Frome Times Past

In light of the recent spate of burglaries in Frome, we look back at an infamous bunch of mid-nineteenth century miscreants.

The Maggs-Sparrow gang, named after its two leaders, were responsible for most crimes committed in the town during the late 1840s and early 1850s.

So much so, one newspaper reported that they had ‘infested the neighbourhood’ with their nefarious and, for the most part, nocturnal activities.

Their modus operandi usually involved the stealing of food stuffs – bread, cheese, potatoes – from local shops or neighbouring fields in order to feed their dependents.

William Maggs, for example, had a family of thirteen – although many of them would follow in their father’s footsteps with varying degrees of success.

The situation turned more sinister, however, when Maggs and Sparrow, along with fellow villain Robert ‘Frome Bob’ Hurd, stood trial for murder.

They were accused of brutally killing a fourteen-year-old girl on a farm at West Woodlands, as told in our book ‘The Awful Killing of Sarah Watts’.

Although found ‘not guilty’, it was not long before they were back to their old ways and first Sparrow, then Maggs, found themselves in prison for theft.

Both men were condemned to transportation for life, although neither was destined to leave these shores.

Maggs died before his ship could set sail and Sparrow served out most of his sentence behind the walls of Dartmoor prison.

With their leaders incarcerated, the remainder of the Maggs-Sparrow gang tried to carry on, but their activities were short lived.

One question that had remained unanswered though, was how the gang could have operated for so long without detection.

The answer came with these latter arrests and the large bunch of skeleton keys found in their possession which could open any premises within the town.

Mick Davis & David Lassman