Georgian
An intriguing glimpse of village crime in the 1790s has come to light through a notice passed on by Christine Bourner, daughter of Frank Hawkins, whose family home was No. 3 The Square in the 1960s, when the Hawkins hairdressers traded at Southdown House. The notice, dated Tonbridge, November 10, 1796, appeared in the Parish Magazine December 2008 issue, and it describes a break-in at a spot close to home.
The target was the Pleasure House, a building that stood on the Island at the Mount, a location near Ramhurst, which lay within the parish of Leigh. The door of the building had been forcibly broken open, and the intruders made off with a curious mixture of household goods. Among the missing items were an iron tea-kettle with a copper lid and a falling handle, an oval block-tin tea-pot with a black handle, and a round tin sugar canister holding about four pounds of sugar. A round japanned tin tea canister, which had contained a quarter pound of green tea, also disappeared, along with four small over prints with figures, each in gilt frames and glazed.
The notice offered a reward of two guineas, payable on conviction by George Children, Esq, of Tonbridge. Children was a founder of the Powder Mills and lived primarily at Ferox Hall, and his family owned Ramhurst Manor as well as the corn mill down the lane. Anyone selling or pawning stolen goods was to be stopped, and word of such goods was to be given to George Children himself.
The article appeared in the Parish Magazine at a time when recent vandalism had been reported around the village, a reminder that troublemakers are nothing new here. Two centuries apart, both the 1796 burglary and today's incidents show that quiet corners have always needed watching.