Snowy. Tim Harris

had absconded. Hardiman Morton said he saw the defendant on Mr Benjamin Young’s land between 6 and 7 o’clock on the Sunday morning in question. He was beating a turnip field and fired a gun.

       Witness was behind a high hedge and could not see what defendant shot. Witness got over the fence and ran after defendant who crossed the plank over the river and pulled it after him thus preventing witness from following. Defendant was further charged with a like offence on land of Mr G. Goddard on the 13th September 1884. Morton stated that about 6.30a.m. that day he saw defendant shoot some birds; he was not more than 10 yards from the defendant.

      Grimston Petty Sessions report by the Lynn News, 2 July 1888

      Village constable Hardiman Morton was a neighbour of Fred’s when he lived at Greys Cottages. The land on which Fred was caught was within a mile of home. He seemed to have no thought as to whether he would be caught – perhaps the excitement of pitting his wits against officialdom had made him careless, for clearly he would be recognised and easily found:

      I had got such a liken for the Game I was past stoppin. Poaching is something like drug taking, – once begun no goen back, it get hold of you. The life of a Poacher is anything but a happy one, still it is exciting at times, and the excitement go a long way to sothe his concience if it trubble him.

      Cornered and unable to flee one night, Fred was badly beaten up by four keepers:

      . . . they got a cart from the farm near by, and took me to the lock up and left me.

      The next morning I was nearly Dead, so bad that the Police had to send for the Doctor, and wen he had looked at me he ordered me to be taken to Lynn Ospitall. I had a verry bad cut head and a Brused Boddy.

      I stayed there for a fortnight . . .

      Charges for the crimes committed in 1884 were laid against Fred in 1888, although they took place four years earlier. On a later occasion in 1884, Fred – having just won a gun at a pigeon shoot – was coming home with his pals in high spirits when they started to pot at pheasants in a wood, making a lot of noise. The keepers were soon after them. A fight ensued and Fred laid out a keeper, who was one of those who had assaulted him on the earlier occasion:

      I did not stop to think or lose the chance of payen some of the score back that I owed.

      Fearing the man was badly hurt, Fred fled to the nearest town, probably King’s Lynn, from where he took a train to Manchester. By then Anna was pregnant again When Fred left that night to save his own skin, it seems he thought very little of his wife’s, for there is no record that the two ever met again.

      It is not perhaps surprising that Lilias Rider Haggard writes in the preface to I Walked by Night that it was only with the greatest reluctance that Fred talked about his much-loved first wife – he must have been deciding which fib to tell next!