27/07/2026
Rowdy behaviour in Hereford City is not new. This account from 1686 is from Hereford City Borough records BG11/17/5/72
Edmund Hawley, barber, was reported not only for shaving and trimming his customers on the Lord's Day, in time of divine Service - and on Easter Day, during the Administration of the Blessed sacrament - but for sending out for ale, and entertaining them in his cellar, where brawling, swearing and cursing then ensue; and also at other times, at midnight as well as by day, when his customers should have been at work, causing them to arrive at work late, and drunk; and where fiddle-playing, music, dancing, singing and roaring cause great disturbance to the neighbours.
Further, the cellar is not only frequented by workmen and labourers, but by wandering tinkers, ragmen and beggars; and, lately, there are "cubs or pens" in it for the improvement of drinking; and all the workmen and young fellows are enticed there by a bold young woman who had recently gone to London bare of clothes and returned shortly afterwards with her silks; and who sits in the men's laps, and causes formerly exemplary husbands to be unkind to their wives;
and her mother, who draws the ale, is a person of as ill repute as her daughter, having two husbands now living - unless the former husband had been lately hanged; he having been branded and transported, but had been seen recently in Presteigne, Hereford, and in Bristol gaol for picking pockets and other felonies - causing the neighbours to provide double fastenings to their doors - and was suspected of providing his family with some of the spoils.
Also, when the constable came, at the request of the employer of one of the men, to persuade the man to go to his work, Edmund Hawley's wife, and Johan and Elizabeth Jackson (the daughter and her mother) threatened and made game of him, and Johan bragged of it at a neighbour's house.
