Potted Histories

Tag: crime

  • The End of the Rough Fleet

    The Rough Fleet, an amorphous gang of street thugs under the leadership of John ‘Mad Jack’ Wilson were a terror to the locals, notably in and around Hanley, for many years at the very beginning of the 19th century. Born in 1787, Wilson was the eldest surviving son of David Wilson, a respectable pottery manufacturer who ran the Church Works, Hanley, which stood on ground between St John’s Church and what later became Hanley Deep pit, ground now given over to the swirl of roads and traffic islands where Town Road coming out of Hanley joins the Potteries Way. John Wilson was also the man who accidentally killed his brother and niece when he was firing off cannons to celebrate the Hanley Wakes in 1807 (see ‘An Awful and Melancholy Accident’ above). Maybe this family tragedy had in some way adversely affected him and set him on the criminal path he henceforth followed, but it is easy to look for excuses for bad behaviour and there is too little information on John Wilson’s early days to know for sure what started him on his criminal career; perhaps he had always been a bad lot who just got worse over time.

    The approximate site of the Church Works just outside of the centre of Hanley
    Source: Google Earth

    Concrete information on the early origins of the gang is likewise thin on the ground. Writing in the early 1840s and thus well within living memory of events, John Ward in his history The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, noted that ‘In the years 1808 and 1809 a gang of reckless young men, some of whom were respectably connected, carried on a system of nocturnal outrage, rather from a wanton and mischievous spirit, than for the sake of plunder, which greatly annoyed and terrified the peaceable community. They obtained the name of The Rough Fleet, from their daring and buccaneering-like exploits’. This may have been when they started their reign of terror, but if so it seems that they continued causing trouble and dodging any real justice for the better part of a decade before the gang’s chief members were finally brought to book. 

    Between 1816 and 1818, The Staffordshire Advertiser noted that the gang or its individual members were involved in several brushes with the courts for assaults, riotous behaviour and attempted shootings. At the Swan Inn in Hanley’s Market Square in early 1816, John Wilson was confronted in the bar by one outraged local, potter John Sheridan of Cobridge, who accused him of threatening his life and shooting at him, describing Wilson as ‘the terror of the neighbourhood’ and ‘the Captain of the banditti’. Wilson took Sheridan to court for slander when the latter accused Mad Jack of murdering his own brother, but he lost the case perhaps as a result of the growing ill-feeling towards him and his confederates. Incidents continued to be reported through to early 1818, while in the same paper John Wilson’s financial fall was also chronicled. His father David Wilson had died suddenly in 1816 and as John was his heir, the Church Works and family business had passed to him. Little good he did with it, though, being more interested it seems with his incessant drinking, partying with his gang and trouble-making and by July 1817 he was declared bankrupt and as numerous notices in the papers showed, his pot bank and other properties quickly passed out of his hands.

    The end for the gang followed shortly after this in early 1818, when as Ward put it, ‘several of them were ultimately prosecuted at the Sessions, and convicted of various misdemeanors, which at length broke up the lawless confederacy.’ It came about as the result of an attack on a local constable Ralph Barton, who was left wounded by the encounter. Eight members of the Rough Fleet including John Wilson, were arraigned on a charge of riot and assault at the March Assizes at Stafford, being committed to Stafford gaol in June with the case being deferred until October; and it was there, doubtless much to the relief of the locals, that they finally got their comeuppance. 

    ‘John Wilson, Samuel Shelley, Thomas Shufflebottom, John Clews, Henry Brereton, John Wallbank, Wallace Lockett, and Samuel Earnest, were convicted of riot, and of assaulting a constable in the execution of his office at Hanley. These prisoners are part of a corps too well known in the Potteries by the name of the Rough Fleet. Wilson (the Captain) was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment; Shelley (Lieutenant) to ten months; and the other six to four months; each of them to find security for a year longer. The three first-named pleaded guilty.’ 

    Following this conviction as Ward noted, the Rough Fleet seems to have been broken and it disappeared from the streets of the Potteries. Certainly that infamous title does not seem to crop up in any further stories in the contemporary press, save as a bad memory and the fates of its former members remain unknown.

    Reference: John Ward,  The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent (1843) p. 369; Staffordshire Advertiser 16 March 1816, p.4; 5 July 1817, p.4; 18 October 1817, p.4; 31 January 1818, p.4; 21 March 1818, p.4; 13 June 1818, p.4; 24 October 1818, p.4.

  • Visiting Burslem’s Houses of Ill Fame

    The oldest profession in the world had its place in soft underbelly of the Regency Potteries. Prostitutes plied a regular trade usually around the local inns where there were rich pickings when the potters and miners rolled in with their wages. A brief memoir of the period reveals that then as now many of the local working girls were ordinary women driven to extremes by circumstances, the probable cause being abject poverty. A Short Memoir of Ann Sheldon, published in 1821, tells the story of the short life of a dedicated Burslem Sunday School teacher. Constructed around entries in Ann’s diary, it reveals her to have been a noble spirited young woman, who saw it as her Christian duty to visit the sick and try to save the fallen.

    Burslem town centre in the early 19th century.

    In April 1813 following a class, one of her class members asked Ann if she would visit a woman who was very ill. Accompanied by a fellow teacher ‘Miss B’, she went to see the woman whom she soon discovered to be a local prostitute. They found her to be, ‘a little better and very penitent.’ Ann continued : ‘she had been a very wicked woman for years, and is now little more than 30 years of age. Her parents died when she and her sister were young. As they advanced in years they got into bad company and lost their character. Masters would not employ them and they became common prostitutes.’ The woman, exhausted and frightened by her illness, told the two teachers that if she lived she was determined to leave her ‘wicked course of life.’

    After praying together they left her. The two young teachers had obviously been shocked by the interview and though the nature of the woman’s illness is never stated, the impression we are left with is that it was contracted as a result of her calling. Both came away from the house burning with a desire to save others from such a dangerous and degrading career.

    The next day, Ann and Miss B set out once more and found a woman to direct them to the ‘houses of ill fame’. They visited two buildings, but met with a mixed reception, made all the more galling no doubt, by the fact that at least two of the girls they encountered were old Sunday school scholars.

    In the first house ‘we found a young woman about seventeen years of age, who lived by herself, and was three years ago a Sunday scholar.’ The girl was unmoved by the teachers’ entreaties, Ann went back many times to invite her back to the school, but to no avail.

    There were two women in the other house: ‘we found a woman about twenty-seven years of age; who met in class about two years ago: we both spoke as close as possible for an hour and a half; they shed many tears and confessed they had a hell upon earth. There was another woman present, a companion in sin, who appeared to take no notice: – I said to her come down on your knees, and cry to the Lord, to have mercy upon your soul, before it is too late: we all bowed the knee before God, and found much liberty in prayer.’

    It is unknown whether Ann and Miss B efforts were successful. The biography remains silent on the matter. Ann herself died at a young age in 1819.

    Reference: John Tregortha (publisher) A Short Memoir of Ann Sheldon, Burslem 1821

  • Diary of a Bad Boy

    On the morning of Wednesday 8 April 1908, the curious adventures of Moses Newell a somewhat grimy but innocent-looking 13 year old boy, were related to the Magistrates Mr J. P. Pratt and Mr P. Elliott at Fenton Police Court when he was brought before them on the charge of stealing a purse containing 11s, 4½d that belonged to his mother who lived at 17 Park Lane, Fenton.

    Newell had left home on the previous Saturday and nothing had been seen of him until early that morning when he had been discovered sleeping in an ash pit behind Clarence Street, Fenton. Of the stolen money only 1s, 4d was found on him along with a small diary, some cigarettes and a few other items. The magistrates were left in no doubt as to the boy’s guilt or about what he had been doing with the money over the last four days, as the guileless youngster had been good enough to keep an account of his crime and his subsequent adventures in his diary, which were read out to the court. It was an exacting record of nothing less than a sustained eating and spending tour of the Potteries towns.

    ‘Saturday – Left home at dinner-time, having stolen a purse containing 11s, 4½d. Went to Hanley market, and had a twopenny potato pie, a cup of tea and a penny cake. Bought a purse and then two ha’penny books. Went into another cake shop and had another cup of tea, and stopped there until the theatre was open. Went to the Theatre Royal “Fourpenny Rush,” came back to Fenton, and slept in ashpit.


    Sunday – Went to Longton and into cake shop. Had two penny herrings, a pen’orth of bread, a pint of tea. Cost me 4½d altogether. Went into icecream shop, and had a pen’orth of icecream, a ha’penny “cornet,” a penny drink, and then a wafer and another pen’orth of icecream, and a penny drink with icecream in it. On Sunday afternoon went into same cake shop, and had two-pen’orths of Yorkshire pudding and a cup of tea. Came back to the icecream shop and had some more icecream, and stayed playing. Went back to ashpit.


    Monday – Got up at a quarter to seven, walked to Hanley, bought a ha’penny book, went on car to Burslem. Bought a purse. Went into cake shop, but they had nothing ready. Walked round the stalls, and had a pen’orth of toffee. Went into cake shop. Had a cup of tea. I fetched some coal for her and she gave me a penny, and I had another cup of tea and some sandwich. Bought two ha’penny books – “Dick Turpin” and “Robin Hood.” Went to Longton again. Cost me threepence going and threepence to go to the theatre. I had a bottle of “pop,” two oranges, and I paid for another boy threepence to go in and gave him twopence. He bought some “fags” and fetched me some.


    Tuesday – Got up about seven. Got a car and went to Longton cake shop. Had two-pen’orth of meat, two-pen’orth of bread, and a pint of tea. I stopped in the cake shop until dinner-time. Had a penny bowl of soup and another pint of tea. Got a car to Hanley and thought I would go to theatre, but did not. I got a car again and went to Burslem. Went in another cake shop. Bought a penny bowl of soup, ha’porth of bread. I had a pen’orth of tea and went to Drill Hall (Poole’s entertainment), and paid twopence to go in. Bought a pen’orth of chocolate, ha’penny wafer, ha’penny glass of “beer,” and had another pen’orth of chocolate. When I came out I had a penny bottle of “burdock.” Got on the car to Hanley, and came to Fenton and got in the ashpit again.’

    On the morning of Wednesday 8 April, though, young Newell’s spending spree came to an inglorious end when he was woken by a woman throwing ashes on him. Newell told the court that at first he thought it was a cat and then he thought it ‘as a fowl pecking him.’ The woman got hold of him and pulled him out of the ashpit and gave the boy a cup of tea. The authorities soon learned of his discovery and he was subsequently arrested by PC Ford for the theft of the purse.

    After hearing the excerpts from Newell’s diary the magistrates remanded the boy for a week in order that a home might be found for him. A week later on 15 April, he was brought before Magistrates Mr Harold Wright and Mr A. Edwards at Longton on the charge of having wandered abroad without proper guardianship. His mother Fanny Williamson said that the lad was beyond control and that whenever he did something wrong he stayed away from home. The previous September and October he had disappeared for two months and could not be found. He had eventually come back, but had been away since then. On Saturday he ‘had been found in the pigeon place’, but later that day he had again absconded, this time with his mother’s purse and money. The woman was evidently at her wit’s end with the boy and the Stipendiary Magistrate Mr Wright said that the best thing to do was to send him to Werrington Industrial School until he was 16 years old. 

    Little is known of Moses Newell’s later life, though after serving his sentence he moved out of the area; at the age of 16, in the 1911 census, he was recorded as working as a servant on a farm in Ruthin, Wales. Neither the Medal Rolls nor the Commonwealth War Graves records for World War One list his name, so this artful dodger seems to have managed to slip away again.

    Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, 8 April and 15 April 1908. 

    , , , ,