The Hedges Family: Molecatchers of Hampshire

Victorian engraving of a mole

Introduction

As a teacher we are told to prepare our students for jobs that have not been invented yet. After all, who would have imagined twenty years ago, that you could be an app designer? But in 2014 there were indeed over 1.3 million apps available for android devices made by them. Yet, as new jobs and occupations develop, others become obsolete.  Framework knitter, lath render, whitesmith, nailer, and the rather gloriously named slubber doffer are among the more unusual and archaic occupations that I have found on censuses during my research. But the one that has currently caught my attention is that of mole catcher.

Now we all know what a mole catcher is – it’s someone who catches moles – but I was keen to find out a bit more about what this entailed in the 1800s. I cannot pretend that the research is original but what I have found out fits very nicely with my genealogical research into this branch of Levi’s family and has made curious reading.

A mole poking out of its mole hill - apparently they can dig 30 metres of new tunnel per day and shift 540 times their own body weight in that time

The Hedges Family of Kingsclere

The branch of the family that I will be looking at were called the Hedges. Levi’s great great grandmother was Ada Ellen Hedges (b. 1865, Wolverton, Hampshire) and it is her brothers, father, grandfather and cousins that will be the focus of this post.

It can get a wee bit confusing, and though my research into this side of the family is currently ongoing I have managed to put together a rudimentary family tree below. The family is very extensive so I have only included my mole catchers within (with the exception of Ada Ellen herself). Hopefully it should provide a useful point of reference here.

Hedges Family Tree of Mole Catchers (click to expand size)

The Hedges family in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were based in and around the little Hampshire market town of Kingsclere. In 1868 it was described as being of good size; located near the Downs in the north of the county. The Hedges Family are generally to be found in the surrounding villages, including Wolverton (1 ½ miles away), Baughurst (5 miles away) and Tadley (6 miles away).

The surrounding area was well cultivated and used for growing barley. There were abundant surrounding woodlands and the extensive common there was enclosed in 1842. Moles in this period were seen as a serious pest - their burrowing disturbed the new enclosure fences – and so it is in this context that the Hedges Family were operating in what was seen as a rather lucrative trade.

A view over the Downs near Kingsclere, Hampshire

Mole catching – A Lucrative Trade

The first thing I found out about mole catching was that it was a trade that was mostly passed down in families with fathers passing onto their sons the tricks of the trade. This is also the case in Levi’s family where the census shows at different points, at least three generations of mole catchers.

Census Returns 1841-1901

1841 – John Hedges (aged 50) – mole catcher

1851 – His son Charles Hedges (aged 24) – mole catcher and lath cleaver

1871 – Charles Hedges lath cleaver and mole catcher (aged 44), his sons William (aged 16) and John (aged 14) are also down as mole catchers on the census

1891 – Charles Hedges (aged 64) mole catcher

1901 – Charles Hedges (aged 74) mole catcher

1871 census return for Charles Hedges and his family

There also seem to be other mole catching members of the Hedges family in the local area, including mole catchers Frederick Hedges and his nephew William in the 1901 census. I have good reason to think them to be the descendants of Charles’ uncle William (born c. 1794) and therefore cousins to our branch of mole catching Hedges.

Mole catching cousins in nearby Tadley in the 1901 census

The second thing I found out about mole catching, was that it was a skilled profession that could be quite profitable. Beyond killing the moles for local landowners and farmers, the mole catcher could sell the skins for profit. Apparently, four million mole skins were imported to America from England at one point, and a mole catcher in this period could make around £50 per annum, a sum comparable to that of a school teacher at the time. To advertise his profession, many mole catchers wore mole skin coats, the front alone of which required the skins of around 100 moles – thus it was a testament to the mole catcher’s skill (and great advertising to boot). Even Queen Victoria hired a rat and mole catcher, the famous Jack Black, who incidentally also bred fancy pet rats one of which was owned by the author Beatrix Potter.

Jack Black, rat and mole catcher for Queen Victoria

Illustration from Beatrix Potter's book 'Samuel Whiskers'. The book is dedicated to her rat, named Jack Black

Lastly, I found out that clay traps worked best for catching the moles, as they retained less human scent than other traps. That said, wooden traps and later steel traps were also common. The mole catcher would often scratch his initials onto the traps to identify them as his own. For two of the perils of the business were poachers and itinerant mole catchers. The former stole the moles from the traps to sell the skins, whilst the latter could undercut the fee charged by the parish mole catcher and steal his work as he passed through.

A victorian mole trap

Sadly, with the increased usage of poisons like strychnine undermined the traditional skills of the mole catchers by the later Victorian period – they were cheaper and quicker to kill this way. It is clear that even by the 1860s the mole catching profession was under some pressure, as the Hedges family supplemented their mole catching trade with work as lath renders or cleavers. It is no surprise, then, to see that in the third generation of Levi’s branch of the Hedges family, John and William Hedges did not maintain the profession into adulthood. William became a working tradesman by 1881, whilst his brother John was first a ‘carrier’ (literally someone who delivers packages) before becoming a green grocer in Henley, Oxon in 1901 and then finally a timber cleaner in 1911.

That said, some land owners still retained the old mole catchers into this period, as attested by the fact that the cousins in Tadley were still active mole catchers at the turn of the century (indeed Levi’s 2nd cousin, 5x removed, puts his profession down as mole catcher in the 1911 census).

Census return from 1911 for William Hedges, mole catcher

Final Note

Apparently, mole catching as a profession has enjoyed a comeback in recent years, since killing moles with strychnine was banned in 2006.  

A traditional mole catcher at work in Cheshire

But to finish off this post, I have found a very lovely poem by John Clare from this period entitled simply
‘The Mole Catcher’:

Tattered and ragg'd, with greatcoat tied in strings,
And collared up to keep his chin from cold,
The old mole-catcher on his journey sings,
Followed by shaggy dog infirm and old,
Who potters on and keeps his steady pace;
He is so lame he scarce can get abroad,
But hopples on and growls at anything;
Yet silly sheep will scarcely leave the road.
With stick and spud he tries the new-made hills
And bears his cheating traps from place to place;
Full many are the miners that he kills.
His trotting dog oft looks him in the face;
And when his toils are done he tries to play
And finds a quicker pace and barks him on his way.

References

British Mole Catchers Register - available here

'Jack Black: Rat Catcher' - available here

'Kingclere' on Hampshire Genuki - found here

'Mole Catchers: A brief history' by N. Jewell found here