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The Blakeney 'Gang' in the 1890s
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In the 1890s it was claimed by the local
establishment that a group of men from the Blakeney Hill area were exercising a
system of terrorism over the inhabitants of the Forest.
There were questions asked in the House of Commons. The Deputy Surveyor of the Forest of Dean,
Philip Baylis, who resided at Whitemead
Park, Parkend, thought
the situation serious enough to ask for a troop of cavalry. Instead the Chief
Constable, Admiral Henry Christian, only sent eight additional officers. 
To understand these actions today, it has
to be seen as a part of the continuing struggle by Foresters which resulted in
a number of violent confrontations and covert actions between the Crown and
commoners in the Blakeney area.
Trouble had started in 1893 when Philip
Baylis was appointed Deputy Surveyor. He was determined to rid the Forest of
commoners permanently and to extend the enclosures in the Forest
up to the statutory limit which had been the cause of the riots back in Warren
James's time.
A census of Forest of Dean
sheep in 1898 recorded that commoning was carried out by 236 people with a
total of 10,851 sheep. His threat of a complete ban fanned the flames of rebellion
in the Blakeney area.
In early May 1895 Blakeney's vicar, Alexander
Pringle, a supporter of the Deputy Surveyor, wrote a letter to the local press
in which he claimed that the area was becoming notorious for its 'exceptional
lawlessness'. He related that there had been numerous acts of atrocious cruelty
to horses, donkeys, and sheep, as well as fowls stolen, the motive being to
drive out from their privilege of pasture other persons in the Forest. He went on to claim that the police authorities,
from the Chief Constable downwards, have done their best, but hitherto had
failed. He concluded by saying "In exceptional circumstances there
ought to be exceptional law, for the condition of affairs is worse than in Ireland."
For our 19th century ancestors, poaching
on private land was often a matter of survival and it was no surprise that they
often came into conflict with local landowners and their gamekeepers.
Historian, David Jones, wrote that
the poacher was ... such an ordinary figure, an accepted and normal part of
rural life. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century poaching was widely
regarded as one of the fastest growing crimes in Britain, and, unlike arson,
highway robbery, cattle-, horse- and sheep-stealing, it continued to be a
prominent and permanent part of the rural scene even in the 1880s and 1890s.
Poachers were overwhelmingly working
people, and in the Forest, usually colliers.
This was a classic case of a social crime which the Magistrates and the
landowners were determined to stamp out. It was also convenient for those in
authority, when writing to the newspapers, or addressing Parliament, to lump
all those in opposition from the Blakeney area, as a 'gang'.
It is also important to remember that
those magistrates were often also the major landowners in the area with a
vested interest in extending the enclosures.
The name most commonly associated with the
'Blakeney Gang' was Walter
Virgo. Born in 1845 to farmer, James Virgo and his wife
Charlotte Yemm, he had six brothers and four sisters. He came to the attention
of the police from 1869, with his offences including poaching, drunkeness,
carrying a gun without a licence, sheep-stealing and brawling. During the 1890s
his sons all appeared in front of the magistrates charged with similar
offences.
In 1893 he was, not for the first time, in
conflict with Philip Baylis. The Deputy Surveyor's keepers had impounded some
of Walter's sheep which were later rescued on a night raid at the pound. Baylis
retaliated by impounding more of the sheep and placed a fine of 3 shillings on
each of them. Walter Virgo swore revenge.
Baylis at that time wrote - "This man
Walter Virgo is one of a family that has a most notoriously bad character in
the Forest - and I am informed that Walter Virgo has been convicted of sheep
stealing and has also on two other occasions been tried at Gloster for offences
but acquitted - and at present he and other members of his family exercise a
system of terrorism over the inhabitants of the Forest and it is commonly
stated that if other people incur their displeasure or turn animals out on the
Forest by which the pasturage used by the Virgos would be lessened, the animals
are either driven over quarries - or killed or injured or some other injury
inflicted.
George Rowlinson from Cinderford, a
Methodist minister and the local miners' trade union leader, and Sydney Elsom
JP from Yorkley, also a Methodist minister and leader of the Freeminers, were
highly critical of the comments, and those of Baylis's supporter, the vicar of
Blakeney, Alexander Pringle. They accused them of becoming hysterical and
vastly exaggerating the outrages to try and tar the whole Forest community with
the actions of a very small minority in an attempt to justify enclosing the Forest. At the same time they did condemn the actions of
the Blakeney men. 
The heavy police
presence in the Blakeney area soon resulted in clashes between police and
locals. On the evening of April 30th, 1895, two of the sons of Walter Virgo,
Aaron (26) and Moses (28), and their friend Evan Davies, were walking towards
the Swan Temperance Hotel in Blakeney around midnight when they were stopped by
some policemen who included PC Newport and PC Jones. They were asked about the
contents of a bag they were carrying. The encounter soon developed into a brawl
between the trio and a number of police. PC Newport and Aaron Virgo both
finished up with injuries. It turned out that the bag had only contained
stinging nettles. When arrested the brothers claimed that during the encounter
they had been roughly handled by the police officers and brought a charge of
assault against PC Newport.
Convicted at
Littledean Court of assaulting PC Newport, the Virgo brothers each received a
prison sentence of one month's hard labour, and Evan Davies a ten shilling fine
for assaulting PC Jones. The charge against PC Newport was dismissed.
Philip Baylis later
alleged that if there had not been other constables present PC Newport would
have died in the assault.
Evan Davies was to
have another encounter with PC Jones. In September 1895 he was appearing at Littledean Court
again. Fisherman Henry Davies, and his sons, Harvey and Evan, were charged with
being in possession of an unseasonable salmon.
PC Jones gave
evidence that he was on duty at Milcombe Head on the 5th of September when he
saw the three defendants coming up the Severn
in a boat. They came ashore at Milcombe Head. Harvey Davies was carrying a bag
and when asked what was in it he said " a fish". The constable asked
to see it and when shown an 18lb salmon said he would have to take possession
of it. Henry Davies then produced a glass bottle from his pocket and threatened
to knock the constable's head off. PC Jones eventually took possession of the
fish plus three nets. Henry and Harvey were both fined £5, plus 10 shillings,
the value of the fish.
On the night of 9th
February 1896, locals near Blackpool
Bridge heard three loud
explosions. The next morning, workers employed by Messrs Williams of
Cinderford, the timber merchant who had the contract for fencing and enclosing
Blakeney Hill, found that the firm's steam sawing machine had been
dynamited. Baylis was in no doubt that the Virgos and the Blakeney Gang
were to blame, and the Forest Commissioners went on to offer a reward of one
hundred pounds for any information. No one came forward to claim it.
The next
major event took place only two months later. In the early hours of April 3rd
1896 a worker at the New Fancy colliery noticed part of the woodland on fire
near the Lodge at Russell's enclosure. He alerted John Hatton the keeper
residing there who quickly rounded up other keepers and woodmen to beat out the
fire. As soon as they had dealt with that blaze their attention was drawn to
another.
The Dean
Forest Guardian later reported that
"it appears that the outbreak occurred at several places simultaneously,
and no sooner had the men put out one blaze, than their attention was attracted
to another, and this went on for hours, and in the opinion of one authority,
somewhere before mid-night on Saturday, somebody deliberately made at least
thirty fires in the district referred to"
When, next day,
Philip Baylis examined the damage he reported that fifty separate fires, over a
line between two and three miles long, had been started in the enclosures. Most
probably "by some person or
persons carrying a small lamp such as miners use and just pushing it into the
dry fern where there happened to be a suitable place." He went
on to say that had the wind not died down and some light rain fallen, this
attempt to burn down the Forest would have
succeeded. He was in no doubt that this was the work of the 'Blakeney Gang'.
Baylis used these
outrages in an attempt to put pressure on the Forest Commissioners to enclose
the Forest. He claimed that the Virgos were
the main beneficiaries of the right to common. The Commissioner decided that he
was being misled by Baylis and urged him to compromise.
In June
1898, a memorandum by Sir Edward Stafford Howard, the Commissioner for the Forest of Dean,
signaled the end of Baylis's ambition to have all sheep removed from the Forest. He wrote - "the
number of persons keeping sheep as well as the number of the sheep themselves
is very much larger than I had been led to expect, so that the matter will have
to be dealt with very carefully and by degrees, no wholesale prohibition being
in my opinion possible. It will be desirable to take means to let the owners of
sheep know that their animals have no legal right in the forest but are only
there on sufferance ... Apart from this, and so long as the rightful commoners
do not step in to prevent it, the Crown will not interfere with the
sheep."
Walter Virgo died in
1903. He is buried at the Blakeney Tabernacle, an independent chapel and
surrounded by others who were involved in the 1890s disturbances.
There was no way
that he, his family or workmates would have attended the Anglican Church at
Blakeney where their enemy, the Reverend Alexander Pringle, preached.
