A Victorian Poacher - James Hawker's Journal

The life of intelligent, teetotaler poacher, James Hawker, a tailor's son. Born in 1836, when `times were very Bad,' his parents, and indeed most of the country people they knew `found it Hard to live.' The rural Midlands of his day were rich in game, but to Hawker the land was the property of `the Class' and the riches it contained were for the sport of the wealthy. who fed their pheasants on hard-boiled eggs while the working labourer and his family went hungry. Hawker began to poach for food because he loved it for the excitement he found in the hunt under forbidden conditions. He lived to the age of 85, a respected figure in the Leicestershire village of his retirement and the friend of many of the landowners whose gamekeepers he had so often outwitted. Later in life he wrote down his recollections, and they present a remarkable man, shrewd, humorous, learned in country lore, a first-rate field naturalist, vigorous in his championship of the poor and eloqient in his exposition of the poacher's craft. As a social document alone, this is a rewarding book...