The harts of the People were much more callous than to day – my Grandfather walked from my home to Norwich, a distance of thirty miles to see Bloomfield Rush the Murderer hung on Castle Hill, and there were thousands of people there. I think it was the last time any one were hung in Publick at the Castle. They had been tryen him for days and days, and the whole County wanted to se the end of him, and most of them as could do so got there one way and another, even if they had to walk.
The background to this particular case was that 59-year-old Isaac Jermy, a Recorder in the Court at Norwich, his son Isaac Junior and daughter-in-law Sophia, and Isaac’s 13-year-old daughter Isabella had just finished dinner in their Elizabethan home, Stanfield Hall near Wymondham, on 28 November 1848 when Isaac and his son were shot dead by an intruder. Sophia was maimed for life and her maid crippled; only Isabella was spared, following the quick actions of the cook. Despite his disguise of a mask and a woman’s wig, the culprit was recognised by the servants.
James Blomfield Rush was arrested and found to have a motive. In a complex and slightly shady deal, Isaac Jermy had lent him money to purchase a farm and it transpired that Jermy was set to foreclose on the £5,000 mortgage in two days’ time.
On 29 March 1849, Rush defended himself at the trial by trying to lay the blame on others who had brushed with Jermy in financial dealings. The Victorians hung onto every word of the case, which was reported at length, and caused a sensation. Even Charles Dickens visited the scene of the crime. Drama increased when Sophia’s crippled maid was carried into court on a specially devised bed to give evidence. Rush’s mistress Emily Sandford, governess to his nine children, gave evidence for the prosecution, heightening the excitement. It took fourteen hours for Rush to sum up and just ten minutes for the jury to find him guilty.
Passing the death sentence, the judge remarked that he ‘saw the hand of God at work’ in an act of retribution for Rush’s failure to make an honest woman of his mistress: ‘If you had performed to that unfortunate girl the promises you made her, to make her your wife, the policy of the law which seals the lips of a wife in any proceedings against her husband would have permitted you to go unpunished.’
Protesting his innocence to the last, Rush was hanged on 21 April 1849, on the bridge over the moat at Norwich Castle. Thousands flocking there found stalls selling pottery figures of the principle characters, which were bought in large numbers. There were food stalls and drink flowed. A good time was had by all, except Rush. In fact, gala – a festive occasion – comes from the word gallows because everyone went on a jolly to see a hanging!
In Pentney church, Fred’s father John (25) married his first wife Susan Wing (33) on 5 March 1839. Susan was born to James and Mary Wing from Pentney in 1804. The couple had four children: Mary Ann (1839), Rebecca (1841), Maria (1842) and James (1845). It was confusing to read in the 1851 census that John and Susan had four daughters, the youngest being Jane, but by the 1861 census Jane had reverted to James. Presumably the enumerator must have misheard in 1851 and as neither John nor Susan could read or write (both marked their marriage certificate with a cross), they would never have known. In the 1861 census only Mary Ann (21) and James (16) were still at home. Rebecca (20) was a servant at Church Farmhouse, Pentney, while Maria (19) was at the nearby village of Middleton, working as housemaid to Thomas Mathews, a farmer.
Mary Ann was acting housekeeper for John, because on 17 February 1861, Susan had died aged 57. She suffered gastric fever for four weeks and dysenteric diarrhoea for three weeks. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Stacey and her only surviving child, Maria, were living next door.
CHAPTER 2
1862–82 Growing Up
Elizabeth married John Rolfe on 30 April 1861, just 71 days after Susan’s death, when she was 34 and John was 48. I Walked by Night describes Fred’s father as a difficult, bigoted man, so one wonders what the attraction was. Did she marry him to keep a roof over her head, because life as a widow with a daughter to care for was a terrible struggle? Perhaps Mary Ann did not want to continue living at home with her peppery father, so he needed a housekeeper, for men in those days did not fend for themselves.
The author Flora Thompson (1876–1947) wrote in her book, Lark Rise to Candleford:
Patty was not a native of these parts but had come there only a few years before as housekeeper to an elderly man whose wife had died. As was the custom when no relative was available, he applied to the board of Guardians for a housekeeper, and Patty had been selected as the most suitable inmate of the Workhouse at the time.
In Arcady for Better or Worse, a book written by a clergyman, Augustus Jessopp, about rural Norfolk in the late nineteenth century, the following tale is related:
An habitual drunk, Dick’s first wife died and left him with two children, the eldest three years old. Dick had such a bad character that no one would be his housekeeper, the neighbours ‘did for the children’. Within ten days of his wife’s death Dick’s patience was exhausted. Off he walked to the Workhouse, got admission on some pretext to the women’s ward, and gave out that he wanted a wife and wouldn’t go until he got one. An eager crowd of females offered themselves. He picked out the prettiest.
“What’s your name?”
“Polly Beck.”
“How many children?”
“Three!”
“Who’s the father?”
“Don’t know! I had two by Jack the butcher, they died. T’other three ain’t so big.”
In less than an hour Dick, Polly and the three little ones marched out together happily. At the Registrars office, within a month, Polly became Mrs Styles and turned out not such a bad wife.
Whatever their reasons, John and Elizabeth married, and ten months later Fred was born. The children of John’s first marriage were almost off his hands. James is listed in the 1861 census as a 16-year-agricultural labourer and would probably have been on half wages as a half man, but he would still have been bringing money in. With only Fred and Maria to bring up, the family would have been better off than most.
In the mid-1800s village life in England was hard, the average wage being 10/- (about 50p) and the well fed bought about a stone of flour for two each week, each stone costing 2/6d. The principal groceries were cheese, yeast, sugar, paraffin wax candles (used from mid-1800s), tea, tobacco for the head of the household, with a few coppers left over for beer. Groceries were purchased from John Sare, the Pentney grocer, or from the post office, which also served as a butchers and general shop. Meat was rarely eaten, while herrings and fat bacon (when families could afford them) were saved for father and any working boys so they had the strength to work, as it was imperative to keep the wage earners well. Prosperity was seen as the ability to have one meal that included meat a day.
In 1880 a loaf weighing a pound cost 1d, milk was a penny a pint (skimmed, a farthing). Tea was an expensive luxury, coal cost 25/- a ton, sheep’s heads were a penny and doctor’s fees ranged between 2/- and 6/6d. The average number of children in a family was between five and six. They survived largely on bread and dripping, porridge and root crops boiled into a stew.
Sadly, any happiness the Rolfes shared must have been short-lived, for while Fred was a toddler, his step-brother James died in King’s Lynn Hospital on 19 December 1863 of General Deposit of Tubercular Exhaustion.
Known as the ‘White Plague’, tuberculosis killed almost everyone who caught it. It was found in the bones of Egyptian mummies and there was no hope of a cure until the germ was identified in 1882. The disease reached epidemic proportions in the 1600s when one in five died of it and there was a real fear it