Off The Record
Alan Crosby uncovers the tale of the boy who stole on behalf of his criminal uncle
A tale from the archives shows that crime is relative
As a historian I frequently come across people in the past who strike me, for varying reasons, as being particularly interesting characters. Quite often such discoveries are accidental, when I’m looking at documents for one purpose and find much more rewarding content that has nothing to do with my particular project. One such case concerns a thieving family in Salford in the reign of Charles I, starring a young boy who could give the Artful Dodger a run for his money.
At the beginning of January 1630 Sir Cecil Trafford, a magistrate, cross- examined William Shawe, aged 11. The interview took place at Cecil’s house in Trafford Hall or Park, a large rural estate. Young William admitted that a year previously his grandmother, Katherine Eller, had persuaded him to “get what farthings and money he could and bring it to her”.
The boy was employed as a servant in the house of Edmund Pycroft of Salford, a gardener, and his wife Ann. He found a bag of money at the house, took 5s out of it, and brought it to his grandmother.
‘William regularly took money and gold from his master and mistress’
Greedily, she told him to bring her more. Soon, his uncle Abraham Eller (his mother’s younger brother, who the Manchester parish registers show was aged 23) got in on the act, telling William to bring him money as well.
To put the plan into effect, he gave the boy “an aiglet or a point bended to pick the locks of his master’s chests, and gave him nine keys to unlock the locks”. It’s abundantly clear that Abraham was a professional thief, with his handy lock-picking tool and his sizeable collection of duplicate keys – and he also gave his nephew “a handkercher with four strings of inkle” to put the money in. This, a square cloth with tapes at each corner, could be tied up to form a bag or bundle.
William was to take the money, tie it up in the cloth, “hide it in a hole in the earth”, and every Saturday bring the loot to his uncle who would be waiting at the “fleshboards” (or butchers’ stalls) at Manchester Market.
William was a good and obedient lad, and thus bidden he regularly took money and gold from his master and mistress. Interestingly, he was also literate and numerate. He had kept a tally of what he took by scratching a figure ‘5’ on the wall of the house for every £5 he stole. By the time of the interview there were no fewer than 10 such figures, and he had also taken other money that he hadn’t recorded – his uncle had commanded him “to creep into his master’s parlour when his master and mistress were asleep and take money out of the bag of his mistress”, which he duly did.
And that’s not all, for Uncle Abraham also wanted valuable goods. During the year William had taken from the house “four pair of flaxen sheets, a tablecloth, and two dozen of napkins, all of housewife’s cloth, and a gold ring”, which his uncle put in a sack and took away. When I reached this section of the document (which is in Lancashire Archives), it struck me that Edmund and Ann Pycroft must have been singularly unobservant and lacking in business acumen, to stay blithely unaware as their house was denuded of furnishings and their purses and bags were emptied of money.
It’s a fascinating insight into the underworld of the early 17th century, and I confess to having a warm admiration for the boy William. This family of thieves – the widowed grandmother (who was probably in her mid-50s), the roguish uncle and the obedient lad – make a wonderful picture. Sadly, because the other documents no longer survive, we can’t establish their fate, but I am ashamed to say that I harbour a dark and guilty secret myself. Many of my maternal and paternal ancestors were Mancunians. I would love to find the thieving Ellers on my family tree – they’d be far more interesting than the God-fearing respectable types!