Description

[004129] [Protection of Persons and Property]; Craske, Edmund J. Salt-Hill Society, for the Protection of Persons and Property from Felons & Thieves, Within the Hundreds of Burnham and Stoke, in the County of Buckingham. No Place: No Publisher, 1908. First Edition. Double Elephant. Unbound. Poster. Fair. Single sided printed poster, approximately 430mm x 700mm in size

Browned generally, with a band of heavier brown stain across the head, several small tears to edges, a couple of small holes from wear to folds

Instituted in 1783, this society, like many other similar societies, largely existing between 1780-1850, “were private institutions, made up of local property-owners, who came together to form an organization and raise a fund in order to find, arrest, and prosecute, at common expense, offenders against themselves and their property” (Philips in Hay and Snyder, Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750-1850, page 118)

This society is unusual as it still exists, and has a link to Eton College, the website notes, “Salt Hill, from which the club takes its name, was the place where Eton boys waylaid travellers to collect ‘salt money’ – an annual ancient ceremony known as ‘Montem’, which traces its roots all the way back to the 1400s. As a patron of Eton College, King George III was an enthusiastic supporter of the Montem ceremony, although an excess of unruly behaviour brought the tradition into disrepute and it was abandoned in 1844”

Apparently unrecorded