Twixt Thistle & Rose

Recently, project volunteers have been sorting through stacks of police documents (including wanted posters, telegrams, printed notices, and handwritten letters) in the possession of the Berwick Constabulary, dating from the 1880s and 1890s. Much of these documents have been variant forms of correspondences and incoming communications from other police constabularies from many diverse regions across the country. As to be expected, the most commonly reported crime in these documents concern the loss of property. Typically, the items most frequently stolen and pursued were watches (usually lever watches and their accompanying chains known as ‘Alberts’) and jewelry such as brooches. Following these, there were many listings of stolen clothing or material goods, with garments such as jackets and higher-end fabrics such as ‘Persian silk’ routinely being listed as lost. With some of these listings, there occasionally is found attached to the notice a selection of matching fabric swatches to help aid the police in their investigations

 Many of the reports found in the archival documents were copies of itemized lists of stolen goods from Newcastle, usually describing the missing goods in great detail and likely an example of routine mass-distribution of information across the region’s police stations.   As demonstrated through their recurrence within these documents, the frequency and commonality of this type of petty to mid-level, property-based crime shows us that the intersection between crime and poverty in this period was an interlocked phenomenon. Indeed, many of these instances of petty theft, such as the taking of small items like silk handkerchiefs, is exemplary of a kind of opportunistic criminal enterprise, and one was usually only small-scale in its remit. A key example of this is the case of a vagabond who spotted some clothes drying on a hedge and decided to swap them with his own and disappear with a freshly clean new wardrobe. There were several other instances of this type of opportunistic theft occurring in rural communities too, and usually these involved the taking of animals such as horses and/or livestock such as the stealing of two sheep in Hawick or another case of duck-napping in Crosshall outside of Eccles .

 

With many of these cases found within the documents, the role of transportation is clearly a crucial element in understanding how the 1880s and 1890s were experienced as decades that saw an increased interaction between mobility, geography, and the interaction of different social classes.

Similarly, with the transformation that increased mobility had brought for criminal opportunities, the uptake of transportation and technology by law enforcement was equally fervent. This is clear in the way these posters, notices, and letters held with the archives show the way in which crimes that have taken place, sometimes, in completely different regions of the country, are nonetheless circulated and made apparent to the numerous police forces across the nation. As with the roof-cutting burglary, which in reality has little to do with the Berwick constabulary, other similar cases such as the theft of some prized artwork in London (which included works by Constable and Alma-Tadema), demonstrate how communication lines had transformed the way in which police activity was increasingly expanding at the end of the century and had transformed local crime into something of national attention. The urgency of many of the letters also show that the postal system had reached an incredibly efficient standard by the 1890s, in which communication of crime was able to be successfully dispersed great distances within the space of 24-48 hours after its discovery. As is evident with these cases listed here, the breadth of the geography covered is wide and the breadth of communication is shown to be extensive with cases ranging from Portsmouth, to Cardiff, to Worcester, and up to Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Although much of these crimes demonstrate a similar kind of narrative in the way the events play-out in the reports, there are a few notable instances of slightly more unique approaches to theft. One such example involves a thief in Glasgow posing as a local barrack’s representative, described as ‘looking respectable’ and dressed as a soldier. The man acquired a significant number of watches from a city jewelers, convincing the shop owner that he was a liaison for the city’s barracks before disappearing with the items. It was found that a similar crime had also been committed in Edinburgh, suggesting that this individual had developed a successful system that was dependent upon his apparent credibility in order to poach these items with relative ease. It is notable the way in which the physical description of suspects often hinges around this idea of ‘respectability’, and there is clearly an unspoken code or shorthand of what qualities this term would suggest.

In a similar vein to the ‘respectable’ watch thief, there were multiple instances of embezzlement and fraud found in the reports, often which required a level of coercion and subterfuge greater than the standard opportunistic pilfering found in watch and brooch thefts. One such case involved a man known by the name of H. G. Henry who described himself as a retired army captain and went around the Tyneside area taking out finely furnished rooms under the pretence that his belongings and money were delayed in arriving. Once suspicions started to encroach upon Mr. Henry, he then disappeared without paying for the rooms and services he had made use of. Other such cases of fraud include an incident concerning door-to-door subscription fraud, another regarding cheque fraud committed in Glasgow and a case of embezzlement by John Bough [BA/P/15/4/94] from Liverpool who was suspected of attempting to leave the country with the £13 (£1640 in 2018) he had swiped from his cash register at the Liverpool Patent Stopper Mineral Water Company.

One case concerning embezzlement shows the unique way in which police communication can serve as a glimpse into the way in which perception and memory were used to help further investigations during the period. In the case of a man called Charles Mackie, accused of embezzlement in 1890 [BA/P/15/11/95], the notice shows a perfect distillation of the way in which physical description was utilised within police communication in order to compensate for the lack of photographic evidence: Mackie is described as having ‘one eye nearly turned out of sight when looking upward but is in the habit of looking at the ground’. Other cases echo this kind of thumbnail character sketch in which small details are registered, with one describing a suspect as having a ‘squeaky voice’ and a ‘fast walk’, whilst another is described as having worn out shoes, another as having noticeable dental issues, and another describing a man in his 70s who, conspicuously, sported a ‘long light-coloured wig.’ It is through these small instances of eccentricity in the reportage that many volunteers find glimmers of something tangible when working with these documents that help to enliven the past through their specificity.

One surprising revelation found in the sifting of these documents is the fact that violence is featured less prominently than initially suspected. This could be because, as today, theft was clearly a more common crime; but it could also be that also be that cases of violence that did occur within a district were generally dealt with in a swifter manner and thus the need for inter-district communication was reduced. That being said, there are, of course, some notable cases of violent crime such as one of matricide in Edinburgh committed by Henry Lang [BA/P/15/11/101], a case of murder-suicide concerning insurance, and a poster on an Italian gang murder in London in 1890, complete with an illustration of the suspect, Michele Ardolino.

In a similar vein, there were some occasional cases of missing persons and even more uncommonly, cases of missing children, such as Mary Ann McKinley who had escaped from the South Shields workhouse [BA/P/15/15/28]. Also found was a report of a missing 2-year-old girl called Margaret Campbell, who was allegedly taken by ‘trampers’ from her home at 6 Fleet Court, Gallowgate in Newcastle in 1885. The report contained detailed descriptions of her appearance, describing her hair as being cut in a ‘can-can’ fashion and that she was wearing a ‘blue flannel petticoat and dark blue flannel frock’ but, crucially was without hat, stockings, or boots. Another case that was uncovered has a kind of tragic sensationalism to it that nonetheless shows the level vulnerability operating within Victorian society: it tells of a parcel which arrived in Bristol from Edinburgh and was opened up to reveal the body of dead, 2-week-old baby. Though only one document, it nonetheless bears the weight of a multitude of different narratives ranging from the immediate questions of who, why, and what happened, to larger stories of infant mortality and poverty to the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses such as postpartum psychosis (if, indeed, this is even part of this case’s story).

Many of these cases bear the burden of requiring further investigation by the very nature of them being fragmentary glimpses into larger stories of lives that have at some point intersected with the law. It this kind of meeting with the ordinary and the everyday of the past that many of our volunteers have found most rewarding and illuminating when working with the documents. Like a small window into otherwise anonymous and forgotten lives, the documents provide a network between the past and the present and help to refocus the idea of where history occurs as in small actions and eccentric personalities that nonetheless reverberate back to us today. In addition to mediating would-be forgotten individuals, the documents also show through their annotations, scribblings, misspellings, and messy handwriting the very sense of aliveness between the past and today that can only be recovered when holding a faded telegram or a scuffed letter, with all its inkblots visible to see.

Ryan McNab

By 1881, Shadrach, now nearing age 20, and his family are living in Gateshead at 13 Union Place, part of the deprived Windmill Hill area. Much like his father and brother, he too is listed as a ‘hawker’. As the Nelsons are not referred to by the term ‘Pedlar’, it seems likely they would have a horse in their usage, although the vagueness around the differences between the various branches of street-sellers and/or travelling salespeople makes it difficult to claim certainty on this. The 1888
Hawkers Act clarifies this confusion of definition by describing the specification of ‘hawker’ as ‘any one [sic] who travels with a horse or other beast of burden, selling goods’. Certainly, as his thieving indicates, Shadrack seemed to have a familiarity with horses, both in terms of handling and riding them and of the potential market value they would hold.

The family’s move to Gateshead from the kind of rural villages and towns that we find them in prior to the 1881 census is in many ways typical of the urban migration many people undertook during the latter half of the 19th century. The strain of piecemeal income generated from the hawking trade, evidently pushed the Nelsons closer towards the urban centre of Tyneside in order to maximise their customer-base. Henry Mayhew describes how, even though the pedlar or hawker is
generally by 1861 ‘confined to the poorer districts’ of cities, the opportunity to be ‘the purveyor in general to the poor’ (5) resulted in a dependent relationship within working- class communities upon hawkers and their wares.

By the following year Shadrach had departed from the rest of his family and begun his year or two of horse stealing. Returning to where we first met Shadrach in 1882 in the Hawick area, research shows that from the start of the year he is away from the Gateshead area where we last left his family, suggesting he left home sometime after 3 rd April 1881 when census was recorded. Commencing on the 11th of January in Horton, Northumberland, Shadrach would go to steal horses from Blyth on the 8th of February; Barnard Castle, Winlaton, and Marwood in April; Billingham,
County Durham on 15th of May; and Alston in Cumbria on the 8th of July. As these are only the recorded due to his having been caught, it is likely that he committed more thefts of this nature throughout the year also. Several newspaper reports give us little clues as to how Shadrach operated during these crimes: Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail (27th Jul 1883) tells us that during the theft at Billingham, Shadrach had befriended the son of Mr Robert Thompson, the horse-owner that he would go on to steal from. It describes how Shadrach had watched Mr Thompson’s son ‘put the
horse into field’ before ‘walking back towards Billingham with him’, later returning that night to take the horse. With all of his thefts, he would go on to try and sell these horses, which was often how he was apprehended. He would usually try to either ‘swop’ (Cumberland and Westmoreland Herald, 8 July 1882) the stolen horses or sell them for anywhere between £5 – £15, which today ranges from about £600 – £1770. Many of the newspaper articles refer to Nelson as a ‘Notorious Horse Stealer’ and also note several of the aliases he used to go undetected, such as John Robinson, John Stewart, and Watson.

After having been caught a total of 7 times through 1882, Shadrach is sentenced in several different trials the following year to 3 different 6-month prisons sentences. He is sentenced to hard labour, which often meant performing such tasks as quarrying or rock-breaking, building roads, treadmill-walking, and/or crank-pulling. These would usually be undertaken in silence and in isolation. Whilst by no means would any of these punishments be considered easy or desirable, it is worth noting
that for some, the reality of prison life at this time was in some ways more agreeable than their alternative option of staying in a poor house/workhouse.

Commencing with the Poor Law in 1834, the ‘policy toward vagrants combined a legal recognition of their right to relief with a determination to award this relief under intensely disagreeable conditions.’ (6) These disagreeable conditions in some instances were taken to such an extremity that at ‘The [sic] vast majority of homeless wayfarers preferred to take refuge in dosshouses, charitable shelters, the streets, or even the prisons rather than in the casual wards’ as ‘The prisons were generally held to be less punitive than the casual wards; they offered a better diet and lighter labour tasks than the workhouses’ (7) . This is not to say that Shadrach had an intention of being caught and arrested, but it perhaps throws into relief the kind of options he faced as a young man who had grown up in poverty, likely with no education (illiteracy among Travellers and Gypsies was almost uniform (8 ), and whose alternative for some form security was a workhouse, an option most Gypsies and Travellers rarely partook of (9) , it is perhaps more understandable as to why for Shadrach, he so often relied on theft throughout this period of his life.

Because of the interrelationship between Travellers and hawking, often the profession had commonly been associated with thieving and other nefarious activities. Henry Mayhew expresses this prejudice when he describes costermongers (urban food vendors) as ‘slippery customers’ and later lumps all kinds of itinerant working-class trades together when he writes that ‘beggars, patterers, hawkers, tramps, and vendors of their own manufacture, are mingled with thieves, women of easy virtue, and men of no virtue at all’. The confluence between hawkers/pedlars and criminal activities such as poaching and theft were certainly at times a warranted association. For example, poaching gangs frequently ‘had informal contracts with itinerant vendors or with tradesmen who sold their catch over the counter in shops, stalls and public houses.’ (10) Therefore, it is not unlikely that Shadrach would fall in to this kind of enterprise, in that proximity to criminal activity would oftentimes be a commonplace occurrence for him both as a child and as a young man. Furthermore,
his frequency in returning to horse-stealing throughout this year implies that his position within rural society is one of such precarity and suspicion that he regularly would have had no other option in gaining money or food. Interestingly, one article mentions that he was also wanted for desertion of the 3rd Battalion Durham Light Infantry, which indicates that he had dipped his toe in a different stream of employment, though clearly without much commitment or success.

After serving his time for these horse-thefts, Shadrach gets married in the December quarter of 1884 to Charlotte Maria Drummond, born in the Ford area and similarly hailing from a family of hawkers. The marriage record lists the couple as living in Newcastle with two other people, Bridget Horan and James Croney, likely sharing a single room. Though he does return to stealing, at least as far as the records show, he is indicted and fined £2 11s for resisting police arrest in June of 1886 in Berwick, along with 3 others, one of which is likely to be his wife. Though the incident is not described, it is worth noting that the relationship between Travellers and the rural police force was a long one of tension and, at times, harassment on the behalf of the police. (11)

By the time we find him at the next census, aged 29, the couple were living in the Freeholders Quarter in present day Longhorsley with their two-year-old son, Shadrach jnr., born in Wooler. By this time, both Shadrach and Mary are listed as a ‘licenced hawker’ on the census records. With his history of convictions earlier in the decade, it is notable that Shadrach is evidently working within the requisite legal framework for a hawker. As required, a licenced hawker was expected to be of ‘of
good character and a proper person’ as judged by a local constabulary’s inspector, clergy, or justice. We can somewhat assume, then, that family life had made Shadrach a little bit more law-abiding, if only on paper.

Nonetheless, life would remain challenging for the family and they found themselves living in slum accommodation at 16 Liverpool Street in Newcastle by 1901.

By this time, Charlotte had given birth to Anne and Margaret and the family were once again inhabiting a single room. Life in Newcastle evidently proved somewhat stable for the Nelsons as they are found 10 years later living in the same street, this time at number 7, indicating a pattern of
movement that often saw them returning to the city. This is typical of the kind of routes that Traveller and Gypsy communities operated within at this period, usually drifting back into urban areas during the winter months before moving back through the countryside as the weather improved and seasonal work began to pick up again in the spring. (12) In the 1911 census, Shadrach and Mary’s daughter Ann, now 17 is recorded as assisting in the business of her parents, although it is assumed that Margaret, 16, is similarly involved in the business, as no other profession is otherwise listed. By this time, Shadrach jnr. had left the family environment and simply recorded as absent.

Shadrach jnr.’s own relationship to the law is similarly as fraught as his father’s was in the 1880’s. An article in the Jedburgh Gazette, 23 Feb. 1907, describes how Shadrach jnr., now aged 18, was ‘sentenced to seven days imprisonment for stealing seven sheepskins and nine lbs of wool from the premises of Elliot, Taggart & Company’, of which he shortly ‘brought them back and sold them
to the same firm.’ Clearly, the brazenness of some of his father’s earlier exploits had been passed on to his son. He would go on to be fined in 1922 for poaching salmon in Kelso, arrested for a burglary at Norham in 1924, and in 1929, would be sentenced to six months imprisonment for theft of ‘a quantity of horse hair, an overcoat, and seventy empty sacks’ from a farm in Earlston, Berwickshire. His name would further come up in association with the theft of some wool in 1930 in Ancrum.

Records suggest that he was married in 1915 to a Sarah Anderson in Hawick, who would go on to give birth to another Shadrach in the September quarter of that same year in Newcastle. Shadrach III would also have several brushes with the law, including burglary in Wark-on-Tweed in 1931, an assault on a policeman in Alnwick in 1939, and a further assault on a policeman and car theft in 1955. What happened to Sarah is unclear; whether Shadrach jnr. and herself separated, divorced, or
whether she died, it is unknown. Regardless, he remarried in 1948, after having cohabited in Alnwick with Eva Mills since at least 1939. Perhaps the most startling crime in Shadrach jnr.’s lifetime is his accidental murder of Eva in 1950. Evidently, Shadrach jnr. was playing target practice with his nephew when the gun misfired and fatally hit Eva in neck. He was cleared of intent by a jury, though the judge did admonish him for his senselessness and negligence at firing a shotgun indoors. Sharach jnr. would die 6 years later at the age of 67.

Returning finally, to his father’s life, Shadrach would manage to survive into his early 80’s. This is remarkable when considering the way in which his life was spent in between many places, devoid of much comfort. Henry Mayhew, although steeped in class-prejudice, describes hawkers of the mid-1800’s as living roughly to the point of eventual collapse: ‘Many of these hawkers drink hard, and, being often men of robust constitution, until the approach of age, can live “hard,”—as regards
lodging, especially. One hawker I heard of slept in a slaughter-house, on the bare but clean floor, for nearly two years.’ Clearly the hardship of hawking manifested in a life always at the edge of deprivation. Charlotte dies in Kelso in 1927 from a cerebral haemorrhage; on her death certificate, we find an ‘X’ in place of where Shadrach’s signature would be, confirming that he, like many of his socioeconomic background, was indeed illiterate. After Charlotte’s death, Shadrach seems to continue to drift around as before. In 1935, now aged 73, he is accused of having received stolen goods in Alnwick. He is described as having ‘no fixed abode’ and having knowingly received a stolen
harness and pony (horses are certainly a theme throughout his life). Luckily for Shadrach, the charges are dismissed when he agrees to return the pony to the owner, a Mr. Laidler. Despite his avoidance of reprimand, the article states that the Chairman of the proceedings held ‘grave suspicions against the accused.’ Evidently, Shadrach is still operating with a kind of precariousness that results in ostracism from local communities and despite his age, he continues to drift from place to place.

He seemingly continues to wander about for the next 7 years before his death in 1942. His death certificate records him as having died from ‘carcinoma of the oesophagus’ at 2.55am on the 27 th of January, 1942, aged 81 in Birgham, Eccles. His death was registered by his daughter Margaret Souther in Eccles, so it is assumed that he was staying with her at the time of his death. Both Shadrach and his wife Charlotte are buried in Kelso, along with their son Shadrach jnr.

What Shadrach Nelson’s life shows us is that the life of a hawker and his family was certainly one of strife and uncertainty. As is evident with Shadrach, hawking required a lifestyle that is prepared to be constantly uprooted, living with a lack of security, and often receiving little material return. In many ways, it is the stuff of popular lore when thinking about the 19th century’s relationship to wealth, poverty, and those who battled to survive within it.

Certainly, Shadrach Nelson and his namesakes were no angels, and the reliance upon theft showed a disconnect between himself and the communities he moved through. Yet, or rather, because of this somewhat archetypal narrative of economic struggle and social exclusion, Shadrach Nelson’s story reveals an incredibly lucid portrait of life lived in penury in the Victorian north-east, one in which
the impulse to dismiss certain actions as merely criminal is perhaps too simple a charge to level him and those like him. And if his resilience has shown us anything, those charges will probably never stick anyway.

Shadrach Nelson, 28 October 1861 – 27 January 1942.

5 Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851.

6 Rachel Vorspan. ‘Vagrancy and the New Poor Law in Late-Victorian and Edwardian England’,
The English Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 362 (Jan, 1977), pp. 59-81, p. 60.

7 Ibid, p. 64.

8 the 1967 Plowden Report found that almost all Gypsy or Traveller adults ‘were completely
illiterate’, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/22/gypsies-lagging-education-
gypsies-travellers.

9 ‘Gypsies rarely haunted either casual wards or common lodging houses’: Behlmer, ‘Gypsy
Problem in Victorian England’, p. 234.

10 D. J. V. Jones, ‘The Poacher: A Study in Crime and Protest’, The Historical Journal, 22.4 (Dec.,
1979), Cambridge University Press, pp. 825-860, p. 850.

11 Behlmer, ‘Gypsy Problem’, p. 235.

12 ‘it seemed unlikely that even they [gypsies] could resist the onslaught of urban civilization.
Already by mid-century, small bands were finding city homes during the winter months.’ George
K. Behlmer, ‘The Gypsy Problem’, p. 240.
See also https://www.historytoday.com/archive/britains-gypsy-travellers-people-outside

N.B.: Throughout much of the recorded material (i.e. censuses, birth, death, marriage certificates, and newspaper articles) there are many variations in the spelling of ‘Shadrach’ (such as ‘Shadrack’, ‘Shaderick’, and ‘Shadrick’). For the sake of clarity, ‘Shadrach’ has been chosen as the catch-all version.

On Wednesday the 8^th of February, 1882 a telegram was sent to John Garden, the superintendent of the Berwick Constabulary from Andrew Rutherford, an inspector of the Blyth police.

The telegram told of a man called Shadrach Nelson, who had been arrested in the town of Hawick in Roxburghshire for a ‘Pony stealing’ charge in the Blyth area and had subsequently escaped custody. A newspaper article from the following week (14^th February, 1882) in the Southern Reporter describes Shadrach’s flee from imprisonment. It tells that Shadrach was left alone with a Mrs. Chapman, the wife of the Constable left in charge of his detention. Having noticed his opportunity, he managed to persuade Mrs. Chapman to release him for a few moments respite. The newspaper goes on to describe how Shadrach ‘bolted to the door and made his way up the Loan’ (a street in Hawick), after which he managed to evade recapture despite the attempts to apprehend him from ‘four or five constables’ and ‘a very large crowd’.

The following two years for Shadrach Nelson would be spent in and out of court for similar crimes of horse theft across the north-east region. In total, research suggests that Shadrach would spend much of 1882 on a crime-spree of horse thieving, of which he was caught, arrested, and later tried for 7 separate incidents.

On the surface, the evidence suggests that Nelson was a prolific criminal of seemingly ineffective capabilities but nonetheless possessed some form of persuasive or manipulative characteristics, as evidenced by his flee from jail. Whether committed through a kind of careless boldness, circumstantial desperation, or a likely combination of both, what Shadrach Nelson’s streak of horse stealing shows us is a somewhat archetypical story of a person on the fringes of rural poverty during the latter half of the 19^th century. How came to be that Nelson, at the age of 21, found himself in and out of prison for mid-level larceny is a story that reads like a window into Victorian destitution.

Shadrach McGregor Nelson was born on the 28^th of October, 1861 in the village of Chatton, near Wooler in Northumberland. He was the second son of James and Ann Nelson, born in to a family of first-generation Irish Travellers whose father had migrated from Ireland at some point in the 1810’s or 1820’s and had moved through the Scottish borders and northern England throughout the following decades.

At the time of the 1861 census, recorded before Shadrach was born later that year, James and Ann Nelson are documented as living with James’ father, also James, his mother, Catherine, and their other 7 children, whose ages ranged from 19 to 1 years old. Also, in residence at the property is James and Ann’s first child and Shadrach’s older brother, James (III) born in 1859/60. The census describes the family as being ‘Travellers’, with James snr. being born in Ireland in 1812. Shadrach’s father, James, was born in Scotland in 1831, so it is assumed that James snr. and Catherine, herself hailing from the Morpeth area, married somewhere near that date. The birth records of several of their children vary from up to Scotland (James jnr.) and west to Cumberland, demonstrating a wide area of movement covered by the Nelsons.

As their occupation is listed as ‘travellers’, it is clear that their accommodations in Chatton would not have been comfortable, spacious, or even permanent. Though no address is recorded, it is highly likely that a family of 12, existing within this incredibly low economic bracket, arguably outside even the poorest of those living in abject poverty at the time, would be occupying a single room dwelling or perhaps even little more than a stable or barn. As the 1861 census was taken on the 6^th of June, the likelihood that the family were sleeping in a farm building or even outdoors is increasingly likely due to the time of year.

By the taking of the next census on the 6^th of June 1871, James and Ann are no longer living with his parents and siblings, but are instead found encamped on Mattillees Hill, near the village of Duddo, Northumberland. This time, the fact of their temporary accommodation is confirmed. In addition to their sons James and Shadrach (now aged 9), they also have three daughters (Margaret, 1866; Ann, 1869; Catherine, 1870). The various different locations of their children’s births (Glanton, Eglingham, Norham, Nesbit, and Spittal) shows the iterant nature of the family. Noticeably, Shadrach’s birthplace is here recorded as Eglingham, Northumberland, instead of Chatton when his birth was registered. Throughout his life, various different censuses would note different and conflicting places of birth for most of the family members, showing that the relationship to place for the Nelsons was either misremembered or in some ways malleable – a phenomenon not unusual for families whose circumstances required regular upheaval.  

Interestingly, at the time of this census, the legislative attempts to reckon with the sizable itinerant population (in 1909 the Salvation Army estimated upwards of 60,000 people were homeless[1]) were struggling to be met. The 1824 Vagrant Act had bestowed upon local law enforcement the powers of prosecution for the homeless population, but in practice it was often hard to prove specifically that the accused had no means of support and therefore should face some form of local intervention, or in reality, retribution.

The Victorian relationship to Gypsy and Traveller communities was a complex one. On the one hand, there was a cult of Romanticisation by some in the urban middle-class over the direct relationship to the landscape and nature that Gypsies seemed to demonstrate, developed much in light of the rapid urbanisation occurring throughout the country; on the other hand they were continually ostracised as racially other, morally degenerate, and therefore criminally dangerous. Furthermore, their lifestyle in general posed a point of frustration for a society that was increasingly reliant upon fixed notions of property and location: ‘Victorian “travelers” were […] part of a shifting population whose contours left a society enamoured of statistical precision frankly baffled.’[2]

In the case of the Nelsons, it is evident that this kind of living was not an unusual circumstance for the family. When Shadrach would later become involved in horse-stealing, one of the newspaper reports states that his ‘uncle and other relatives slept in a loose box at the prosecutor’s farm’[3] (a loose box referring to a stable or enclosed area to keep horses). These sorts of sleeping arrangements would continue through the family into James and Ann’s grandson, Shadrach Jr.’s, lifetime, as evidenced when he was fined in 1946 for trespassing after camping outside of Hawick[4]. It seems clear that the Nelsons, like many families, of both Traveller and non-Traveller lineage, had a complicated and precarious relationship to property and shelter throughout their lives and that their frequent movement both determined and was a product of their operating one the edges of wider working-class life.

In the case of the Nelsons, James is listed on this census as being a ‘Hawker of Earthenware’, an occupation typical of Traveller and Gypsy communities during this period. As of the year of this census, 1871, it would be expected of James to have paid the local police for the right to trade as laid out by the 1871 Pedlar’s Act, though as this restricted itinerant pedlars and hawker’s movements to a specific locality and would require the acquisition of a new licence for every new local authority, it could be assumed that someone such as James Nelson would not be in full complicity with the law. Perhaps because of this inefficiency of the legislation’s breadth, this law was amended in 1881 to allow licenced hawkers to trade within any locality without risk of fine. As is demonstrated here by their temporary setup on Mattillees Hill, the nature of hawking typically resulted in precarious living situations that required a flexible relationship to where one resided. As is pertinent to this case, the Nelsons were likely en route to their next market, village, or town to try to sell some of their earthenware pottery when the census was recorded.  

By the time of the next census in 1881, his youngest sister Catherine is no longer listed, suggesting she had died; when and where is unknown. Although obviously tragic, what is perhaps more remarkable is that James, Shadrach, Margaret, Ann, and later three more daughters (Charlotte, Catherine, Jane), all seemingly reached adulthood in spite of these arduous circumstances of poverty. The difficulty of looking after, what would-be eventually, 8 children without any security of shelter, income, food, and physical safety shows us the trying circumstances that helped to produce Shadrach’s later complicated relationship with authority.

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[1] It should be noted that this was not contemporaneously verified and therefore could be inflationary; nonetheless, the likely number of homeless or ‘vagrant’ people during the second half of the 19^th century was probably well within the tens of thousands so the figure serves as a useful illustration of the contemporary anxieties regarding the homeless or itinerant population.

George K. Behlmer, ‘The Gypsy Problem in Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 1985), pp. 231-253, p. 233.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Reported in ‘Pony Stealing at Horton’, Morpeth Herald, 20 Jan 1883.

[4] Jedburgh Gazette, 20 Jun 1946.