When John Tozer Baskerville died at Brisworthy Farm in 1904, his death certificate described him simply as a farmer. He'd worked that land on the edge of Dartmoor for over twenty years, his daughter and son-in-law lived with him, and he left his family the equivalent of around £100,000 in today's money. A quiet, respectable end.

But twenty-eight years earlier, police had broken open a locked tea chest in John's house in Plymouth and found it stuffed with stolen railway goods — silks, satins, velvet, plated silverware, thirty-six pairs of brand-new boots, and over £100 worth of property taken from the South Devon Railway. He was sentenced to five years' penal servitude at Plymouth Quarter Sessions in 1876.

So how did a convicted thief become a respected Devon farmer? And what happened in the years between the courtroom and the cowshed?