Watkin Dwight.

Although there were many cases of the Pheasant breeding Dwights being in court over their stolen pheasants or their eggs and even simple trespass on their land Watkin was unfortunately on the receiving end of the law.He had 2 periods in prison for house breaking being flogged also once  .I expect he was fleeing the law  when he moved upto Scotland and then onto Canada,where he probably resumed his profession

Born in 1843 (father…Hunphrey who was a ‘farmer’ of 20 acres)

He was in Aylesbury court  in 1864 and  was given  9 months for larcency 

In July 1868 he commited burglary and received 15 MONTHS IMPRISONMENT

 

 

He is easy to trace on account of his name but he lied about age at cencuses

 

In 1871 he is in Quebec living at St-Armand East, Missisquoi, Quebec, Canada

In 1891 e was a General Labourer living at  66 Alexander St Bonhill Dumbartonshire 

 

 

He and wife Margaret arrived in Boston USA 17 Sep 1892 travelling  on 31 august 1892 on the ship The Prussian  with Henry John and Alfred

 

They  arrived  back in Glasgow on 1 August 1910   from Boston  on the Numidian  ( The Allan Line- master Thomas Moar)

 

He and Margaret went back to Boston  arriving on 2 Sep 1910  on the Rumidian

 

He spent 2 terms in a Canadian prison

 

 

 

Wiliam Dwights  son ( the Pheasantries Berkahsted) John Edward Dwight :

 

from The Herts Advertiser ,Week ending March 20th 1897 -

A meeting of the Hemel Hempstead Sparrow Club was held at the Bell Hotel in the High Street. The club had been founded by Matthew Leno of Cox Pond Farm (see entry for Dec. 5th 1896), who was its chairman.  Mr. Leno presided at the first quarterly meeting of the club and presented the prizes for the greatest number of sparrows killed during the previous three months.

 

The top prize of £1 went to Mr. E.J. Dwight for killing 3,814 sparrows, second was Mr. H. Taylor who killed 2,957, and third was Mr. Gee with 1,635.  The total number of dead sparrows for the quarter was 12,585. [Gazette 20.3.1997]

 

 This may seem a club with a strange motive but until the 1970s sparrows and finches existed in huge numbers causing a lot of damage to wheat crops which were nearing harvest.The land was often ploughed upto the spring so the old cereal stubbles provided food for them in the winter .Sparrow was aloose term for any finch. I remember gamekeepers boasting how many hundreds they could kill with a single shot.​

It was in the 1970s that farmers adopted autumn  sown cropping  as varieties became available and thereby causing a permanent fall in many bird species .