James Hawker

Who was James Hawker?

James Hawker was an English poacher.

He was born Daventry, Northamptonshire and began poaching as a teenager to gain extra income whilst working as an apprentice bootmaker. He joined the militia to acquire a gun and reached the rank of corporal, although he left Daventry after falling out with the head gamekeeper at Badby. In 1893 he was elected to the Oadby school-board and in 1894 was a member of the Oadby parish council. Hawker kept photographs of William Ewart Gladstone, Charles Bradlaugh, Augustine Birrell, Thomas Sayers, and Gladys Cooper in his diary. In 1921 he died of a heart attack at Stoughton Road, Oadby and was buried in Oadby cemetery.

In 1961 the Oxford University Press published his journal, written in 1904-1905, a "mixture of autobiography, poacher's handbook, and radical philosophy". A play of Hawker's life, The Poacher, was produced by the Emma Theatre Company in 1980 and written by Andrew Marley and Lloyd Johnston. After the first performance of the play, a collection was raised which paid for a headstone at Hawker's grave, bearing the motto: "I will Poach till I die".