On This Day in Wembury — 15 September 1877
Night Poachers at Wembury
On 15 September 1877, the Western Weekly News reported the appearance at Plympton Petty Sessions of two Plymouth labourers accused of night poaching in Wembury.
Richard Martin and John Howell were both described as coal lumpers working on Plymouth Quay, a hard physical job involving loading and unloading coal from ships.
The incident had taken place at about eleven o'clock on the night of 20 August. Thomas Sampson, who worked for Mr Cory of Langdon Hall, was watching a field occupied by a farmer named Mr Wilson when he spotted a long net being carried across it.
Martin was close to the net, while Howell was also in the field together with another six or seven men.
Sampson and his companions tried to seize the net. The encounter quickly became rather more serious when, according to his evidence, the whole group turned upon them. In the confusion the alleged poachers escaped.
Their freedom did not last long.
A few minutes later Sampson encountered Martin on the public road. He searched him and found a rabbit concealed in his trousers. Howell proved more difficult to catch, but on the following Sunday morning P.C. Ware of Plymstock arrested him in Plymouth under a warrant.
Both men were brought before the magistrates and remanded until the following Monday.
I have searched for a later report giving the result of that hearing, but I have not yet found a reliable contemporary source for the eventual verdict or sentence. So I will leave the story there rather than invent the outcome. The surviving report does, however, give us a wonderfully vivid picture of Victorian Wembury after dark: watchers hidden in the fields, a gang carrying a long poaching net, a confrontation in the darkness and finally the rather unfortunate discovery of a rabbit down one man's trousers.
Reflection: Poaching was no trivial matter in Victorian England, particularly for poorly paid labourers. For Martin and Howell, a night's expedition from Plymouth into the Wembury countryside ended with the police, the magistrates and one particularly incriminating rabbit. More than 140 years later, it is the small details in stories like this that bring the old fields of Wembury back to life.
On this day in Wembury – 15 September 1960
Source: Cornish Guardian (reported later in 1960/61)
Disappearance of Eric William Joiner
On 15 September 1960, Eric William Joiner, aged 49, a civil engineer at Devonport Dockyard living at Pixie’s Acre, Wembury, vanished while on duty travel. That day he drove about 80 miles to RNAS Culdrose near Helston, Cornwall, completed his work, and then disappeared.
His car was later discovered abandoned at the base of Roughtor, near Camelford. A huge search effort followed: police with tracker dogs, military units, naval helicopters, and many civilian volunteers scoured the moor for a week. Despite these efforts, no trace of him was found at the time.
Nearly five months later, his body was discovered on Roughtor (4 February 1961).
Entries are summaries and interpretations of historical newspaper reports.