A naughty Oliver with an unusual job

jane · Senior Member

RE: A naughty Oliver with an unusual job

Shane Bywaters · Guru

Hi Linda,

Yes, definitely hoping to get the photo gallery online.

Just one little spot on the photo of my Great Grandfather Frank, something I only spotted when zooming on close, was that he is wearing earrings in the photograph.

Clearly men across the world have been decorating their ears for hundreds of years, but I don't know how common place it was for men in the UK, in rural Oxfordshire, in the early 1900's. Was it to symbolise something, make some sort of a statement or simply a fashion thing - may have been very common I guess, or perhaps amongst soldiers.

Just thought it was interesting to see.
Thanks
Shane

Linda · Senior Member

Hello Shane

Interesting to see how much you look like your Gt Granddad. Are you still considering making a gallery of photo's? It would be interesting to see if there are any resemblances between the different branches.

Bye for now - Linda

jane · Senior Member

From what I've now read in an 1840 book called Sporting Scenes and Country Characters, estate managers did employ itinerant rabbit catchers (a.k.a. poachers!) for their expertise at ferreting. This seems not to have gone down too well with the gamekeepers who were higher up the pecking order. It also sounds as if it was not unusual for the rabbit catcher to take home some of his catch, and I guess this would be overlooked by the estate managers as long as they had enough for their own table.

Though this book was written some 100 years before Frank Oliver was rabbiting, I would think things were still much the same. So we can imagine Shane's great-grandfather out with his ferret, crouched down over rabbit-holes in West Oxfordshire, and presumably later with an armful of rabbits, trying to find customers for them.

Jane

PS: here is an amusing article about ferrets and broadband (but you may wish to look closely at the publication date!)

Shane Bywaters · Guru

Hi Jane,

Wow, I'm pretty sure this one is very close to home for me - I'm positive this is my Great Grandfather.

So your note about 'ancestral poaching skills' was spot on, given that Franks father was a regular visitor to the petty sessions for poachng in the late 1800's.

I know that Frank lived in New Yatt and I've also been told that he was a 'Game Keeper', perhaps he progressed from Rabbit Catcher to a fully fledged Game Keeper later in life.

Either way, its a nice story of 'Poacher turned Game Keeper' from father to son.

Here's the only real photo I have of Frank, crica WW1.

I'll have to ask my great aunt if she knows anymore of his Run-Rabbit, Rub-Rabbit, Habits.

Thanks,
Shane

jane · Senior Member

Once upon a time, long long ago, there were policemen on the beat in Witney, who kept a watchful eye on what was going on. The vigilance of Witney policemen meant that Witney Petty Sessions was always full of people who'd committed offences that now usually go un-noticed and unpunished. (So speaks a grumpy pedestrian who often has to jump out of the way of cyclists-on-pavements.

)

For example, as reported by the 'Witney Gazette' of 14 March 1941, Frank Oliver of New Yatt was fined 25 shillings for 'riding a bicycle without a proper rear light'. Perhaps he did have some sort of rear light, and maybe a working front light, for other people in court at the same time were prosecuted for having no lights at all.

What caught my eye was not his crime but his occupation, though: he was a rabbit catcher!

Was he self-employed, selling his catch to those looking for ingredients for their stews and pies in this time of meat rationing? (Someone talking of war-time Plymouth remembered that "Rabbit formed a staple part of people's diet and a rabbit catcher with four or five rabbits hanging from his arm would sell and skin the creatures on the spot.")

Or would one of the local estates (perhaps Eynsham Hall?) have needed a rabbit catcher to get rid of the pests that munched all their crops? In either case, all those ancestral poaching skills would have come in handy!

Have a look at the "GREAT BUNNY PLAGUE" for the story of a twenty-first century rabbit catcher.

Jane