children: her husband Samuel was in gaol for two months for poaching.
Secondly, Lady Dashwood’s game keepers do rather come across in the press as mean, vindictive bullies, and capable of being economical with the truth. (The ‘mean’ bit requires justifying. Two women who cut down a dead beech tree on West Wycombe estate land were caught by a gamekeeper, found guilty and fined. It’s not poaching, just an example of bloody mindedness, since picking up dead wood was a common right.)
The enmity between the locals and Lady Dashwood’s gamekeepers reached a fever pitch just short of open warfare in 1874-77. Note, please, that with two, possibly three, exceptions – Samuel Collins, Amos Hawes & Benjamin Goodchild – Downley men were law-abiding and honest and not involved in any of this (unless they were just very good at poaching). In further defence of Downley, Samuel Collins was probably just trying to get a rabbit for the family pot to supplement his meagre income, Benjamin Goodchild was probably just walking his dog, and young Amos, aged about 10, was led astray by Naphill men. He was convicted of poaching in October 1874 along with John West, Jesse Bristow and Joseph Putman of Naphill, but received only a £1 fine, compared to the £5 fines of Bristow and Putnam, and the £2 fine of West. £5 was a massive fine and would have caused considerable bitterness.
One month later, in November 1874, the tension escalated. Two of Lady Dashwood’s keepers – James and William Batson, father and son, appeared at the County Sessions held in Wycombe Town Hall to bear witness against an alleged poacher caught on the Common (which one is not specified, but Downley seems likely). The accused proved he was elsewhere, and the case was dismissed with the Batsons accused of ‘falsely, wickedly, wilfully, and corruptly [committing] wilful and corrupt perjury’. On leaving the Town Hall, William alleged his father was kicked to the ground by three chairmakers while he himself was assaulted by Avery, a hairdresser on White Hart Street, and two others, watched by a jeering crowd of three hundred.
The Batsons decided to prosecute their alleged assailants, using two policemen as their main witnesses. The latter claimed that Avery, Franklin, Westrup and Parker had hit the Batsons, drawing blood. However, the policemen’s actions rather belied their words. They had arrived late (said everyone else), they had asked a third Dashwood gamekeeper present to confiscate Williams Batson’s stick, implying that Batson had initiated the violence, and they had then gaoled Batson (for his own protection, they later claimed: “He was not loved; he was rather hated”). Meanwhile, the four accused all had solid alibis, and almost every other witness said William had provoked the crowd by waving his stick around, shouting that he’d ‘hit the first **** chairman who came near over the **** head’, and the policemen were lying about who had assaulted who. The case caused such rancour in Wycombe – the vicar was hissed in court, Lady Dashwood was effectively accused of defending the indefensible – that it was moved to Aylesbury.
Tensions then reached a crescendo in January 1875, when Avery, Westrup and Parker accused the Batsons and the two policemen of perjury. Wycombe chairmakers attended the trial ‘in full force’, alternately applauding and jeering witnesses. The court dismissed the case against the policemen (unwisely, said a later judge) but decided to commit the Batsons for trial by jury on grounds of perjury. Incidentally, the Batsons returned from Aylesbury on the same train as Avery, Westrup and Parker: the latter, reported the press, ‘were met by hundreds of their fellow-townsmen and a band of music at the station, while the unlucky gamekeepers, who prudently left the train at West Wycombe, narrowly escaped mobbing.’
The next eruption of ill will occurred in November 1876, when Lady Dashwood’s (newest?) gamekeeper, James Abbott, accused five men – Thomas West, chairmaker of Naphill, John West, James [Jesse?] Bristow, John Putnam, and Robert Johnson – of assaulting him. Perhaps they did – at least three of these men had past poaching convictions, and why invent such a thing? – but the case was dismissed because of a lack of witnesses. No doubt all the defendants had wonderful alibis.
James Abbott engineered his revenge. In April 1877, he accused Thomas West of Naphill & Benjamin Goodchild of Downley of ‘using a dog to take game’ in Downley Field. It was an odd accusation. Benjamin was a respectable middle-aged chairmaker, neighbour to Henry Collins, the richest man in Downley, and might just have been accidentally trespassing while walking his dog, while Thomas was twenty years his junior and might well have not been present at all. At the trial, both Thomas and Benjamin did their best to sway the magistrates: they were ‘respectably dressed’ and Ann West, widowed mother of Thomas, swore her son was at home and in bed. Nevertheless, both were found guilty and each was fined 10s., plus 12s. 6d. costs. Thomas’s lawyer promptly sued Abbott for malicious perjury, a case that was heard two weeks later and dismissed.
Abbott had won – but at what cost? The consequent waves of enmity must have affected his morale because a month later an advertisement appeared in the Field: – ‘Game keeper of Downley seeks new position’. He was clearly on a very short fuse. In October he was found guilty of assaulting Thomas Mullett, chairmaker of West Wycombe, and fined £2 and 17s. 6d. costs.
It is entirely possible therefore that in two years, Lady Dashwood lost three gamekeepers at the hands of the locals, and her usual goodwill and generosity evaporated. Downley folk (Samuel & Amos excepted) were not to blame in all this – it was the men of Naphill and Wycombe doing the poaching – but Downley felt the impact of her wrath. In early 1878, locals petitioned Lady Dashwood to repair the path between Naphill and Downley, and she refused. They could pay for it themselves. They couldn’t afford it, which is why there is no road between Downley and Naphill today.