Just An Added Extra Regarding The Poachers Apprentice

[Kay 3,709]

Hello again, Bob

Thank you so much for posting ‘The Poacher’s Apprentice’ film. I’m only sorry that Dad wasn’t still alive to see it: he would have loved it. The scene where the poacher is checking his night lines and the two lads are spying on him reminded Paul and me of the tales Dad used to tell us about his maternal grandfather, Joe Timmins.

Joe, a coal miner, was acknowledged in the Walsall Wood of the 1920s to be one of the most skilful poachers in the district. As children, Dad and his pal used to follow him, just like the lads in the film, and watch him as he set his night lines in the flooded clay holes around the area known as the Iron Dish. Dad told us that, no matter how closely he and his pal observed him, they could never discover where Joe had tied off his lines.

Joe was after pike. These days, very few people eat that fish, do they? Though only the other day I found a French recipe book from the 1930s that included “Pauchouse de brochet”, or pike cooked with herbs, garlic and wine. Dad didn’t say how Joe cooked his catch, but it wouldn’t have been with garlic and wine [To the best of my knowledge, pike is quite a rough fish to eat and tastes of the riverbed – Bob].

As might be expected of a poacher, Joe had a way with animals, rather like the “horse whisperers” and “dog whisperers” we read of today. The only photograph we have of Joe shows him with his daughter’s little dog, which he sometimes used to sit on a bar stool to guard his beer if he left it unattended in the pub.

Like many men of his generation, Joe walked for miles along the canals, calling at pubs from time to time. On one occasion, he came from the towpath into the bar of the Nag’s Head, at Little Bloxwich. He commented to the landlord that there were some fine hens in the garden he’d walked through and that he, the landlord, should take care no one stole them. The customers all agreed that no one would dare come into the garden when the landlord’s particularly vicious dog was loose. The following week, Joe entered the bar once again through the back door, this time with the landlord’s “vicious dog” attached to a piece of string.

Here’s the photograph I mentioned, Bob. We think it was taken around 1924 when Joe was nearly seventy years old. Forty years later, Dad was in the Hawthorn Tree, talking to and elderly fellow who told of an old chap he remembered who could handle any dog, no matter how apparently uncontrollable. Slowly, Dad realised that the reputation of his grandfather was still present in the Walsall Wood folk memory.

Dad was quite a skilled poacher himself, and in the last few years of his life grew to physically resemble his grandfather.

All the very best, Bob; and thanks again for the film; if it triggers any further recollections that might be of interest, we’ll pass them on.

John Anslow