The Great Grandfather, the Gamekeeper and the Genealogist’s Nightmare

A family story, a shooting in the woods, a murder trial, a mysterious death – and four years of research in the archives of North Yorkshire

One of the pleasures of working with an archive is discovering that the most interesting family history stories are the ones that start and end with questions that are left unanswered...

Sometimes you get a photograph, a name, a date and a family story. Then you start pulling at the threads – and discover that the story is simultaneously true, untrue, and much more

complicated than anyone remembered.

That is exactly what happened to the researchers behind a fascinating booklet in the collection at Staithes Museum, Great Grandfather, Gamekeeper – A Genealogist's Nightmare, written by Gladys Hall.

It begins with a family story about Gladys's husband's great-grandfather, Robert Wright, a gamekeeper who lived in Loftus. The family had been told that Robert had been shot by poachers when his son Thomas was about twelve years old. The story went that Robert survived for more than a year and a day after the shooting – apparently important because of the distinction between murder and another form of killing in the law as the family understood it.

There was just one problem.

The researchers couldn't find the shooting.

And so began a four-year investigation through churchyards, census returns, parish records, family history records, local newspapers, libraries and archives around Yorkshire and beyond.

The booklet's recurring warning is simple:

“Never believe a thing you hear.”

As genealogists will know, that is excellent advice.

Finding Robert Wright

The first task was to find Robert's grave.

The researchers had been told that he was buried in Loftus Cemetery, so one cold, damp day in 1997 they went looking.

Loftus Cemetery is a large place, with hundreds of graves. After searching without success, they tried the churchyard instead.

There they found him.

Robert Wright's gravestone recorded that he died on 24 February 1892, aged 72, and that his wife Charlotte had died on 29 December 1883, aged 53.

Already, one part of the family story had proved unreliable: the grave was not where they had been told it was.

And the researchers learned their first important lesson – one apparently insignificant word can send a genealogist in completely the wrong direction.

They also learned another lesson which anyone researching old graves in North Yorkshire might appreciate:

Take wellingtons.

Even if it looks dry when you leave home.

The missing shooting

The researchers next turned to the archives.

The 1891 census revealed Robert living in Loftus with his son Thomas Stephenson Wright, his daughter Emma D. Wright, and his grandson Fred Wright. Robert was described as a retired gamekeeper, aged 71 and born in Dullingham, Cambridgeshire.

Further research showed that gamekeeping was a family occupation. Robert's father, William Wright, had been a gamekeeper near Dullingham, and Robert followed him into the profession. Robert himself eventually became a gamekeeper for Lord Zetland, working at Upleatham in Cleveland before moving to Loftus.

But there was still no sign of the shooting.

The researchers searched archives in York and Middlesbrough. They looked through books, microfilm and fiche. They searched parish records and census material.

Nothing.

Then came the discovery that changed everything.

While searching the Whitby Gazette for Robert's death and funeral, they found a report dated 26 February 1892.

Robert Wright had not died from an old gunshot wound.

He had died by suicide.

The newspaper reported that the retired gamekeeper had cut his throat with a razor at his home in Loftus. An inquest was held the same day, and the verdict was suicide while temporarily insane.

For the researchers, this was a shocking discovery.

They had been searching for one tragedy and had stumbled across another.

But the newspaper report contained a tantalising clue. It said that Robert had been shot by poachers about eight years earlier, and that he had apparently never been the same afterwards.

The family story had been wrong about some very important details – but it had not been entirely wrong.

The shooting really had happened.

The Highfields shooting

The researchers eventually found the story in the Yorkshire Evening Press.

On 13 December 1883, Robert Wright and another gamekeeper, Thomas Metcalfe, were working on Lord Zetland's estate near the Highfields Plantation, close to the Handale boundary.

They heard shots.

When they investigated, they encountered two men whom they believed to be poaching pheasants.

The men fired.

Robert was shot in both hands. Thomas Metcalfe was shot in the leg and fell to the ground. The poachers escaped, while Robert had to get help for his badly injured colleague.

The newspapers described a brutal and frightening encounter in the woods.

But there was a second tragedy to come.

Thomas Metcalfe did not recover. He died in January 1884, and the shooting therefore became a murder case.

One of the men, John Lowther, a miner who lived in lodgings in Brotton, was arrested. Another man, reported as Mr Lobb, was also accused of being involved.

And suddenly the researchers had found the story they had been looking for.

A Victorian murder trial – and some remarkably inconsistent evidence

The case produced a fascinating collection of newspaper reports.

And this is where the booklet becomes particularly entertaining for anyone interested in historical newspapers and family history.

The reports broadly agree about what happened – but the details vary.

Were the keepers ten yards away when the poachers fired?

Did the poachers shout at them first?

Did Robert say, “You mean scoundrels, what did you shoot us for?”

Or did the shooting begin when Robert released his dog?

Even the weather was disputed. One witness described the night as clear and moonlit. Another said it was dull.

There was also the question of the boots.

Police Inspector Allen had examined footprints at the scene and then examined Lowther's boots. Unfortunately, Lowther's landlady, Annie Bousfield, had already washed and oiled them.

The police also found a moleskin jacket with blood on it, as well as fur and feathers in the pockets.

And then there was the dog.

The defence suggested that the poachers had been shooting at the gamekeeper's dog rather than the men. The dog was examined for evidence of gunshot wounds, but none was found.

It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely courtroom argument than trying to persuade a jury that the intended victim of a shooting was actually an elderly dog which happened to be standing nearby.

Robert Wright's family

The newspapers and records also allow us to glimpse the wider Wright family.

Robert had married Charlotte at Upleatham in 1851. They had several children, including Thomas Stephenson Wright and Emma, and their daughter Caroline died as a young child.

Thomas Stephenson Wright was working as a woodsman in the 1891 census. He was also the son who would eventually find his father after Robert's death.

Emma was living with the family and keeping house, while her son Fred, Robert's grandson, was a schoolboy.

The researchers also traced Robert's father, William, back to Dullingham in Cambridgeshire, establishing a family tradition of gamekeeping stretching across generations.

Another gamekeeper appears in the story too: Stephen Fowle, who helped fetch Thomas Metcalfe after the shooting. The researchers later visited Upleatham and found his grave.

This is one of the things that makes the booklet so valuable as a piece of family history research. The story is not just about one dramatic event. It gradually reconstructs a whole network of people, places and occupations around Loftus, Upleatham, Handale and the Zetland estate.

What happened to John Lowther?

In court, John Lowther was found guilty of the murder of Thomas Metcalfe and sentenced to death.

But even here, the story refuses to provide a neat ending.

The researchers initially could not establish whether the sentence was carried out. Then, many years into their research, they found a small newspaper report from February 1884 announcing that the death sentence had been respited by the Home Office.

Even that report called him James Lowther rather than John Lowther.

Was this simply a newspaper error? Was the sentence subsequently commuted? Where did Lowther go afterwards?

The researchers still did not know.

And this is perhaps the most important thing about this booklet: the research is still unfinished.

There are still unanswered questions.

The mysterious death of Robert Wright

Robert survived the shooting for another eight years.

His wife Charlotte died just weeks after the 1883 shooting, on 29 December 1883, from what her death certificate recorded as dropsy and heart trouble. Thomas Metcalfe died the following month.

Robert continued to live in Loftus and eventually retired from gamekeeping. The 1892 newspaper report described him as well known and highly respected, cheerful and “jocular”.

Yet on 24 February 1892, at the age of 72, Robert died by suicide.

His son Thomas was downstairs preparing for work when he heard a strange sound from the back kitchen. He found his father with a razor.

At the inquest, the family said Robert had recently seemed depressed, although they did not know why. The jury returned a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane.

The researchers wondered whether the shooting, the death of Charlotte, or the other events of Robert's life had contributed to his final years. The newspapers suggested that people who knew him believed he had never been the same after the shooting.

But the researchers were careful not to claim an answer they could not prove.

That is another good lesson from the archive.

Evidence can tell us what happened. It cannot always tell us why.

And then came the potatoes...

There is one wonderfully ordinary detail hiding amongst all this tragedy.

After Robert's death, his belongings were put up for auction.

The sale included the expected Victorian household contents and furniture.

But the auction notice also listed:

a side of home-fed bacon, about 30 stones of potatoes, 40 young blackcurrant trees, garden tools – and two loads of manure.

After years spent researching shootings, murder trials, suspicious deaths and family secrets, the researchers were amused by the sheer practicality of Robert Wright's final inventory.

One moment you are reading about a gamekeeper caught up in a notorious murder case; the next you are considering the fate of his blackcurrant bushes and two loads of manure.

It is a small detail, but it brings Robert back to life as a real person rather than simply a name in a newspaper.

Why this story matters to family historians

The researchers spent four years following Robert Wright's story.

They visited Loftus churchyard, Upleatham, Highfields Plantation and the places where Robert and his family had lived. They searched the Whitby Gazette, Yorkshire Evening Press and other local newspapers. They used census records, parish registers, marriage certificates, burial records and family history sources.

And their conclusion was not that they had solved everything.

It was that the search itself had changed their understanding of the family.

The original family story contained errors:

Robert was not buried where they had been told.

The shooting did not happen when his son was twelve.

Robert did not die from his injuries.

The story about surviving for “a year and a day” was wrong.

The story that a suicide had to be buried secretly at night was wrong.

Even the newspaper reports could not always agree with one another.

But there was also truth buried inside the family memory.

Robert Wright really was a gamekeeper. He really was shot by poachers.The shooting really did happen at Highfields. His fellow gamekeeper Thomas Metcalfe really was killed. And Robert really did live with the consequences of that terrible night for the rest of his life.

That is the fascination of local history and genealogy.

A family story is not necessarily a historical record – but it can be a clue.

The archives at Staithes Museum

The Great Grandfather, Gamekeeper – A Genealogist's Nightmare booklet is one of the fascinating pieces of family history research in the archives at Staithes Museum.

It is a wonderful example of the kind of material that can be found in a local museum collection: not simply objects on display, but research, photographs, family histories, newspaper cuttings, transcriptions and stories about the people who lived and worked across our corner of North Yorkshire.

If you are researching a family from Staithes, Loftus, Upleatham, Whitby, Cleveland or the North Yorkshire coast, it is always worth asking what might be hiding in local archives.

You never know what might turn up.

And if there is one piece of advice we can borrow from Gladys Hall and her four years of research, it is this:

Never believe a thing you hear. Check it. Then check it again. And take your wellingtons.

Catalogue reference for the book: 2019.Red.729