Between 1821 and 1841, Adam Stark recorded 140 entries under the heading of crimes and courts in his newsbooks, a chronicle of offences great and small brought before the Petty Sessions at Gainsborough’s Town Hall, committed to Kirton House of Correction, or sent on for trial at Lincoln Castle. They range from the mundane to the momentous, short weights in a shopkeeper’s pan; a fourteen-year-old boy committed for an indecent assault on a child of two and a half; a farmer stripped of £88 in gold by Sunday evening thieves while his family were at chapel; and the murder of Miriam Tong at Blyton Carr, a case that drew Stark to one of his most extended and careful accounts.
Read together, these 140 entries do not constitute a comprehensive crime record for Gainsborough in the period, Stark selected what he sent to the Stamford Mercury, and much that passed through the Town Hall went unrecorded by him. But they offer an unusually vivid picture of how a prosperous market town managed disorder, who wielded authority within it, and where the line between crime and merely inconvenient behaviour was drawn.
The Magistrate’s Bench: Sir Charles Anderson
One name runs through the crime entries more than any other. The Reverend Sir Charles Anderson, 2nd Baronet, of Lea Hall, appears as the presiding magistrate in dozens of Petty Sessions from the first year of the newsbooks to the last. He commits poachers, hears cases of assault, fines publicans for keeping disorderly houses, reprimands constables for dereliction of duty, deals with vagrants, receives charges of bastardy, and sentences men to Kirton House of Correction for everything from stealing slate to refusing to obey a master’s orders.
Anderson was not the only magistrate, the Rev. Mr. Vevers, the Rev. F. Peel, the Rev. H.J. Wollaston, and various lay justices including W. Hutton and W. Wilfitt appear throughout the record, but he is by far the most frequent presence. In the 1820s and 1830s, to be brought before the Magistrates at Gainsborough was, in most cases, to be brought before Sir Charles Anderson.
The newsbooks capture his style only obliquely, through what Stark chose to report. He is consistent, firm, and occasionally willing to show leniency: a man convicted of trespass in pursuit of game is permitted ‘by the Magistrate to settle the business’ by paying £1 each to the constable and the prosecutor rather than being committed. When a constable named Everett neglects to serve a summons, Anderson has him publicly reprimanded and ordered to pay costs. When a publican’s case falls to the ground for want of proof, it is noted without comment.
On Thursday were committed to Kirton House of Correction by the Rev. Sir Ch. Anderson Bart, Rev. Mr. Vevers and Rev. Mr. Peel, Henry Perkins and William Anderson for poaching, 6 months; Fuljambe Awty for a misdemeanor for trial at the ensuing session; John Faulkes for vagrancy.
Anderson’s authority extended beyond the purely judicial. As a clergyman and baronet, he was also a substantial landowner and a significant figure in Lincolnshire’s public life. In the newsbooks he appears not only on the bench but in civic and public life more generally, he is a justice of the peace, a church dignitary, and a magistrate who sat, in some cases, alongside his own son C.H.J. Anderson, suggesting a justice system in which family and landed status were structural rather than incidental features.
Kirton House of Correction and Lincoln Castle
For most offenders who appeared before the Gainsborough Petty Sessions, the destination, if they were committed, was Kirton House of Correction, the bridewell for Lindsey, the northernmost of Lincolnshire’s three divisions. Sentences at Kirton were typically short: one month to hard labour for vagrancy was standard; three months for poaching; six months for a more serious case of snare-setting or refusal to pay a bastardy order. A few entries mention Southwell House of Correction, over the county boundary in Nottinghamshire, for offenders apprehended on the Nottinghamshire side.
Lincoln Castle was the destination for the more serious cases: those committed to take their trial at the assizes, or those convicted of offences that fell outside the summary jurisdiction of the Petty Sessions. Thomas Parker, committed in June 1833 for burglary at the dwelling house of surgeon George Oliver at Newton upon Trent, was sent to Lincoln Castle to await the next assizes. Henry Hase, convicted of assisting in smuggling and fined £100, was committed to Lincoln Goal until the fine was paid, though the Lords of the Treasury later commuted his sentence to six months. The Dent case, father and son charged with receiving and stealing wool from the son’s employer, was committed to Kirton for trial at the next sessions, the father charged with knowingly receiving stolen property.
The system as Stark records it was one of summary justice for minor offences, with commitment for trial as the escalation for anything that required a jury. The Petty Sessions at Gainsborough met regularly, roughly monthly, and handled a wide range of petty offences without jury or extended process. A man convicted of swearing profane oaths in 1823, having refused to pay the penalty, was committed to Kirton Bridewell for sixteen days at hard labour. An apprentice who absented himself from his master’s service spent a fortnight at Kirton. The system was swift and cheap.
What People Stole
The theft entries in the newsbooks reveal the material economy of Gainsborough more precisely than almost any other source. People stole what was available, valuable and portable: from the wharves, rope, slate, laths, oak staves, pig iron; from the shops, meat, cloth, tools, silver spoons; from the counting houses, cash and promissory notes; from the farms, sheep, horses, bacon, a pistol.
Wharfside theft was a persistent problem. In June 1821, the counting house of Henry Smith, wharfinger, was broken open and notes stolen. In January 1823, Mr. Hyde’s counting house on the Chapel Staithe was forced and £20 taken. In February 1823, a butcher’s shop and another counting house were both broken into on successive days. In December 1833, three ketchmen were committed for stealing oak staves from the wharf of Messrs. Flower and Sons. The pattern is consistent across twenty years: the wharves and warehouses of the river trade were both the commercial heart of the town and its principal target for theft.
Livestock theft appears frequently in the later years of the record. In September 1832, an excellent cart mare belonging to a Mr. Naylor was stolen from a close at Newton upon Trent overnight, ‘a poor old thing left in its place’, a detail that suggests the thieves were prepared and had brought a substitute animal. In October 1834 a lark-brown gelding, described with the precision of a man who expected readers to help identify it, was taken from Francis Bainbridge of Marton. In July 1836 a four-year-old dark bay pony ‘when going has the habit of pointing one foot more than the other’ vanished from a close on the Morton Terrace.
On Wednesday morning last it was discovered that a dark bay or brown gelding pony had been stolen out of a close of Mr. Heatons on the Morton Terrace Gainsburgh. As it is rather a particular one, four years old, 13½ hands high, black legs and switch tail, and when going has the habit of pointing one foot more than the other, any person giving information will be suitably rewarded.
The most striking single theft in the record is that of August 1841, when thieves entered the premises of William Tomlinson at Blyton between six and eight on a Sunday evening while the family were at chapel and took ‘£88, all or nearly all in gold, a pistol, a large quantity of bacon, some shoes and other articles.’ The gold is remarkable, £88 was a substantial sum, representing months of income for a labouring family, and its form, held entirely in coin, suggests either a deliberate preference or a distrust of the banking system.
The Game Laws: Poaching and the Land
Among the most numerous individual categories of offence in the crime entries are those arising from the Game Laws: poaching, setting snares, trespassing in pursuit of game. Lincolnshire’s game laws were enforced with some consistency by Anderson and his fellow magistrates, and the newsbooks record a steady flow of convictions throughout the period.
The standard sentence for a first poaching conviction was three months at Kirton to hard labour. Repeat offenders were treated more harshly, and those caught on private land faced the aggravated offence of trespass. In January 1823, John Carlisle was committed for six months for setting snares at Grayingham. In October 1832, two Lincoln men were committed for three months for poaching on the land of Robert Duckle, Esq., having been caught returning repeatedly to the same ground at night.
The social dimension of poaching enforcement is plain in the entries. Those prosecuted are overwhelmingly labourers, boatmen, and artisans. Their accusers are the landowners and their gamekeepers. In November 1830, John Woodcock and George Cauldwell were convicted before Anderson for setting snares in the wood of H.B. Hickman Esq. of Thonock Hall, one of the county’s great landowners, whose name appears throughout the newsbooks as employer, magistrate, and subject of social notice alike. The game was his; the snares were theirs; the bench belonged to men like him.
Not all game law cases were straightforward. In December 1823, an unnamed ‘unqualified gentleman’ was fined £6 for shooting. Stark’s note is characteristically precise: ‘the paragraph in your last respecting an unqualified gentleman of this place being fined £6 for shooting, although true in fact, is false in the detail.’ The bird had risen in an adjoining manor, was shot and fell in that manor, was retrieved by the owner, and given to the shooter. The flaw was in the jurisdiction, not the act. The entry suggests a world in which even minor game law infractions could generate anxious correspondence about the exact particulars.
Vagrancy, Disorder and the Margins of Respectable Society
A second large category in the crime entries covers what the Petty Sessions treated as offences against public order: vagrancy, drunkenness, keeping disorderly houses, selling without a licence, unlicensed hawking. These entries reveal the boundaries that Gainsborough’s propertied classes sought to maintain around their town.
Vagrants were committed to Kirton with minimal process: a single magistrate’s order was sufficient. In July 1822, Ann Lord was committed for vagrancy by Sir Charles Anderson alone. In November 1822, four men, James Smith, Joseph Punnell, John Brady and Henry Welbeck, described as vagrants, were committed for one month at hard labour. John Williams, an itinerant bookseller from Boston, was imprisoned for a month for ‘unlawfully vending books in Gainsbro.’ Martin Jolly, convicted in February 1825 ‘as an idle and disorderly person’ for selling goods without a hawker’s licence, was simply described as such without elaboration on the goods or the vendor.
Fortune tellers attracted a rare note of editorial warmth from Stark. In November 1828, and again, almost word for word, in November 1829, he wrote of visitors who ‘having no fortune of their own to look after generously look after that of their neighbours and by way of eking out a livelihood offer five shillings worth of knowledge for half-a-crown.’ The repetition across two successive Novembers suggests either a very punctual itinerant tradition or, more likely, a recycled paragraph, but the ironic tone is unmistakably Stark’s own.
The good people of Gainsburgh during the last fortnight were favoured with a visit from some of those kind good natured souls who, having no fortune of their own to look after, generously look after that of their neighbours, and by way of eking out a livelihood offer five shillings worth of knowledge for half-a-crown.
The Petty Sessions also served as the mechanism for enforcing economic order in the market town. Weights and measures inspections were a regular event, and the sessions record a steady stream of fines, usually 5s and costs, for shopkeepers found with deficient weights. In April 1833, eleven Kirton shopkeepers were fined at one sitting; at the same sessions, fourteen shopkeepers from ‘several neighbouring towns’ were convicted for insufficient weights. William Hunt of Blyton was fined 20s for having ‘no less than seven small weights deficient.’ In January 1834, eight shopkeepers from Kirton and Misson were fined in a single session. The consistency of these prosecutions suggests less a campaign against dishonesty than a routine administrative exercise, regular as the market itself.
Violence: Assault, Highway Robbery and the Night Watchmen
The assault entries in the newsbooks range from minor domestic quarrels to a planned highway robbery and a mass attack on the town’s night watchmen. Most assault cases were resolved summarily, a fine, a binding over to keep the peace, or at most a short commitment. But a handful of entries stand out for their scale or brutality.
In November 1832, Stark recorded ‘a murderous attack’ on two of the town’s night watchmen by six men: four seamen named Robert Turman, Thomas Pickwell, George Thompson and George Marshall, and two shoemakers named Arthur and Sidney Jenkinson. They were armed with ‘large oak battens taken from the wharf.’ The watchmen were assaulted in the street. All six attackers were brought before the magistrates. The tone of the entry, ‘murderous attack’ is Stark’s own word, reflects the seriousness with which assaults on the constabulary were treated.
In August 1837, highway robbery came to the roads between Gainsborough and Willoughton. J. Gilbert of Willoughton, returning from Gainsborough Market on horseback, was stopped half a mile from the town by four men who ‘pulled him from his horse and plundered him of £20.’ His horse found its own way back to the White Hart Inn. The four men were apprehended, a detail Stark recorded without further elaboration on their fate.
In August 1831, a different kind of violence appeared: an attempt to attack a barn full of sleeping Irish labourers at Newton, Stark’s entry linking the incident explicitly to the ‘disgraceful attack upon the labouring Irish near Boston.’ He does not describe the Newton incident as successful, but the entry, brief, pointed, placed in the crime and disorder column rather than as a news item, reflects a quiet awareness of the hostilities facing Irish migrant workers in Lincolnshire during a period of agricultural change and political unrest.
The Murder of Miriam Tong, 1838
The most serious crime in the newsbooks is the murder of Miriam Tong at Blyton Carr in the summer of 1838. Stark’s entries on the case run across several months and represent some of his most careful and extended reporting.
The first mention comes in June 1838: ‘a child belonging to Thomas Tonge, a farmer on Blyton Carr, about 2½ years old, missing, supposed stolen.’ The next entry, in August, shifts register dramatically: ‘On Saturday last Amos Bell was brought before Charles Anderson and C.B. Luard Esq. and the Rev. Mr. Pooley for further examination, when various circumstances strongly confirmatory of connection of Bell with the murder of Miriam Tong, who our readers will recollect was missing from her father’s house at Blyton Carr about the beginning of June, were adduced in evidence.’
The child had not been stolen but killed. Amos Bell, his relationship to the Tong family is not specified in the newsbooks entry, was brought before the magistrates on the evidence accumulating against him. The case went forward to Lincoln. Stark does not record the outcome of the trial in the surviving newsbooks, but the entries themselves are among the most carefully phrased in the entire record: Stark writes of ‘circumstances strongly confirmatory’ of Bell’s connection, not of proof, maintaining a precision about what the evidence showed and what remained uncertain.
The case is exceptional in the newsbooks not only for its gravity but for its subject: most of the 750 deaths recorded by Stark are from illness, accident or old age. Violent death by another’s hand is rare in the record, and the murder of a child rarer still. The care with which Stark reported it, the initial notice of a missing child, the subsequent connection to Bell, the formal examination before the magistrates, reflects both his journalistic instincts and the genuine alarm the case would have created in the surrounding communities.
Mr. Jerrems: The Burgess Constable of Gainsborough
Running through the later crime entries is the figure of Mr. Jerrems, Burgess Constable of Gainsborough, who appears repeatedly as the man who actually catches people. Where Sir Charles Anderson presides on the bench, Jerrems does the work on the street: he receives information of robberies, conducts searches, apprehends suspects, and appears as a prosecutor in assault cases when he himself has been attacked in the execution of his duty.
In September 1833, ‘Mr. Jerrems the Constable, having received information of some carts having been robbed, went to various places and by his active exertions succeeded in recovering the property.’ In October 1833, a man named John Hunt was convicted of assaulting Jerrems in the execution of his duty; ‘in consequence of his contribution he was permitted by the Magistrate to settle the business’ by paying £1 each to the constable and prosecutor. In April 1834, Jerrems apprehended four men, Thomas Ludham alias Bill Moody, Andrew Evans, George Barnard and Charles, charged with highway robbery of a man named Gray the previous evening.
Jerrems is not a colourful figure in Stark’s telling; he is simply a reliable and effective one. He is assaulted, he recovers property, he makes arrests. He is fined when he fails in his duty (in an entry from 1833, a constable, probably a different officer, is reprimanded for neglecting to serve a summons). In a justice system that relied heavily on voluntary effort and amateur enforcement, the recurring presence of an active professional constable is notable.
Conclusion: Order, Deference and the Limits of the Law
The 140 crime entries in Adam Stark’s newsbooks describe a system of local justice that was, by the standards of the period, both functional and deeply unequal. The Petty Sessions resolved most offences quickly; committals to Kirton were frequent and swift; the machinery of the game laws was regularly deployed to protect the property rights of landowners against labourers who needed to eat. Vagrancy was not a crime of intent but a crime of condition, and its punishment, a month at hard labour, reflected not a judgment on the vagrant’s character but on the danger that visible poverty presented to the social order.
At the same time, the entries show a system capable of enforcing order against those with some standing: the publican fined for short measures, the gentleman fined for shooting without qualification, the coach driver fined twice for furious driving. The law was not applied exclusively downward. But the weight of the record, the poachers, vagrants, wharfside thieves and absconding servants who make up its largest categories, reflects the priorities of those who sat on the bench and the readership who received Stark’s reports.
The entries also preserve voices that would otherwise be lost entirely: Joseph Elwood, repeatedly imprisoned for pretending to have fits to obtain charity, caught the moment he sees a constable; James Cawkwell, imprisoned for three months for ‘want of sureties to keep the peace’, meaning he could not find anyone to vouch for him; the unnamed woman convicted of picking a pocket at Kexby, evidence insufficient, committed to Kirton anyway ‘for further examination.’ These are the ordinary textures of a criminal justice system that Stark recorded without sentiment and, mostly, without comment.
Sources
This article draws on the Adam Stark Newsbooks 1821–1841, transcribed by Paul Kemp and Andrew Birkitt, 2009, held by Gainsborough Heritage Centre. The 140 Crime & Courts entries referenced are fully searchable in the Adam Stark Newsbooks Database. All quoted passages are taken directly from the original transcription.
