Posted by Brian Lilley Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 8:48 PM Brian
on 10/8/2001, 8:29 am
Thanks to Roger Lilley of Surrey, England for the following email message ........
Subject: LILLEY FAMILY HISTORY
By some mysterious chance (mistake) I landed on your website!
I am Roger John Lilley, Grandson of George Lilley late of 6 Westbourne Road, Bedford England. (b 3 April 1879 d Bedford 29 Sep
1960). George was one of the children of Joseph and Charlotte Lilley. Joseph and Charlotte were married on 15 October 1866 at
Kempston and are mentioned in your database.
I attach a jpg file of some details that I found in one of my father's books when he died. These record that there were 6 children of
teh marriage of Charlotte and Joseph, and that Joseph died on 15 Nov 1923. The six children were:
John b 2 November 1867
Emily b 13 March 1869
Walter b 30 November 1871
Tamar b 18 January 1873
GEORGE b 3 April 1879
Rhoda b 15 October 1880
George Lilley was Married to Gertrude , who died on 13 May 1950 aged 70 yrs. They had 6 children
Frederick *
Arthur b 12 November 1908 d 18 December 1981 (My Father)
Edwin George b 12 November 1910 d 16 January 1954
Joan
Gertrude *
"Kit" *
* details to be found and forwarded if you are interested
I also append some text from a book "8000 years - A kempston History" published by Kempston Urban District Council in 1966,
that gives some more details of teh family around the time of the "Poachers", who were, in fact hanged for "Attempt to Murder",
not poaching. There is further information on this element to be found on www.schools.bedfordshire.gov.uk/GAOL/contents.htm .
THE TRAGIC BROTHERS
I must now take the story back to a tragedy of 1828that of the Lilley brothers, hanged at Bedford Gaol on 4th April 1829 for
shooting at a gamekeeper. They came from a pretty solid family. Their grandfather, John Lilley, had land in both Felmersham and
Kempston. He was a farmer, dying in 1813, aged about 75. He left £400 to each of four surviving children, John, William, Elizabeth
and Mary, and the interest of £400 for life to another son, Thomas. After Thomass death, the capital was to be divided among his
children, Samuel, John, Matthew, William, West, Ann, Mary, Elizabeth and Joseph. The two Lilley brothers were the Matthew and
William of this family of grandchildren. All that one can tell from the will is that their father was not perhaps considered altogether a
good manager by his own father.
When Thomas, the father, died in 1848, he was described as a labourer, but he was still well enough off to leave a will (and at that
time only about one in six men were prosperous enough to do so). He bequeathed £105 besides goods. His widow, Elizabeth,
died in 1855 and also left a will. Both had as their executor, Samuel Lovell of Bedford, coal merchant.
We cannot tell what happened to the two boysMatthew, born 1802 and William, born 1808. The interesting thing is that during
the unrest of the late 1820s and early 1830s, there was no noticeable trouble at Kempston. I think we can take it that the main
cause of agricultural discontent was the enormous rise in population after 1801. The population of Kempston in 1671 was 752, in
1801 it had risen to 1,035, a rise of 50% in 130 years. In 1811 the population was 1,161, in 1821 it was 1,419 and in
1831 it had risen to 1,571, this latter figure representing a rise of 50% in 30 years. It is probable that for Kempston there was
always a certain amount of work in Bedford for those who, had they lived in more isolated villages, could only have been employed
as farm labourers.
Matthew Lilley married Elizabeth Beldam in 1826, and soon there was a child. The second child, Charles Beldam Lilley, was born
during his fathers imprisonment. Matthew Lilley was getting parish relief in 1827, his brothers William and West Lilley in 1828. By
the usual rates, as settled in 1827, a man, wife and one child got 6s. (later 7s.) a week, and an unmarried man 4s. a week. Their
guns must have been hidden up the chimney for at one point there was an order that no man keeping a dog or a gun was eligible
for relief.
After Matthew was arrested, his wife and children generally got 5s. a week, but she disappears from the records. However, the
son, Charles Beldam Lilley, in the 1851 census was aged 23, and was a self-employed farmer, farming six acres.
THE POACHERS DOOM
Of course poor men had to go poaching at night to get food for their families; of course the laws against poaching on the preserves
of the landowners were drafted with severity and carried out with draconian harshness by magistrates who themselves preserved
game and paid keepers to protect it; but the savage sentence meted out to the hapless Lilley brothers caused a shiver of horror
throughout the county at the time and still has power to shock the sensitive mind, especially at the present time when real
murderers are allowed to escape with their lives. The Lilleys offence, while searching for game in Bromham Wood on that
November night in 1828, was maliciously shooting at and wounding Thomas King with intent to murder. It was held at the time
that King, the gamekeeper, attacked the men first and that he was not wounded at all, but he said he was, before the Judge at the
Lent Assizes of 1829, and so the two Lilleys were condemned to be hanged by the neck until they were dead, and sentence was
duly carried out at Bedford Gaol on 4th April.
Listen to what Mr. Potter Macqueen, M.P. for Bedfordshire 18261830, had to say as to the reasons that made the Lilleys go out
poaching. He saw them in prison before their trial: In January 1829 there were ninety- six prisoners for trial in Bedford Gaol . . .
There were in this number eighteen poachers awaiting trial for the capital offence of using arms in self-defence when attacked by
gamekeepers. . . The first two I will mention are the two brothers, the Lilleys, in custody under a charge of firing on, and
wounding, a keeper, who endeavoured to apprehend them whilst poaching. They were two remarkably fine young men, and very
respectably connected. The elder, twenty-eight years of age, married, with two small children. When I inquired how he could lend
himself to such a wretched course of life, the poor fellow replied, Sir, I had a pregnant wife, with one infant at her knee, and
another at her breast; I was anxious to obtain work. I offered myself in all directions, but without success; if I went to a distance, I
was told to go back to my parish, and when I did so, I was allowed,
what? Why, for myself, my babes, and a wife, in a condition requiring more than common support, and unable to labour, I was
allowed seven shillings a week for all; for which I was expected to work on the roads from light to dark and to pay three guineas a
year for the hovel which sheltered us. The other brother, aged twenty-two, unmarried, received 6d. a day. These two men were
HANGED at the Spring Assizes.
The execution, as stated in the Quarter Sessions Rolls, cost £8 l0s. 6d., but half was paid by the Sheriff. Thomas Gwyn Elgers
carpenters bill for putting up the gallows, and making two elm coffins was £2 3s. 6d.
Thomas and Benjamin Kilpins ironmongers bill for fixing the drop was l0s. Altogether a cheap job for the County-and another foul
blot on the escutcheon of English justice as administered near the end of the reign of King George IV.
I hope the above is of interest - I amy well be able to find some more detail. If so I will forward it to you.
Well done for getting as far as you have - it must have been a daunting task.
Best Wishes
Roger Lilley
Carshalton
Surrey
England
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