Advertisements
for gamekeepers
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The gamekeeper was one of the most important members of the outdoor staff. His duties included rearing game birds for shoots, breeding, killing and skinning rabbits, breeding deer, setting traps, destroying vermin, training hunting dogs and keeping watch for poachers. He was expected to be well-trained in gun use and an excellent shot. | |
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April and May were busy times for gamekeepers,
as this was when the breeding season for game birds such as pheasants
and partridges began. First, the hens had to be caught and taken to
laying pens. Once the eggs were laid, broody hens were |
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| When the eggs
hatched, the chicks were moved to the rearing field, where numerous wooden
bird coops were set up. Tunnels and traps were set up around the edge
of the coops to catch vermin such as rats and stoats. When the birds were
a few weeks old they were released into nearby cover where they were watched
day and night. Gamekeepers usually took turns at night-watching. |
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Generally, under-gamekeepers were assigned the task of vermin control, and products such as the rat pellets advertised here helped them in their work. |
Coops outside the Head
Gamekeeper’s house at Emo
The shooting
season began in Autumn and was another busy time for
gamekeepers. A shooting party at Emo in 1861, for example, shot 675 birds,
hares and rabbits in just three days! At such times, beaters were brought in to
beat the undergrowth with sticks, to draw the birds into the open. Gamekeepers
stood by during the shoot, collecting the birds as they were shot and providing
cartridges for the shooters. Gamekeepers often received tips from visitors,
particularly when they had to return to base to get new cartridges. Indeed, a
visitor who was not generous might find that the gamekeeper mysteriously
disappeared when new cartridges were needed!
Beaters at
Rabbits were a particularly valuable asset
on the Emo estate and were often the target of poachers. A court case from
October 1923 recorded in the Leinster Express newspaper
records how Thomas Holmes, a gamekeeper at Emo, caught two poachers stealing
rabbits on the estate. In court, the agent,
Bertram Fitzherbert
reported that,
“The Park bred and produced a very large
amount of rabbits, they killed from 8,000 to 10,000 rabbits a year, and it was
a very valuable asset to the estate. They kept a staff of men looking after
them and a staff of men for killing them. For the last couple of years they had
got a lot of trouble from gangs of poachers going about there.”
The judge found
the two men guilty of poaching and fined them 10-15 shillings each, although he
warned that should another such case come before his court he would not be so
lenient. Indeed, in earlier years the
penalty for poaching could be much more severe: a poacher caught stealing a
rabbit from a snare on the Abbeyleix estate in 1892
was sentenced to one month’s hard labour (Leinster Express Dec. 3rd 1892). Rabbits brought in a
considerable income on the Emo estate; in 1921 when the house lay empty and the
estate grounds were much reduced, the income from rabbits was still estimated
at ₤500 a year.
The gamekeepers at
Emo also had to closely guard the fallow deer in the
As suppressors of
poaching, gamekeepers were often unpopular with the local community, and even
their wives could be treated coldly. The job could also be dangerous – a
gamekeeper murdered on an estate at Timahoe in 1892
was believed to have been shot by poachers, as he had recently had several
poachers fined in court (Leinster Express
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An advertisement
posted in the Leinster Express gives an indication
of the skills expected of a head gamekeeper in 1892: |
Like most of the upper staff on country estates,
head gamekeepers were usually recruited from abroad. The best known gamekeeper
at Emo is John Dempster He was head gamekeeper from the
late 19th century until the house was closed in the 1920s. He was
born in
Other gamekeepers
at
We have very
little record of what the gamekeepers at Emo were paid, although head
gamekeepers’ wages ranged between ₤20 and ₤80 on various estates. In
1850, however, Joe Conway was paid only 10d per day for keeping, or 11
shillings and eight pence for 14 days work. Gamekeepers could supplement their
income with tips (during shoots) and perquisites, as they were often allowed to
take home skins, feathers and rabbits. The feathers of mallard drakes, for
example, were used to make fishing flies and could be sold on to fur and
feather merchants who paid up to one pound an ounce for them.
Head gamekeepers at
Emo were sometimes left money in their employer’s will. For instance,
John Dempster on the
grounds of
John Dempster was
the head gamekeeper at Emo from the late 19th century until the
house was closed in the 1920s. From the 1901 census we know that he was born in
From the 1911 census
we know that John and his wife had 10 children, two of which died young. The
family was to be beset by further tragedy, however, as they would also lose
two sons in the Great War. The names of these sons, James Dean, the former
gamekeeper, and his younger brother William S., can be seen on a war memorial
in the church at Coolbanagher, where they are listed
among the members of the parish who
John Dempster was
a familiar figure on the Emo estate. At the 1892 Servants’
Ball, he acted as Master of Ceremonies
at the dance. Viscount Carlow, youngest son of the 6th Earl recalled
that his father used to play cricket on the Dempster’s
front lawn. He vividly describes the Dempsters in
his journal of 1907-44,
‘Perhaps
the most familiar figures of all were the Dempsters,
who looked after the farm just beyond the garden, and lived in a small house
with wall flowers growing round the front…Mr. Dempster, the gamekeeper, was
a man of weighty appearance with a broad expanse of front view well in keeping
with his position. Mrs. Dempster on the contrary was short and skinny, and
talked in a high pitched croak, at the same time displaying a remarkable absence
of teeth. Beset with misfortune throughout her life, her speech had a tone
of tragedy about it’.