Monthly Archives: May 2012

One of the key individuals in A Fascination of Dines is Joseph Dines aka Leigh Dines Halstead (1802-1872).  He was convicted of horse stealing, sentenced to death, and then after he was reprieved, he was transported to Australia for life.

Full details are in the book which includes the sources and references but today let’s look at the facts and see if we can answer the question:  guilty or not guilty.

First the facts:

• On the 16^th of December a patrole (a sort of roving policeman) called Higgins saw Joseph riding through the gate at Epping Turnpike at about 4 pm.  A sack had been substituted for a saddle and a piece of rope formed a stirrup.  On being questioned Joseph produced a piece of parchment and made reference to his servant and his gig.  Concluding that his suspicions were baseless Higgins allowed Joseph to continue.
• On December 17^th a watchman called Buswell ( forerunner of the Metropolitan Police) was in his box opposite 8, Great  Smith Street where Joseph lodged when, just before 3-0 a.m. he saw Joseph emerge carrying a saddle and a bridle
• Early on the 17^th, a time is not given, Henry Bailey finds a grey horse under a tree.  It was wet and cold, newly shod, and appeared to have been ridden very hard.  He took the horse to the Roebuck Inn in Chigwell at about 7-0 a.m. and handed it to the landlord, Mr Reeves.
• At around 9-0 a.m. Bailey met Joseph in Epping Forest, with a bridle in his hand.  He said he was looking for his horse which he had lost overnight when he tied it to a tree while he went to hunt for some rabbits.  Bailey went with Joseph to the Roebuck to claim the horse.  On the way there Joseph told Bailey that he had swapped a little blood mare and £4.00 for the grey mare the previous Saturday.  At the Roebuck the landlord was not an easy man to convince and he didn’t like the look of Joseph so he detained him.
• At about 9-30 a.m.  a man Wheeler found a saddle in Epping Forest, partly concealed in the furze and bushes, he took the saddle to the Roebuck because he had heard that a grey mare had been taken there.  Reeves persuaded Joseph to write to his friends in town to come forward and verify that he had “chopped” (i.e. swapped) the horse.  Joseph did so, addressing it Mrs Jones, No. 8 Great Smith Street.  Reeves gave this note to a stage coachman who was passing by, in order to send it on its way.  Then for some reason Reeves followed the note to town where he spoke to Lee, an Officer of Lambeth Street Police Office.  They then took it upon themselves to speak to the coachman who had not handed the letter into the post office and they intercepted it and then took it to the Magistrates at Lambeth Street.
• Lee then searched No. 8 Great Smith Street where he found a letter addressed to Leigh Domville Halstead, who was an articled clerk who had been dismissed from the house owing to his bad conduct.  He also found tailor’s bills belonging to Halstead and bills of sale for horses, made in the name of Dines.
• Then Thomas Jaques, a horse patrole in Chigwell said he went to the Roebuck acting on information received and asked Joseph to show him some proof as to who owned the mare.  Joseph is said to have produced a parchment issued from the King’s Bench, signed by Le Blond, certifying that Leigh Domville Halstead was an admitted attorney of the above court.  Jaques wasn’t satisfied and took Joseph into custody.  He found that he had a martingale, a pair of snare and other things on him.
• Joseph was taken before the magistrate, Mr Abdy, where said that he could prove that the mare was not worth £10.00 and that he had had a dog with him and had been ‘coursing.’  While on his way to the magistrate’s house Joseph was said to have tried to free himself from another prisoner he had been tied to and asked for a gun so that he could kill himself.

These were facts that had been placed before the court, although Lee’s evidence about the search was not allowed.  From the moment of his arrest Joseph had been protesting his innocence and both and Reeve and Lee had spoken  freely to a local newspaper reporter who had reported at length (he was paid by the word) about the mysterious Mr A, the son of a prominent Cheshire clergyman who had gone through the fortune left by his father some years before as well as £3,000 left by his mother on her death three years previously.

The grey mare in question had last been seen at Knebworth Hall on the previous Sunday but was only realised to be missing on the 16^th.  One wonders, if it was Joseph riding him on the 16^th, why he did not have a saddle? It is also a puzzle as to which horse he left home to go and saddle up in the early hours of the 17^th and how did he get to Chigwell if he didn’t ride the grey mare?

What do you think?  Was Joseph guilty or not guilty?

One of the more diverting of tasks in studying family history is working out who marries whom. The Dines often married again when the first wife died. With so many young children to care for a Dines widower would search around for a new mother for them. Some times they only waited three months before remarrying. This gives a list of names of people marrying into the Dines family. For example:

• Aldis, Andrews, Bailey, Baker, Barber,  Batchelour,  Beeson,  Bernard
  Birkenhead,  Board,  Bracker,  Brigham,  Brown,  Buckingham,  Buckle
  Burt,  Butt,  Button,  Campbell,  Carr,  Clapperton,  Clayton,  Coke
• Dalby,  Day,  Deard,  Dennett,  Dewsbury,  Dines,  Dixon,  Dunham
  Dynes,  Edgar,  Edwards,  Empey,  Ellerd,  Firth,  Frith,  Foster
• Gale,  Garrick,  Given,  Gravestock,  Green,  Hall,  Halstead,  Hancock(e)
  Hamilton,  Harkin,  Hawkes,  Holdsworth,  How,  Howe,  Inns
• Jackson,  Jones,  Kelly,  Kensey,  Kewley,  King,  Lane,  Lawrence,  Leather
  Lee,  Lloyd
• MacNamara,  Malpass,  Marshall,  Matthews,  McDougall,  McKay
  McNab,  Moverley,  O’Brien.  Orsman
• Passingham,  Pateman,  Pearson,  Pickering,  Piper,  Potter,  Proctor
  Pryke,  Pywell,  Ralph,  Ricketts,  Riley,  Roberts,  Rolfe,  Rothenburger
  Rouse,  Rowbottom,  Rowley,  Russell,  Sabey,  Saddington,  Sale
  Sherwood,  Singleton,  Smith,  Stevenson,
• Tugwell,  Vindin
• Waterhouse,  Watford,  Webster,  Weetman,  Westmore,  Whitbread
  White,  Whitten,  Williams,  Wilston,  Wood,  Woodbridge,  Wray,  Wright

At last A Fascination of Dines is on the market. 

• It can be obtained from www.lulu.com for £39.64. 

 It is expensive but it does have colour-coded family trees and it will be the cheapest way to buy it if you live overseas as there will be no money transfer fees to pay. 

• The ISBN number 978-1-4716-9278-9 so it should be possible to buy it through a local book store.

I will be interested in any feedback you may have, good, bad or indifferent

One of the problems in genealogical research is that names get “mangled” over the centuries and I have found several suggestions for the origin of the name DINES.  One is that it is Jewish in origin, another is that it arises from a settlement of Danes.  Both of these are possible but there is a third which also seems likely.  The Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames gives several alternative spellings including Dain, Daine, Daines, Dayne, Daynes, Deyns, Dines, Doyne, Dyne and quotes a Richard le Dine, 1201, in Surrey.  It is your choice whether you think the name means honourable, or haughty and reserved.  Both are given

Thankfully the Dines in this book seem to have stuck to the spelling Dines except for an occasional blip where the clerk has entered Dynes into the record

The National Trust Names site http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk indicates that there were 802 Dines living in England in 1881.  There are also a significant number of Dines in Australia, particularly in Western Australia, and in the USA.

“ Don’t even get me started on aliases”

However it isn’t only the surname that cause a headache to the researcher, it is the fact that 18th and 19th centuries families were often numbered in double figures.  So we have John Dines, c1726-1810 having 9 children which includes John, Edward, Joseph, William, George and Charles.  The eldest son, John, includes John, Joseph and William among his 7 children and they went on to have Johns, Josephs, Edwards, Williams etc.  Joseph, God bless him, had 17 including Joseph, William, John, Edward, and Charles, twice.  William has a Charles and a George.  This not to mention all the cousins called Ann, Sarah, Mary or Mary Ann, and Harriet.

It was necessary to sort out family trees just to make sure that the right child was attached to the correct brother.  In doing so, of course, I got a much more complete picture of the Dines and learned of the fascinating lives of some of the other lines descending from John Dines c1726 who by the time he died in 1810 was a respected gamekeeper, farmer and land owner in the area around Kings Walden in Hertfordshire.

My great grandmother was Louisa Dines and she married Richard Brown, a tailor and draper, in Kings Walden in 1859.  To be honest I didn’t think I( would get very far with the Brown line, given how common  the name is, but this family were in and around Buckminster, then in Leicestershire for around 150 years.  Richard, however, led me a merry dance.  Although his birth was registered and he was baptised as plain Richard Brown for some reason he signed his marriage certificate as Richard Frederick Brown, and this was the name used on the birth certificate of his eldest son, Edward Alfred.  He then seemed to become plain Richard again but by the time his youngest daughters got married he had adopted the name Bertram, and his gravestone in Nab Wood Cemetery, in Shipley, in Yorkshire, bears the legend Richard B. Brown.

Anyway these are just a few of the tribulations of researching family name.  Don’t even get me started on the subject of aliases, for example Dines alias Hancock.  The further complication of the identity stolen from Leigh Domville Halstead is the subject of a future posting

After being told on Thursday that the book had been “shipped” by Express the proof has finally arrived today at 2-0 pm.  If that is express then I will be trusting Lulu’s snail mail in future.  The book looks OK at first glance but some of the photographs have reproduced disappointingly.  This could be because I am not good at manipulating digital formats or it could be down to the poor quality of the original photographs.

The contents, sources and index look clear and readable which is a good thing as there are so many Dines with the same name that an index was absolutely essential but it caused me plenty of headaches in preparation.

In another couple of days, once my trusty proof reader has been through it, I will be able to publish details of the ISBN number and places it can be obtained.  Because it is print on demand it has worked out quite expensive, so I certainly won’t be making a fortune on it, indeed I will be lucky if I get my money back but writing and producing the book has gone some way to scratching the itch brought on by a fascination of Dines.

I am waiting for the proof copy of my new book, A Fascination of Dines to arrive.  It is a family history, particularly of one generation,  of the Dines family whose roots are in Hertfordshire but at least five members emigrated to Australia in the mid 19th Century, only one of them at His Majesty’s insistence

The book focuses on three generations who collectively have fascinated me since I first began researching my family history in 1974. The book includes:

• a convicted horse thief,
• a stolen identity,
• an acquittal on manslaughter,
• a murder by poachers,
• the invention of equipment useful in the study of meteorology,
• some sturdy gamekeepers, farmers, grocers, butchers, vets and a lasting love of the Turf.

Indeed one wealthy owner, who bred the winner of the 1866 Melbourne Gold Cup, took the outcome of a wager all the way to the Privy Council and as a consequence had to sell his 25 room mansion and most of his stable of racehorses and head off up to a 64,000 acre station on the borders of NSW and Queensland.

Once the proof has been approved then I will be able to post details of where you can obtain it.  Meanwhile I hope to share my research methods and dilemmas, some extras that I wasn’t able to put in the book, and some extra background to their lives.