By far the most frequent entry in
PC Jones' journal is "Nothing to report".
The area must have been quiet in these early Victorian times, and he spent
a lot of his time checking up on strangers in the area.
The worry for local landowners was that strangers passing through might
not be able to support themselves, and claim money from the local Overseers
of the Poor. The local landowners all had to pay
poor rate and they did not want this to increase, as it would
if more people were claiming it.
In these times there were a lot of poorer tradesmen travelling to market
on foot, and poor people travelling to look for work. PC Jones' journal
records them.
This
entry from February 1848 reads: