The Cock Road Gang

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Bitton, Gloucestershire, England
Surname/tag: Caines Cains Wilmot

Taken from Ancestry Posted 23 Nov 2014 by irene crebbin Possibly from Paul Townsend’s Flickr site which is no longer active

The Caines Family of Oldland Common

COCKROAD was a village in the 18th century. Today it is remembered as modern Cock Road, and a chapel now stands on the site of a look-out point where the fearsome Cockroad Gang kept watch - a spot no outsider ever dared approach. Virtually everyone in the village belonged to the gang, which terrorised the entire Bristol area for decades. They stole livestock, robbed travellers, demanded money with menaces, collected protection money at the annual Lansdown fair and passed counterfeit coins. They were so violent, so unstoppable, that their very names invoked terror. The same surnames - especially the Caines - appear with monotonous regularity in accounts of the gang, and it must have been nearly impossible to have led a blameless life if you were born into one of these families.

Many Cockroaders had colourful nicknames or aliases. Abraham Isles, for instance, was known as Scramhanded Jemmy and, curiously, Twink. There was the legendary Richard (Dick Boy) Haynes, Charles (The Squire) Fuller, and the acknowledged Captain, Thomas Caines. Nor were the women stay-at-home innocents - they regularly stood trial alongside their menfolk. Over the years, numerous intermarriages took place, so that by the first half of the 19th century, everyone seems to have been in some way related. Infamous names included the Frys, Brittons, Brains, Bryants, Wilmots, Webbs, Wards and Isles (or Iles). The legendary Dick Boy Haynes started his career early. At the age of seven he masterminded a scheme for stealing bread by making a hole at the back of the bakery ovens. r was so badly injured that Dick had to carry him three miles home on his back. He also teamed up with a childhood chum called Carey and the murderous pair roamed the countryside, killing and stealing anything they fancied. A Downend man called Crach was foolish enough to fight back so Dick shot at him. The gun jammed so he hit him over the head with it instead. Crach was found dead the next day.

The pair were charged and Carey was hanged soon afterwards. But Dick Boy was acquitted, recovered Carey's body from Taunton gaol and brought it home for burial. When he later discovered Carey had confessed to the Crach slaying, he swore that had he known, he would have dumped the corpse in the nearest river. Dick pursued his murderous career alone until he was transported to Botany Bay for a London robbery. He escaped and arrived back in England with a young wife in tow. He told everyone she was the daughter of a German nobleman - in reality, she came from Westerleigh.

The pair lived in London, where Dick Boy mixed criminal activities with boxing until his equally villainous wife was caught and executed. He then returned to Bristol, where he was arrested for shooting at a police officer. He was strung up on St Michael's Hill on Friday April 25, 1800. But the most notorious of all were the Caines. Benjamin and Ann Caines had six sons, two of whom were hanged and the rest transported. Their two daughters each had relationships with three men, and all six men were transported. One grandchild was hanged and at least three transported.

James Caines was hanged in 1825 for his part in the murder of pound keeper Isaac Garden after an argument at the Tennis Court Inn, Warmley, and his brother Francis was transported for highway robbery. George Caines and Francis Britton were arrested for passing counterfeit coins at a horse fair, and George was later transported for attempting to kill a constable. His younger brother, Francis, was part of a gang which stole £400 worth of cloth from Freshford and a horse and cart to carry it. He was hanged at Ilchester in 1804 with other gang members, including Thomas Batt and Charles (The Squire) Fuller.

Elizabeth Caines (aka Elizabeth Bush) was arraigned at Ilchester for robbing a butcher. When her house was searched, six pigs were found locked in her parlour. Sampson Fry, half brother to the Caines, was jailed for assault in 1809 and possibly later transported. Then Benjamin Caines junior and other gang members broke into the home of elderly Sarah Prigg of Bitton in 1817 and threatened her and her nephew with guns. Benjamin and another gang member were caught and hanged. Benjamin's father then charged locals to see the body to pay for funeral expenses and held a mighty party.

The hanging led to an outbreak of vengeful animal maiming and killing and torching of hayricks, but the level of crime soon settled down to normal for the area. By the time Elizabeth Caines (born 1781) was 41, one son and two of her brothers had been hanged and her two common-law husbands, two other brothers and another son had been transported. As Ian Bishop commented drily in Oldland - the Village and the Parish: 'To have three male relatives hanged and five transported, all in the space of 21 years, is either down to extreme bad luck or gross negligence.' As a further two (Thomas and Samuel Caines) were later transported, it is not surprising there were no Caines left in Oldland by the census of 1841.

One interesting sidelight is that George Caines, nephew of Elizabeth, was transported in 1815 and ran a pub in Parramatta, New South Wales. He called it The Jolly Sailor, presumably after the pub in Hanham - and it was just down the road from Brislington House, home of the Brown family of doctors from Bristol's Brislington (see Appeals on Page seven). But by 1811, local residents had had enough and set up the Kingswood Association for the Suppression of Crime and a vigilante group called the Bitton Troop.

The number of gang members arrested increased, so the Cockroaders travelled further afield where they were unknown, committing crimes as far away as London and Birmingham. Then one night, the Bristol city watchmen and the guards crept into the village and surrounded every house. Every man they found was arrested, regardless of whether they were suspected of any particular crime, and herded into Bristol. The majority were found guilty on some charge or other, and most were either hanged or transported, although there is some doubt whether the gang leaders were caught. Certainly there were no Caines on the list.

Ironically, members of the Cockroad Fry family found themselves on the other side of the dock in the 1820s when they were prosecution witnesses at the trial of John Horwood. He was accused of killing a girl who had rejected his advances and was hanged. He was then flayed by a local surgeon and his skin used to bind a book about the case which is still kept in Bristol today. But the heyday of the Cockroad Gang was nearly over. Mr Braine believed it was the influence of new and highly successful day and Sunday schools, sponsored by Bristol provision merchants.

On the first day, 75 children turned up of whom none could read and only 17 knew any of the alphabet. But it was a start. Cock Road nowadays is lined with smart new houses, but memories of the past still linger - a small cluster of homes near the Cockroad lookout post has been named Cains Close.

Tales from Cockroad from the Kingswood Chronicles

IN 1781, colliers John Read and John Ward were executed at Gloucester for housebreaking. They were described as members of 'a desperate gang which has long infested the country'.

Two years later, James Bryant, Benjamin Webb and George Ward were hanged for stealing sheep from Isaac Lewis of Bitton. While in Gloucester jail they sawed through their leg-irons and nearly escaped. After that, they were restrained by a device known as The Widow's Arms until their execution. Colliers seized two bailiff's men evicting a tenant for non-payment of rent in 1795. They were kept in a pit for 24 hours, only being let out once for a snack of gin and gingerbread. When they were eventually set free, they had to pay six shillings for their overnight board and lodgings.

That same year, Bristol Corporation offered a reward of 50 guineas for the arrest of Kingswood men preventing coal and other goods entering the city. Among those detained were Moses Isles and William Fry. Abraham Isles and Abraham Scull were horse thieves who once held up the toll keeper at Chelwood at gunpoint before committing two more robberies. Isles was arrested at his home that night, and the loot was found under his pillow.

George Groves made a living by stealing from country fairs between 1808 - 1822. He was arrested in Derby, and sentenced to seven years transportation. William and Samuel Bryant were accused of stealing linen, silver buckles and other goods from a house in Bitton. Samuel was jailed in 1812 for stealing wheat at Mangotsfield. Joseph Bryant, aged 40, was jailed in 1812 for attempted housebreaking and Dennis Bryant, 23, for setting fire to a hayrick. He was transported a couple of years later for stealing a bed.

Robert and Thomas Cribb were transported for 14 years soon afterwards for horse-stealing. William Hathway was arrested in Warmley in 1813 for highway robbery, and seven Cockroaders were rounded up after trying to rescue a comrade from the constables. The men - William Powe, Henry Willis, Samuel Brain and John Fry walked free but the women - Hannah Jones, Sarah Lacey and Hester Britton were all jailed for six weeks.

Joseph Willis, Thomas Wilmot and Timothy Bush were all transported for life for the crime of horse stealing. Ann Powell was convicted of theft from a Bitton house in 1814. She was reprieved but her husband, Joseph, was sentenced to seven years transportation for receiving stolen goods. Samuel Brain (aka Black) served two years for stealing poultry and Joseph Bryant, Isaac Ballard, Joseph Parker (aka Evans) and James Baker were charged with house breaking. Not long afterwards Henry and Ambrose Willis were arrested for trying to free another gang member from police custody!

Being a member of a Cockroad family had its disadvantages in court. Sampson Cooke, for instance, was transported for 14 years, simply for stealing a hay knife worth two shillings.

IN these days of prison reform it is difficult to realise the mentality of the old hanging Judges. One of the worst of the hanging Judges was the infamous Justice Buller, a contemporary of Jefferies.

There can be no question that Justices in those days took their tone from Jefferies. He was possibly responsible for more injustice than England has ever known. While the Assizes were sitting at Gloucester, Buller was annoyed by the transparent lies of a witness.

" Where have you come from ? " he asked, " from Bitton, my lord," "You're insolent enough to be of the Bitton breed," was the staggering reply. " But I thought I had hanged the whole of that parish long ago ! "

In the meanwhile, their eldest daughter Betty Caines, had started to live with a Timothy Bush, who subsidised his miner’s income with money received from the odd misdemeanour or dubious acquisition of property which just happened to come his way. Having provided Betty with two sons, Timothy’s relatively short life of crime resulted in him being convicted, together with a Thomas Wilmot and a Joseph Willis of horse theft. Such a theft was regarded as a very major invasion into the deeply held privileges of the rich, and, accordingly could be punishable by death.

Certainly all three were found guilty and condemned to death, but perhaps with providence smiling upon them, they were reprieved, having their sentences commuted to transportation for life. Accordingly, on the 26 August 1813, Timothy Bush sailed from these shores onboard the vessel General Hewart, bound for New South Wales, and the start of a new, if somewhat arduous life as a convict.

The Village of Bitton South Gloucestershire

Unlike today, Bitton used to be an important working area, with coal having been mined for hundreds of years; the brass/paper mill as described, plus the development of the village smithy into a substantial foundry business known as Bush and Wilton, plus the manufacture of furniture by the Caisley company.

Church Road Bitton South Gloucestershire

Kingswood Gloucestershire

Cadbury Heath Then & Now 1922

1922 The King William public house at Cadbury Heath (known to locals as The King Billy)