Peppermint Billy - a brief follow-up

This is just a mini-blog, as I had planned to start off just writing once a week, but I'd mentioned in my first blog that JamaGenie had started me off on this whole process, and naturally she is the one who has now found some extra clues that I missed first time around.

Five years ago The Ballad of Peppermint Billy was written by Kevin Wood which tells the tale of Billy and his misfortunes.

In addition there is a book Death by Peppermint by Tim Randle which tells a fictionalised version of Billy's life. In the first few pages (which you can read via Amazon) the story goes that Edward Woodcock was the local Bailiff and responsible for evicting the Brown family from their home in Scalford.  Whether Mr Woodcock also played a part in Billy's later conviction for theft which had him transported isn't clear but apparantly Tim Randle's own family lived in the tollgate in the late 1800s, so I'm going to do my best to contact him and see whether my Moore family crop up in his research.