Then and Now: Grantham reverend committed boy to prison
The Rev Potchett was the vicar of St Wulfram’s from 1817 to 1856. He was a father of nine children, three of whom later became vicars, writes Ruth Crook, of Grantham Civic Society.
Potchett was a pious man who tried to maintain standards of propriety in the town. In November 1835 he committed a young boy of 16, a labourer from Little Gonerby, to Lincoln Castle prison by proclamation, accusing him of bestiality.
We know from the prison records that the young man was 5ft 2in tall with light brown hair and blue eyes.
He remained in prison until March 1836, when the case was heard in the Lincoln Assizes by Sir J B Bosenquet. The case could not be proved, so he was released.
His father was a shoe maker in Little Gonerby, but he didn’t return home and went to work as a servant in Little Ponton.
There he met his future wife, who was also a servant, and they married in 1839.
The couple did not have any children, but were eventually able to return to Little Gonerby in the late 1850s, probably when the Rev Potchett left the town, and they opened a grocer’s shop there.