NABBED SLABS
A 26-year-old scrap dealer of no fixed abode and his 20-year-old girlfriend were charged at court with stealing 60 paving slabs from the Royal Showground on July 10th. Ivor Taylor was fined £15 and Celia Hamilton of Buxton was put on probation for two years.
Inspector Albert Cox said that the couple owned a lorry and for the past two or three months had been taking goods to the Royal Show site. The Inspector said; “Their lorry became quite well known and after the show had finished they were able to go into the grounds uninterrupted”. He added that the couple were seen by two men, loading the slabs onto the lorry, who then reported them to police. In a statement, Taylor said; “I realise what a fool I have been and I am only sorry my girlfriend had to be involved”.
POLICE BARELY CAUGHT THEM
Eight Coventry youths, aged between 18 and 21 went for a midnight ‘skinny-dip’ in the open air baths in the Abbey Fields on June 6th. They were John Grey (18), Andrew Scott (20), Garry Owen (20), Richard Craddock (19), Roger Mellwraith (21), Bernard Ferris (21), David Winter (19) and Ralph Dolby (21). They were each fined 10 shillings (50p).
Inspector Albert Cox said that a police officer heard the boys, five of which were caught plus three others who had disappeared into the darkness, but they later returned. Inspector Cox also said that there was always trouble of some sort in the Abbey Fields but the culprits weren’t caught every time. He told the bench; “We were able to catch these boys because we confiscated their clothes while they were swimming“. They wouldn’t have got far without them.
PRIEST WASN’T PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION
After a collision, a Leamington priest was charged with driving without ‘due care and attention’ at Bericote crossroads on May 7th. The Rev. James Murphy of St. Bede’s College, pleaded not quilty but the case was found proven against him. He was fined £7 and ordered to pay £1-2s-4d in court costs and his licence was endorsed.
The 17-year-old motor cyclist involved in the accident, Philip Bunting of Warwick, said that he was travelling home from Coventry. As he approached the crossroads he saw a car coming towards the halt-sign on the minor road. “I am sure it stopped” said Mr Bunting; “I accelarated but the car pulled out and it was nearly half-way across the main road when the collision occurred”. Continuing, he said; “I hit the front of the car and travelled further up the road. I couldn’t stop straight away because my left leg was broken”.
Mr W. Maddocks, presiding, said that the bench knew the visibility was bad at that crossroads because of a hedge and recommended that the County Council should look into the matter. Inspector Cox told the magistrates that recommendations had already gone through as a watch had been kept on several crossroads at the time of the Royal Show.
BOYS ‘KNOCKED OFF’ BIKES
Two Kenilworth boys, one aged nine and the other aged 12, admitted at the juvenile court to offences of cycle stealing. The 9-year-old was given a conditional discharge but the older boy was put on probation for two years. Both stole cycles from outside of Kenilworth swimming baths and then sold them. The three cycles concerned were said to have been disposed of for the price of just 2s-5d each. (bargins!)
DREAM RIDER
For riding his bicycle on a footpath in the Abbey Fields, a 15-year-old boy was fined 5 shillings at the juvenile court. The boy said that he did it; “sub-consciously, I didn’t give it a thought”.
ARRESTED AS THEY RESTED
A tall story was told to a police officer when he apprehended two men in a summer-house in the garden of a house in High Street. “We were only resting” said one of them, 48-year-old Robert Matthews, of no fixed abode. The officer saw to it that Matthews and his 27-year-old accomplice, Reginald Mariner, who also does not boast a home address, were escorted to a place more in-keeping with their kind, a cell at Kenilworth Police Station.
At court, both admitted being on enclosed premises for unlawful intent. They departed from court en route for other enclosed premises far less pleasant than those in which they were nabbed – a prison cell. Three months at her majestys pleasure was imposed on both men. For Matthews it will be his 16th prison term. His criminal record was triggered in 1940, and has since made 18 court appearances. These led to a total of 22 and a half years of convictions, in which he has served about 20 years. Matthews told the bench his troubles began after he was torpedoed during the war, and he added that a man who has incurred as many prison sentences as he had, could not be normal.
The arrest of the two men, said Inspector Albert Cox, was due to the keen observation of an off-duty Coventry policewoman who also lived in High Street. She had noticed them hanging about and kept an eye on them from a window. When they thought the coast was clear they shinned over a wall into the garden where the summer-house was located. She then phoned the police. At the station, Matthews shouldered the blame for the intended escapade. Mariner said he would not have been involved but for the fact that a few drinks had dulled his “sense of responsibility”.