Image: Charles Edward Mathews who successfully campaigned against the shooting of wildfowl in Sutton Park
This rare engraving is taken from the collection of Stephen Roberts
The hunting of wildlife in Sutton Park was a centuries-old activity. Its medieval origins had, of course, been as a deer park. The right of the inhabitants to hunt had been set down in the charter of 1528. It was the exercise of this right that led to the coursing of hares in the park – which, in the first half of the nineteenth century, brought in large numbers of spectators. Harry Horton, who grew up in Sutton, was appalled by this spectacle, not just by the cruelty but also by the presence of women in the crowd. In his now-forgotten poem Sutton Park (1844) he wrote:
‘Save when, on yonder hill, the crowds resort,
Lured by the name of fashion and sport.
Then do the echoes of these woods reply
To shouts of barbarous and impetuous joy.
There, too, the angel sex by fashion drawn,
Refuse on cruel sports to pour their scorn;
That sex whose virtues are the theme of song,
Cheer with their smiles the rude insensate throng,
And like th’ Athenian fair, with eager eyes,
Pursue the courser as he flies.
Oh, that this park, so long the rustic’s pride
Should be at last to senseless sports applied.’
Shooting – known to the gentlemen of Sutton as ‘sporting’ – was more regulated. To shoot birds, hares or foxes required the purchase of a permit. Those who came to shoot complained in the 1840s that there was a shortage of birds and mammals and claimed that the corporation was not doing its job ‘or the game would be far more abundant than it is.’ There were certainly an abundance of rabbits. For two days each winter at the turn of the twentieth century, the council issued permits for ferreting. In December 1903 200 local people went ferreting. ‘Scarcely a permit holder was unsuccessful and several parties of three or four obtained more than a dozen rabbits each’, it was reported.
By the end of the nineteenth century opposition to the shooting of birds in Sutton Park was growing. In 1890, unable to agree on a ban, the town council decided to restrict shooting rights to inhabitants of the town. For C.E. Mathews nothing other than an outright ban was acceptable. A solicitor and former Liberal councillor in Edgbaston, Mathews had been instrumental in establishing the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham. Though he retained his house in Edgbaston, he also acquired a residence in Four Oaks and was soon invited to be president of the Sutton Coldfield Institute, which organised lectures in the town. A very keen mountaineer, Mathews visiting Switzerland every year.
On four occasions he reached the summit of Mont Blanc and was one of the few who had climbed the Matterhorn in a single day.
A lover of the outdoors and a speaker at meetings calling for compassionate treatment of animals, Mathews often walked in Sutton Park and here he encountered those who were there to shoot. He lobbied the town council on the matter, but a letter to a local newspaper proved to be more effective. Mathews pointed the finger at one individual, I. Genders, who
‘seems determined to get all he can for his money. Last month, notwithstanding earnest protests and apparently for no other reason than “it would look good in a glass case” he shot one of the grebes whilst it was sitting on the water. The same day the other parent grebe was found dead … Last week the same person shot a short-eared owl, which he left dead upon the ground. What his further achievements may have been I am as yet unaware …’
Mathews was a well-connected and influential figure, a formidable champion of the birds of Sutton Park. His letter caused outrage in Sutton, and forced the town council’s hand. In 1897 the shooting of wildfowl in Sutton Park was prohibited.
Charles Edward Mathews died in Edgbaston in October 1905, but his funeral took place in Sutton Coldfield, where he was also buried.
Stephen Roberts, April 2021