Robert Crumpler was a gamekeeper, aged 42, at Daisy Down, Hardington, in 1891.

Robert was born into a farming family at Lytchett Minster in 1848. His father, Stephen Hooper Crumpler, was a farmer and his mother, Mary, was the daughter of John Jeffery, also a farmer.

By 1861, Robert’s family had moved to Kings Lane Farm, Boldre, near Lymington, Hampshire. The 1861 census recorded Robert as a scholar (a schoolboy).

In April 1871, Robert was a miller, lodging at the Canford Post Office.

By February 1875 he was an under-keeper on the Uddens estate.[1]

In the last quarter of 1877, about six months after the death of his mother, Robert married Jane Elizabeth Kail, the daughter of Benjamin Kail, a coachman.

In August 1878, Robert and Jane lived at Uddens, near Wimborne, where their first child was born.

By October 1880, they had moved to a house near Crow Farm, Ringwood, where their second child was born.

The 1881 census recorded Robert’s occupation as a farm labourer, but he was probably still a gamekeeper as he remained one until the end of his life.

In August 1885, Robert and Jane’s third child was born at Lychett Matravers.

Between then and April 1891, Robert and his family moved to Hardington, where they lived at Daisy Down. In about 1894, they moved to South Perrott, where Robert continued to work as a gamekeeper. He died in October 1914, aged 65, and was laid to rest at South Perrott on 8 October.

His wife outlived him by twenty years. On 12 February 1920, she married Robert Candow, an army pensioner, at South Perrott. After he died in 1927, Jane appears to have moved to the Radford district in Nottinghamshire, where she died in 1934, aged 82.

Robert and Jane’s grandson, Lance Corporal Austin William Stephen Crumpler, died on 28 June 1942 while on war service in Egypt.

References

[1] Southern Times and Dorset County Herald, 6 February 1875, p.6.