In the village and surrounding area, hare coursing went on right up until 2005 when it was officially banned, but from the number of rumours heard, and the court appearances reported in the local press, it is still a regular feature today.
Marham was formerly noted for its great abundance of cherries and walnuts; but most of the trees of the latter fruit were cut down during the late war [Napoleonic] and sold to the gun-makers, some of the largest for as much as £100 each tree.
After Anna’s birth, Mary Ann and James went on to have two boys: James Henry in 1864 and Edward in 1866. On the 1871 census young James is recorded as living with Granny Steeles and two cousins in Marham; of the rest of the family, there is no certain trace. In the 1881 census all three children are living with Granny Steeles and their uncle William, who was a wheelwright.
Mary Ann, 35, by then a widow, was also living close by in the village with a daughter, Florence, who was born on 21 April 1876, with no father named on her birth certificate. Anna, then 19, is listed in the 1881 census as a domestic servant.
In his description of their courtship in I Walked by Night, Fred said Anna was an orphan:
It was perhaps a fellow feeling as drew us together in the beginning, as she poor girl was as much persequted as I had been. She was a servant up at a Gentleman Farmers not so far away from were I was liven, and of corse she had her night out like other servants. She was just eighteen years old, the same age as myself wen I got to know her and she started bein friendly with me.
As soon as it was known that she and I was palling up, those that she worked with, and others, tried by every means in there power to stop her, thinken no doubt that I was no proper compney for her, she haven no parents, and no one to go to. But it was all to no purpose, she would have her way.
Clearly, however, Anna was not an orphan, her mother being close by in the village. Nor does it seem she was living in as a servant, but rather still residing with uncle William, Grandma and her brothers, so it was not a question of being allowed her night out from the big house, but more likely escaping from Grandma’s beady eye to spend time with Fred. At the time Fred, who had not yet served his first prison sentence, was living in the middle of a row of five dwellings known as Greys Cottages, Pentney, with his mother and father and Granny Shaftoe, who was by now a widow.
Wen ever I went to meet her I used to take my dogs with me if the night was rite – or my gun. Many and many a night she came out with me, for she was no hindrence to the game. She could run and Jump as well as me and there was few could beat me at running wen I was a Young man. She could carry as many Birds to – and carryen Birds is no light Job. Many a hare have she carried under her coat for me, and many a Phesant. As it was all Cuntry round that part we had some good sport.
Well I supose that tale got about, and wen they found that they could not stop her from me, they gave her notice to leave her place. There was sevrell Ladies round about who was intrested in her, and put themselves about to get her a place in London at good wages so she should be out of my way. But no she stayed, and stuck to me through thick and thin, wich she could do as she had no parents, and no one to controwl her, so she went what way she wanted.
Having taken his own cottage on his return from prison, Fred recalled:
As I have rote befor, I had a home of my owen to take her to, as sone as she was ready to come, and after a bit she did come, and shared it with me for about four years or more.
Old maps fail to reveal where the pound to which Fred refers was once situated.
Just at the back of the Cottage was a round wall called the Old Pound, were years befor they used to put strayen cattle. That was done away with a long time ago, but the pound came in useful as it aforded us good cover to get home many a night wen we had been out on the Job.
Unless the baby was very premature, Anna must have already been in the early stages of pregnancy when Fred went to serve his prison sentence in November 1882. The couple were married on Monday, 14 May 1883, only just within the three months required by law following the reading of the banns. Both were just 21. According to parish records, the banns were read on 25 February, 4 March and 11 March 1883.
The requirement for banns to be read came about to regularise weddings and do away with common-law marriages. It was enacted in Hardwickes Marriage Act of 1754. Prior to this, the situation had been in disarray with clandestine marriages and young people being married inappropriately or without their parents’ consent. The new law stated that a marriage could only be solemnised in a parish church or public chapel after three readings of the banns, or by licence from the Bishop of the Diocese.
The 1754 Act forbade people under the age of 21 from marrying before they came of age without parental consent. As the law only covered England and Wales, it began the habit of minors wishing to marry without consent to flee across the Scottish border to marry in Gretna Green.
Banns giving the names of the couple are read to the congregation by the clergyman in the parishes where the bride and groom live, and if that is different, in the parish in which they are to marry. They must be read on three Sundays within the three months running up to the marriage, but are usually read on three consecutive weeks. This provides an opportunity for anyone to put forward any legal reasons why a couple may not marry.
Fred and Anna were well enough educated to sign the register, Anna with a practised hand and Fred with fine flourishes, so why did they wait until only two weeks before the baby’s birth? Was it because of parental objections and they needed to wait until they were both 21? Anna’s own mother was hardly in a position to criticise, having given birth to an illegitimate child five years earlier, but Granny Steeles might have been a different matter. It would seem she took all her grandchildren under her wing from time to time, but the fact that Anna, Henry and Edward were living with her while her daughter was living in another home in the village with little Florence suggests she was disapproving of her daughter’s behaviour, for it seems she was always left with grandchildren to support. Perhaps Mary Ann felt that as she herself had managed to raise an illegitimate child alone, that might be a better option for her daughter than marriage to Fred.
The marriage certificate shows that both the witnesses came from Anna’s side: a cousin and a lodger, who lived with Anna and her brothers at Granny Steele’s. It also stated that Fred resided in Norwich, which is odd and unexplained.
At the time, premarital sex was commonplace and rural Norfolk had the fourth highest illegitimacy rate in the country (10.8 per 1,000), but with as many as 25 per cent of brides being pregnant at the time of marriage, it is more likely the family objected to Fred rather than the horror felt in middle-class Victorian society of a ‘base born’ child. It is thought that some girls hoped to catch their man by becoming pregnant but alternatively, it is argued that men wanted to be sure their partner was fruitful before they married.
Did Anna want to marry Fred, or was she persuaded to do so? Was Fred coerced into marrying her or was he afraid of the Bastardy Laws? Whatever the circumstances, the marriage can hardly have been the stuff of dreams.
The 1876 Magisterial Formulist shows that there was plenty of legislation to catch fathers of illegitimate children, twenty-five pages in all, containing thirty-five different charges under section 6 of the Bastardy Laws Amendment Act 1873. Women could go to the local court and ask for support during pregnancy, and after the child was born. The Workhouse could chase a man for support if the new mother was staying there. There were laws enabling distress warrants to be issued and laws to make the father pay funeral and other incidental costs if the child died. Also, laws to bring him to court if the orders were disobeyed, and finally a Warrant of commitment to prison, if all else failed.
There are two different charges outlined in the Magisterial Formulist, one to be enacted if the father fails to support the mother and