The Gamekeeper.
Among the many unsatisfactory products of the Game Laws not the least objectionable is the gamekeeper. Mr. Joseph Arch once said: “Keepers are generally taken from the louting men one sees idling about.” The knowledge that their masters sit on the Bench of Justice, and that their evidence will be believed in preference to that of trespassers, frequently emboldens them to acts of the worst brutality. Some years ago, in charging a Grand Jury at the Nottingham Assizes on certain indictments for malicious wounding and murder, arising out of poaching affrays, Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams commented on the way in which these private police of individuals go out armed to the teeth, accompanied by savage dogs, and without any code of instructions to regulate their proceedings. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, referring to arrests, etc., said: “I believe myself that in three cases out of four, the gamekeepers act illegally.” Whatever the men may have been originally, it is certain that their method of living demoralises the great majority of keepers. They are often selected at first because of their brutality. A humane man would be useless in such a post. Head-keepers, who are generally well paid, as a rule act honestly by their employers, but it is a fact known to the writer that the more poorly paid ones not only take game for their own use, but frequently sell it in order to provide themselves with drink. In almost every district in which game is preserved it is well known to the working people that the keepers will purchase, on behalf of their masters, eggs which they know to have been stolen.
In August, 1900, a show of gamekeepers’ dogs was held at the Royal Aquarium, London. We quote from a London paper:
“I would rather have one of these dogs with me in a night row than three men,” said Mr. W. Burton to a representative yesterday. He was gazing fondly at five ferocious-looking bull mastiffs in the Westminster Aquarium, where a show of gamekeepers’ dogs is being held. “If they were unmuzzled,” he added, “one alone could tear a strong man to pieces in five minutes. At Thorneywood Kennels, Nottingham, I have trained these dogs to help the gamekeeper in catching night poachers, and although they are kept muzzled a man has no chance with them. If he attempts to run away he is knocked down instantly and kept a prisoner until the keeper arrives. They are the same breed of dogs that were used for bull-baiting in the last century.”
With long imprisonment, or even penal servitude staring him in the face, and the prospect of immediate violence from man, or dog, or both, it is not to be wondered at that the poacher often turns out “a rough handful.” All will remember Kingsley’s lines:
“There’s blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire,
There’s blood on your pointer’s feet;
There’s blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there’s blood on the game you eat.”
It is probably not too much to say that hundreds of encounters between poachers and gamekeepers occur every winter in this country. Except in cases where life is lost, the London papers do not report them, and even then they do not always do so. Local papers, published in districts where game is preserved, are the sheets to search for such records.
It may be mentioned here that in the neighbourhood of London gamekeepers are much less aggressive and brutal than in remote districts. Near London they seldom attempt to arrest poachers. Acting under orders, presumably, they content themselves with following poachers and identifying them if possible, for the purpose of summoning them afterwards. Moreover, the punishment meted out to poachers in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis is much lighter, as a rule, than in the provinces. This is believed on all hands to be due to the criticism and denunciation of harsh sentences by Reynolds’s Newspaper and other Radical organs. Such is the effect of this criticism that some years ago, after the occurrence of some bloody affrays, orders were given on some estates near Croydon, that in future poachers were to be simply ordered off the land, and were not even to be summoned unless they resorted to violence. These orders were afterwards withdrawn, but the fact that they were given shows that game-preservers are fearful of losing their privileges if public attention is directed to them.
In reading reports of poaching affrays it is well to remember that it is almost invariably the gamekeeper’s side of the case that is presented to the public. If the poacher escapes, he of course is never heard from. Even if he be caught he is seldom believed, and his description of the encounter seldom reported. There are exceptions to every rule, but it is the sincere belief of the present writer that, when they find themselves confronted by keepers, the vast majority of poachers would go away quietly if allowed. The abolition of the power of arrest would, therefore, be a long step in the direction of peace. The poacher, whether he poach for food or for sport, never believes that he is guilty of a moral crime. For this reason, the gamekeeper will never command the respect which is almost invariably accorded the policeman, even by the most hardened criminals. Policemen, as a rule, are humane in their treatment of prisoners, and chiefly because they do not suffer from any sense of personal wrong. With gamekeepers the case is widely different. From the depredations of the poacher they suffer, or think they may suffer, in repute or convenience, or even in pocket. In the circumstances it is little wonder that they frequently act brutally. As there are exceptions to all rules, there are, of course, exceptional magistrates who occasionally let light in on the dark ways of game-preserving. The following paragraph, culled from the Airdrie Advertiser of March 5, 1898, reveals a case in point:
“Charge against Gamekeepers.—On Thursday, before Sheriff Mair, at Airdrie, Robert Connor M’Guire, steelworker, 14, Watt Street, Mossend, pleaded guilty to a charge of daylight poaching. He was fined 31s., including expenses. Accused complained to the Sheriff that he had been assaulted by the two gamekeepers, and that he still bore marks of their violence upon his arms, which he was desirous of showing. The gamekeepers were called in and appeared to treat the accusation lightly, one of them remarking that ‘it was immaterial to him.’ The Sheriff sent for the Inspector of Police, whom he directed to take the gamekeepers into custody and M’Guire to make the charge of assault against them.”
We may here mention that all appointments of gamekeepers are invalid unless registered with the Clerk of the Peace. Very many of them are not so registered, and, therefore, their arrests, and attempted arrests, of poachers are illegal. The truth is that on many preserves nearly all the young labourers are keepers’ assistants. Many of them are desirous of getting appointed as keepers so as to escape from hard work, and these are often anxious to distinguish themselves by brutal conduct towards not only poachers, but the most harmless trespassers.