TWIN POACHERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVII, Issue 10808, 31 December 1926, Page 6

TWIN POACHERS.

DEATH SOLVES A PROBLEM. A life-long problem of identity ended with the death in the Hitchen infirmary recently. Ebenezer Albert Fox, aged 69, the twin brother of Albert Ebenezer Fox, of Stevenage, Hertfordshire. The brothers were so much alike that it was almost impossible to distinguish one from the other, states the "Daily Mail." Owing to infirmity, the twins had at intervals during the past two or three years been inmates of the Hitchni Poor Law Infirmary, but they were seldom in the institution together. A few days before his death Ebenezer 1 Albert walked out of the infirmary and was' not traced for several days. Eventually he was found in a wooded swamp near Hitchin. He had been there for three days and was exhausted. As babies Ebenezer Albert and Albert Ebenezer were so much alike that their parents could distinguish them only by tying a blue ribbon on one and a red ribbon on the other. In early manhood both courted the same girl, and she was never certain which of the two had won her affections, for invari ably an appointment made by one was kept by the other. The twins used to shoot rabbits and game in the woods; and for years were the despair of police and gamekeepers. They frequently lived in the woods in the game season, making huts of hurdles and straw.

When they reached the age of about 60 one of the twins had more than a hundred convictions for poaching against him, while the other twin was rapidly building up a similar record. Magistrates as well as police were frequently puzzled, for one twin would attempt to prove from the witness-box that the other was the guilty party. On one occasion Ebenezer Albert applied for compensation for wrongful arrest. He declared that his brother Albert Ebenezer should have served the seven days' imprisonment for poaching which he had just completed. Albert Ebenezer also wrote to the Magistrates that he was guilty, but the claim was dismissed.

A lady of the manor in Hertfordshire and a large landowner appealed to the sporting instincts of one of the twins by offering him £1 and a brace of pheasants during each week of the shooting season, if he would absent himself from her preserves for a year. He accepted and kept his promise. But he sent his twin brother to take his place!