Many of us from rural areas may have had ancestors who were gamekeepers, responsible for stopping locals from poaching game on privately owned estates. My own 3x-great-grandfather was from a farming family in Dorset. He moved to neighbouring Hampshire in the mid-Victorian era to work as a gamekeeper, before becoming a farmer himself. His farming background gave him a good knowledge of animals and land, and his appearances in the local press show how he was regularly called on to report burglars and poachers in his area to the police, and to give evidence about them in court.

Given that both gamekeepers and, sometimes, the poachers they were tasked with preventing or apprehending were armed with firearms, it’s perhaps not surprising that court records and newspaper reports are full of stories about injuries and even deaths relating to these individuals. For example, in 1858, an ‘affray’, as it was described, took place between gamekeepers and poachers who were on an estate belonging to Richard Watt in Bishop Burton, a village some three miles from Beverley in East Yorkshire. One gamekeeper, named Jacques, was shot and killed; one of the ‘watchers’, Barrow, received such serious injuries to his head and face that he was not likely to live long; and a third man was shot in the stomach and was in a dangerous condition. It was said that ten to 12 poachers were involved – outnumbering the gamekeepers.

One of the most notorious and well-publicised cases took place three decades later, near Evesham in Worcestershire. The fourth son of Louis Philippe, the last King of France, was the Duke of Aumale, who bought the Wood Norton estate near Evesham in 1872. The estate was a popular place for poachers to roam at night, and so, as with many estates, gamekeepers had to be employed to protect the duke’s lands. In 1889, the gamekeeper was Frederick Stephens, known as Frank. He was a 25-year-old man from Lenchwick, down the road from Wood Norton, the son of an agricultural labourer. In the winter of 1888, Frederick had married Esther Stanton, and their son Herbert was born the following spring. Herbert would never know his father, as Frederick would be dead by the end of that year.

Frederick had the misfortune to be protecting the duke’s lands on the night of Sunday 10 November 1889. Misfortune because it was on this night that a group of men decided to go poaching in their local area. They were two brothers – Joseph and Samuel Boswell – and Alfred Hill, known, whether sarcastically or not, as ‘Lovely’. Frederick had been in the keeper’s hut in the woods when he spotted the men trespassing on the duke’s estate; he immediately left the hut and walked towards them. Joseph Boswell swore, then shouted, Let him have it! One man hit Stephens and tried to strangle him. The gamekeeper responded by getting Joseph’s finger in his mouth and biting it. Then all three started kicking him around the head. It was not clear from reports as to whether Stephens was fatally injured by the blows to his head – which fractured his skull in several places – or whether he was shot during the attack. The Boswells were soon arrested and charged with night poaching and maliciously wounding the gamekeeper; when Stephens, after lingering on, critically injured, for six days (during which he was apparently able to give his own account of what happened) finally died, Joseph and Samuel Boswell were charged with his murder. Alfred Hill, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found.

Shortly before the end of November, the funeral of Frederick Stephens took place at Norton Church. His death had shocked the local community of Norton and Lenchwick, and so there was what was described as a ‘vast’ number of mourners, including distinguished people from Evesham and its surrounding area as well as Frederick’s friends, family and acquaintances. The Duke of Aumale sent his own carriage to transport the chief mourners, and two of his servants, clad in the Aumale livery, represented the Comte and Comtesse de Paris. Frederick had been a member of the Evesham lodge of the Oddfellows, and 70 of his fellow members followed his coffin to its grave. Frederick’s widow, Esther, bravely attended his funeral, and ‘there were universal manifestations of sympathy with her in the tragic bereavement which has befallen her’, according to the local papers.

Now the process of justice ground into gear. The Boswells, who were both local and well known, were found to have been drinking with Hill in a pub the night before the attack, when they had dogs with them for poaching. One of them was heard swearing, saying, ‘Let any *** come. We’ll knock his *** head off.’ On being questioned, Joseph Boswell quickly confessed to his role in the attack.

In December, Alfred Hill was tracked down to Birmingham and charged with murder. He was brought before the magistrates to be indicted. He, together with the two Boswells, was duly tried for Frederick’s murder at the Worcestershire Assizes, and convicted, sentenced to death. However, Hill was then reprieved early the following year, allegedly because of his youth. This decision caused great surprise in the press, for, at 23 years old, he was only six years younger than Joseph Boswell. But instead of the argument being that Hill should be hanged, the public seemed to believe that the Boswells should also be reprieved instead. The vicar and mayor of Evesham organised a telegram to the local MP, Sir Richard Temple, expressing the ‘universal indignation’ of the town about what had happened, and requesting that he pass on their feelings to the Home Secretary. Around 250 local women similarly sent a telegram asking that the Boswells be reprieved. Even the foreman of the jury that had convicted the three men, Frank Woodward of Hanley Castle, called on the Boswells to be reprieved, arguing that it did not make sense that Hill had been reprieved when he was arguably more involved in the murder than the brothers. It was noted in the local newspaper that ‘the murdered keeper and his wife seemed quite out of mind, and one did not hear a single word of sympathy in respect to Mrs Stephens or her child.’

But the calls from the community went unheeded. On Tuesday 11 March 1890, Joseph Boswell, 29, and his older brother Samuel, 39, were executed at Worcester Gaol. They had been woken up at five o’clock that morning for a breakfast of bread and butter with a cup of tea, and ate well. They both seemed calm. It was only when they had caps put over their faces that they lost their composure, Samuel becoming faint and having to be carried to the scaffold. Joseph cried out, ‘Oh, my dear wife!’ and Samuel replied, ‘Yes, and mine, and my poor children!’ Then Joseph said, ‘Goodbye, Sam!’ to the brother he could hear next to him but not see, and Samuel replied, ‘Goodbye, Joe, boy. God bless you! Oh dear, oh dear.’ The last words were uttered by Joseph – ‘I hope everybody will do well’ – and then they both hanged. Neither brother had been told that Alfred Hill had been reprieved.

Then life carried on much as it had before for most of Evesham’s residents. Frank Woodward, the jury foreman at the brothers’ trial, went back to his farm at Hanley Castle, and his wife and four children. He would still be there 20 years later. Esther, Frederick’s widow, was just 24 when he died. She never remarried, but instead continued to live in Lenchwick, moving back in with her parents in order to raise her son. Not too far away were the families of the Boswells. Joseph’s widow Elizabeth, like Esther, moved in with her parents in order to raise her two daughters, and undertook gardening to make a living. Samuel left behind his wife, also Elizabeth, and five children, the youngest of whom, Annie, was born the year her father was executed.

Life changed for Alfred Hill, though. Having had a difficult background – he had been in a boys’ reformatory by the age of 15 – he had now escaped death by a whisker. He would live knowing that his friends and fellow gardeners, Samuel and Joseph, had hanged for an offence he had also been convicted of. However, his reprieve meant a life sentence instead, and he served his sentence at Gillingham Male Convict Prison, and subsequently at Dartmoor prison.

Poaching was a real problem at this time, a leftover of an earlier age when local men could roam the common lands in search of food for their families. But poaching on the wealthy estates in rural areas was trespass, and when faced with gamekeepers trying to protect their employer’s property, tempers could fray, or panic result in fights or even shots. What was at the heart of this case was that it was locals fighting each other – Frederick on behalf of his employer, and the Boswells and Hill on the other side, wanting to get away. The aftermath of the case saw three men dead, and their families having to continue living in the local area together. One can only wonder what their thoughts were if they ever saw each other: wives left widowed and children left fatherless, all in the same situation, yet probably unable to ever be friends because of the circumstances that left them in that situation in the first place.