The Cairn, the Schoolboy and the Vulpicide Outrage of 1903

A rickety cairn, perched precariously over Baysdale. I was told by a onetime resident of the dale that the cairn was built by Roland Close, an estate worker and archaeologist, who was brought up in Shepherd’s House, which can be seen in the distance. Close would walk this way to school in Kildale.

A curious report appeared in the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette in 1903. It seems the fox-hunting folks got particularly irate over something they called “vulpicide” here in Baysdale¹Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette | Friday 03 July 1903 | <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000289/19030703/114/0003> [accessed 2 September 2023].

See, to a fox-hunting soul, there isn’t no sin bigger than vulpicide, which is just a fancy word for slaughtering foxes without rhyme or reason, be it by gamekeepers or anyone else nursing a grudge, real or imagined, against them. Except, of course, in a hunt, then it’s called a sport.

To our modern way of thinking, that might sound a mite odd, but back then, vulpicide was more common than a cold in winter. The gamekeeper had one job in mind: stocking up his master’s shoot with as much game as he could muster. Badgers, foxes, hawks, stoats – they all must be exterminated.

Sometimes, the hunts even paid the keepers for each fox they found on their jaunts, as an inducement to save the foxes. There were tales of owners of big shooting estates who’d tell their keepers to spare the foxes at any cost, even if it meant there were fewer pheasants strutting about. A few keepers did oblige, but most were more interested in preserving birds than foxes. Truth be told, there weren’t too many keepers whose conviction for preserving game birds was not very much greater than their love of foxes²‘Hunting in the North. | Newcastle Daily Chronicle | Friday 04 September 1903’. <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001634/19030904/191/0011> [accessed 2 September 2023].

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  Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette | Friday 03 July 1903 | <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000289/19030703/114/0003> [accessed 2 September 2023]
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  ‘Hunting in the North. | Newcastle Daily Chronicle | Friday 04 September 1903’. <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001634/19030904/191/0011> [accessed 2 September 2023]