BOOTH/DEWSBURY searching for Notorious smuggler/racketeer Dick Dewsbury?

[M-Lin]

Am I understanding it correctly that the Dewsbury family lived in Crosby not Formby?

I'll enquire at Crosby library as I said in my previous post if you would like me to?

That would be very kind of you, thank you. The address is in Crosby and the story goes he owned a fleet of ships in Formby?

In the 1911 census Henry is employed as a 'Narvie' at a timber merchants. I can't find any reference of narvie...

[ShaunJ]

Narvie

Navvie

[M-Lin]

Narvie

Navvie

Thank you. So he was building railways...the perfect cover!   

[ShaunJ]

As you mentioned earlier he was working for a timber merchant so he wouldn't have been building railways. Navvy or Navvie has a very wide meaning in Liverpool and could be just someone involved in unskilled manual labour.

There were extensive timber yards a couple of miles away from Crosby, in Seaforth, near the docks.

[M-Lin]

Thanks again. One a second look I was reading the American meaning.

[mazi]

British history online tells me that "some inhabitants of little Crosby are fishermen who harvest shrimps and cockles from the broad firm sand.

I would think that the fishing fleet would be a fleet of Shrimpers  carts, rather than boats.

The shrimps were cooked and cleaned, then potted for sale, a labour intenive process which might involve employees.

This area of the west lancs coast is constantly either silting up or eroding away, and the continuous
dredging of the channel for liverpools docks may be why his enterprise failed

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01ktz/

Mike

[ShaunJ]

some inhabitants of little Crosby are fishermen who harvest shrimps and cockles from the broad firm sand

That's interesting. Little Crosby is a small community a couple of miles inland. Presumably some of the inhabitants of Great Crosby would be following the same line of work.

[mazi]

Although shrimping was and is popular around southport I had not realised that it stretched southwards to the Crosby area.

70 years ago I had a school friend born at Ainsdale beach, I spent my entire childhood on the beach
and was a bit bemused by the thought of a fleet of boats, sand yachts maybe 

Mike

[ShaunJ]

Reading contemporary newspaper reports of the complaints of 19th century Crosby fishermen, it seems that they had several activities:

-Trawling from boats (not just for shrimp and prawn but also flat fish such as sole)
-Fishing with fixed nets attached to stakes
-Shrimping via hand nets
-Fishing for cockles with rakes