grouse, or something or other.-How would you set about doing it? I should, of course, request the persons with whom I am in the habit of dealing, to use their influence to bring me what they could by a certain day; I should speak to the dealers and the mail-guards, and coachmen, to produce a quantity; and I should send to my own connections in one or two manors where I have the privilege of selling for those gentlemen; and should send to Scotland to say, that every week the largest quantity they could produce was to be sent. Being but a petty salesman, I sell a very small quantity; but I have had about 4000 head direct from one man.-Can you state the quantity of game which has been sent to you during the year? No; I may say, perhaps, 10,000 head; mine is a limited trade; I speak comparatively to that of others; I only supply private families.'-Report, p. 20. Poachers who go out at night cannot, of course, like regular tradesmen, proportion the supply to the demand, but having once made a contract, they kill all they can; and hence it happens that the game market is sometimes very much overstocked, and great quantities of game either thrown away, or disposed of by Irish hawkers to the common people at very inferior prices. 'Does it ever happen to you to be obliged to dispose of poultry at the same low prices you are obliged to dispose of game? It depends upon the weather; often when there is a considerable quantity on hand, and, owing to the weather, it will not keep till the following day, I am obliged to take any price that is offered; but we can always turn either poultry or game into some price or other; and if it was not for the Irish hawkers, hundreds and hundreds of heads of game would be spoiled and thrown away. It is out of the power of any person to conceive for one moment the quantity of game that is hawked in the streets. I have had opportunity more than other persons of knowing this; for I have sold, I may say, more game than any other person in the city; and we serve hawkers indiscriminately, persons who come and purchase probably six fowls or turkeys and geese, and they will buy heads of game with them.' -Report, p. 22. Live birds are sent up as well as dead; eggs as well as birds. The price of pheasants' eggs last year was 8s. per dozen; of partridges' eggs, 2s. The price of hares was from 3s. to 5s. 6d.; of partridges, from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. ; of pheasants, from 5s. to 5s. 6d. each, and sometimes as low as 1s. 6d. What have you given for game this year? It is very low indeed; I am sick of it; I do not think I shall ever deal again. We have got game this season as low as half-a-crown a brace (birds), and pheasants as low as 7s. a brace. It is so plentiful, there has been no end to spoiling it this season. It is so plentiful, it is of no use. In war time it was worth having; then they fetched 7s. and 8s. a brace.'— Report, p. 33. All the poulterers, too, even the most respectable, state, that it is absolutely necessary they should carry on this illegal traffic in the present state of the game laws; because their regular customers for poultry would infallibly leave any poulterer's shop from whence they could not be supplied with game. 'I have no doubt that it is the general wish at present of the trade not to deal in the article; but they are all, of course, compelled from their connections. If they cannot get game from one person, they can from another. Do you believe that poulterers are not to be found who would take out licences, and would deal with those very persons, for the purposes of obtaining a greater profit than they would have dealing as you would do? I think the poulterers in general are a respectable set of men, and would not countenance such a thing; they feel now that they are driven into å corner; that there may be men who would countenance irregular proceedings, I have no doubt.-Would it be their interest to do so, considering the penalty? No, I think not. The poulterers are perfectly well aware that they are committing a breach of the law at present. Do you suppose that those persons, respectable as they are, who are now committing a breach of the law, would not equally commit that breach if the law were altered? No, certainly not; at present it is so connected with their business that they cannot help it.-You said just now, that they were driven into a corner; what did you mean by that? We are obliged to aid and abet those men who commit those depredations, because of the constant demand for game, from different customers whom we supply with poultry. Could you carry on your business as a poulterer, if you refused to supply game? By no means; because some of the first people in the land require it of me.'-Report, p. 15. When that worthy Errorist, Mr. Bankes, brought in his bill of additional severities against poachers, there was no man of sense and reflection who did not anticipate the following consequences of the measure: — • Do you find that less game has been sold in consequence of the bill rendering it penal to sell game? Upon my word, it did not make the slightest difference in the world. Not immediately after it was made? No; I do not think it made the slightest difference.-It did not make the slightest sensation? No; I never sold a bird less.--Was not there a resolution of the poulterers not to sell game ? I was secretary to that committee. What was the consequence of that resolution? great deal of ill blood in the trade. One gentleman who just left the room did not come in to my ideas. I never had a head of game in my house; all my neighbours sold it; and as we had people on the watch, who were ready to watch it into the houses, it came to this, we were prepared to bring our actions against certain individuals, after sitting, perhaps, from three to four months, every week, which we did at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand; but we did not proceed with our actions, to prevent ill blood in the trade. We regularly met, and, as we conceived at the time, formed a committee of the most respectable of the trade. I was secretary of that committee. The game was sold in the city, in the vicinity of the Royal Exchange, cheaper than ever was known, because the people at our end of the town were afraid. I, as a point of honour, never had it in my house. I never had a head of game in my house that seaWhat was the consequence? I lost I lost my trade, and gave offence to gentlemen: a nobleman's steward, or butler, or cook, treated it as contumely; "Good God! what is the use of your running your head against the wall?"-You were obliged to begin the trade again? Yes, and sold more than ever.'-Report, p. 18. son. --- These consequences are confirmed by the evidence of every person before the Committee. All the evidence is very strong as to the fact, that dealing in game is not descreditable; that there are a great number of respectable persons, and, among the rest, the first poulterers in London, who buy game knowing it to have been illegally procured, but who would never dream of purchasing any other article procured by dishonesty. VOL. II. Y Are there not, to your knowledge, a great many people in this town who deal in game, by buying or selling it, that would not on any account buy or sell stolen property? Certainly; there are many capital tradesmen, poulterers, who deal in game, that would have nothing to do with stolen property; and yet I do not think there is a poulterer's shop in London, where they could not get game, if they wanted it. Do you think any discredit attaches to any man in this town for buying or selling game? I think none at all; and I do not think that the men to whom I have just referred would have any thing to do with stolen goods. Would it not, in the opinion of the inhabitants of London, be considered a very different thing dealing in stolen game or stolen poultry? Certainly. The one would be considered disgraceful, and the other not? Certainly; they think nothing of dealing in game; and the farmers in the country will not give information; they will have a hare or two of the very men who work for them; and they are afraid to give us information.'- Report, p. 31. The evidence of Daniel Bishop, one of the Bow Street officers, who has been a good deal employed in the apprehension of poachers, is curious and important, as it shows the enormous extent of the evil, and the ferocious spirit which the game laws engender in the common people. 'The poachers,' he says, เ came 16 miles. The whole of the village from which they were taken were poachers; the constable of the village, and the shoemaker, and other inhabitants of the village. I fetched one man 22 miles. There was the son of a respectable gardener; one of these was a sawyer, and another a baker, who kept a good shop there. If the village had been alarmed, we should have had some mischief; but we were all prepared with fire-arms. If poachers have a spite with the gamekeeper, that would induce them to go out in numbers to resist him. This party I speak of had something in their hats to distinguish them. They take a delight in setting-to with the gamekeepers; and talk it over afterwards how they served so and so. They fought with the butt-ends of their guns at Lord Howe's; they beat the gamekeepers shockingly.' Does it occur to you (Bishop is asked) to have had more applications, and to have detected more persons this season than in any former one? Yes; I think within four months there have been twenty-one transported that I have been at the taking of, and through one man turning evidence in each case, and without that they could not have been identified; the gamekeepers could not, or would not, identify them. The poachers go to the public house and spend their money; if they have a good night's work, they will go and get drunk with the money. The gangs are connected together at different public houses, just like a club at a public house; they are all sworn together. If the keeper took one of them, they would go and attack him for so doing.' Mr. Stafford, chief clerk of Bow Street, says, 'All the offences against the game laws which are of an atrocious description I think are generally reported to the public office in Bow Street, more especially in cases where the keepers have either been killed, or dangerously wounded, and the assistance of an officer from Bow Street is required. The applications have been much more numerous of late years* than they were formerly. Some of them have been cases of murder; but I do not think many have amounted to murder. There are many instances in which keepers have been very ill treated — they have been wounded, skulls have been fractured, and bones broken; and they have been shot at. A man takes a hare, or a pheasant, with a very different feeling from that with which he would take a pigeon or a fowl out of a farm-yard. The number of persons that assemble together is more for the purpose of protecting themselves against those that may apprehend them, than from any idea that they are actually committing depredation upon the property of another person; they do not consider it as property. I think there is a sense of morality and a distinction of crime existing in the men's minds, *It is only of late years that men have been transported for shooting at night. There are instances of men who have been transported at the Sessions for night poaching, who made no resistance at all when taken; but then their characters as old poachers weighed against them characters estimated probably by the very lords of manors who had lost their game. This disgraceful law is the occasion of all the murders committed for game. |
