Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire

Abstract

On a January night in 1827, at Claughton between Preston and Garstang, a gang of six poachers was apprehended by a larger number of gamekeepers, one of whom was shot. He died the following day. The poachers were tried at the Lent Assizes in Lancaster, but ambiguities surrounding the evidence, and the comparatively lenient judgments upon the accused, led to this becoming a local cause célèbre, attracting the attention of a broadside printer and giving the case a place in the iconography of mid-nineteenth century working-class history. This paper looks at the events of 1827 in the context of contemporary opinion, the factual evidence which underlies the case, and the perspectives of historians.