He Took His Secret to the Grave - I Found It 120 Years Later...

John Tozer Baskerville died in 1904 at Brisworthy Farm on the edge of Dartmoor. His death certificate said farmer. His son-in-law was at his bedside. He left his wife and daughter the equivalent of around £100,000 in today's money. A quiet, respectable end to a quiet, respectable life...or so you'd think. Twenty-eight years earlier, police had broken open a locked tea chest in John's house in Plymouth and found it overflowing with stolen railway goods - silks, satins, velvet, plated silverware, thirty-six pairs of brand-new boots, jars of spirits, and over £100 worth of property stolen from the South Devon Railway. He was sentenced to five years' penal servitude at Plymouth Quarter Sessions in 1876, and the Recorder told the courtroom there was very little doubt he was the thief. We follow John from his childhood in rural Shaugh Prior, raised by his uncle on a sixty-acre Devon farm, through his move into Plymouth where he married Amy and climbed the ranks of the South Devon Railway to become head of porters in the goods department - while quietly running a greengrocer's shop on Clifton Street that turned out to be hiding a small department store's worth of stolen goods in the back rooms. From his trial and imprisonment in Pentonville, to his release on licence, to the remarkable decades that followed, where he rebuilt himself as a Devon farmer and took his secret to the grave. His story turns the census returns, prison records, court reports, and newspaper clippings of Victorian Devon into a portrait of a man who built a life, destroyed it, and then slowly, quietly, built another one. 📜 All sources and records used in this video are listed on my website here: https://yourfamilyline.co.uk/blogs/st... 🔔 Join this channel to get access to perks:    / @yourfamilyline   #ukhistory #history #familyhistory #socialhistory #genealogy #archives #victorianera #documentary #hiddenhistory #19thcentury #devon #plymouth #documentaries #historyuncovered #railway #crime #crimehistory #facts #historychannel #truecrimedocumentary #truestory