June 2013 – Edition 99

Introduction

This article follows on from my previous article in the Jerrems Journal of April 2013. In that article I concluded with an account of how Big Bill innovatively issued tokens in 1811 and 1812. In this article we start with a jump forward to 1822, when Big Bill entered into the insurance business to supplement his income as a tea merchant and grocer. During this period he also had eight children.

Children
The children were:

• William Clarke b&d1813. John(1) b&d1814,
• Thomas Clarke b1815 (my great great grandfather),
• Ecclesiastes b1816,
• John(2) b1819, d1867 (Alan FitPatrick’s great great grandfather),
• Mary(2) b1821,
• William b1823 d1869,
• Robert b1824 d1862.

The company had a very substantial backing, with a capital of two million pounds sterling and a Board of Honorary Directors that reads like a list drawn from London’s “Who’s Who”.

I have a confession. The eagle in the photo is the logo of an Ice Hockey Club, it has nothing to do with Eagle Life Insurance.

Returning to Big Bill, in an 1822 advertisement by the company listed Big Bill as one of its agents, offering the following life insurance:

“A person 30 years of age may, by the small annual payment of thirteen pounds, seven shillings and one penny secure 500 pounds, to be paid by this Company (to his family or as he may otherwise direct) at his death. Any other sum may be ensured in like manner, and at any other age.”.

The advertisement then referred to “Annuities granted and purchased”. These were a popular way of providing income for widows (who could not own real estate) and children. The annual payment seems to have been 4% of the lump sum. The principle involved was the same as the purchase of superannuation these days. By lodging a lump sum the payer could nominate the beneficiary of annual payments in perpetuity. In my researches of Censuses I quite often see references to widows being annuitants.

When I first read this advertisement I was surprised at the comparative sophistication of the insurance products available, and I was even more surprised that Big Bill (a tea merchant and grocer) was appointed as an agent for the company.

I would expect that Big Bill had initially visited the company’s office in Waterloo Place in London and received instruction on the company’s products and established his bona fides.

The simple things we take for granted these days would have been quite complex in those days, the most obvious one being the method Big Bill would have used to send the money he had collected to the insurance company.

Presumably he would have been entitled to a commission.

Another aspect would have been that the insurance company would have relied completely on Big Bill to act honestly and diligently, long before trust accounts were invented.

This business could have been quite lucrative for Big Bill. An insurance salesman of his size could have been very persuasive.

Role of Burgess Constables
The powers of a “Burgess Constable”, “Parish Constable and “Constable” were the same. They were what we would now call law enforcement officers, some years before police were known (they commenced in the 1840s). They had to maintain law and order, supervised by the churchwarden and the JP or JPs who formed the Magistrates Court. The Constables had the power to arrest and place people in custody and were responsible for bringing prisoners to the Magistrate(s).

This scheme had its origins in an 1820 Act allowing magistrates to recruit and appoint men as special constables. This power to appoint was amplified by an 1831 Act which also granted full powers of arrest as well as the power to carry weapons for enforcement.

A later (1844) newspaper article referred to Big Bill as “also the head of the police, or rather the only police-officer in the town”.

At 18 stone one would expect that a threat to a criminal by Big Bill that he would sit on the criminal would be sufficient to bring the miscreant to heel.

Although Burgess Constables were not paid for their services they were entitled to payment of expenses and expenditure by the local church. However this was not necessarily plain sailing because an 1834 newspaper rather ominously stated that “Wm. Jerrems presented his quarter’s accounts as constable of Gainsburgh (which had with very few exceptions been wholly disallowed at a vestry meeting of 1833)…”.

Although the church is not identified by name, at that time it would have been the magnificent All Saints Church pictured at the top of this Journal.

It seems likely that Big Bill must have been quite well off financially to be able to afford the time to carry out his public duties.

We now look at the list of duties of Big Bill as a Burgess Constable and some of his experiences in that role.

The Constables were “specially required to visit the Public Houses and Beer Houses in their respective Parishes to see that they were closed by Twelve o’clock on the Saturday night until the end of the Morning Service of the Church of the Parish on the Sunday, and also at the proper hours at night throughout the week, and to take care that no gaming or other irregularity was suffered”.

In Australia at that time the towns and cities had a proliferation of hotels and inns of various shapes and sizes far beyond the current incidence. I calculated that there was an establishment for every 200 people. The Censuses indicated that many of them were small, as indicated by the fact that they had few employees.

It would have been an impossible task for Big Bill to have visited all the pubs in Gainsborough in one day. However, Bill would not have had any trouble finding the Half Moon pub (see photos) which was on the corner of Jerrems Street and Hickman Road, or his son Robert’s inn.

A person of Big Bill’s girth would in all likelihood have been very much aware of the health-promoting properties of beer, and would have carried out this directive conscientiously. When he was carrying out his inspections the public spirited innkeepers could quite possibly have plied him with a free beer to ensure his good health.

In another incident, in 1836, Big Bill is reported to have “dispersed a mob”, which sounds quite impressive. He also investigated a murder.

At the other end of the spectrum, he was called upon to investigate the stealing of 17 geese (1846), the theft of 10 or 12 pounds of bacon and a quantity of lard (1841), and the theft of spoons and silver plates (1840).

For instance the Gainsborough October Fair in 1839 was attended by some undesirables and provided Big Bill with a lot of work. As reported in the Lincolnshire Chronicle of Friday 25/10/1839 a lady had her pocket picked of 25 shillings, and a man was struck over the head by thieves and severely injured. The newspaper also reported that:

“On Wednesday afternoon a young fellow, not above 14 years of age, who says he is a native of Stamford, and named Boyd, was discovered with his hand in the pocket of Mr Spenser, of Walkeringham. Very properly he was brought to the constable, Mr Jerrems, to be taken care of previous to an examination before the magistrates on Thursday.”

This conjures up images of The Artful Dodger from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

I can picture the older residents of Gainsborough tut-tutting when they read the newspaper account, declaring that the younger generation were not being brought up like they used to be (sound familiar?).