A STREET ACCIDENT OF 1499.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

A STREET ACCIDENT OF 1499.

When a dent iu the roadway jolts our car, or a puddle epatters our bicycle, ■uo are quick to complain that roads arc in a disgraceful gtate. We ehould complain a good deal less if we remembered Ilichard Boose, who flourished in Aylesbury at tlie end of the fifteenth century. He was a miller, and it happened that his mill needed repairing in 149' J. He w anted clay lor the work, and empluyed two meu to dig it for him from the highroad. Before they had got enough clay they had made a pit ten feet wide and eight feet deep. Master Boose was unconcerned. People were not squeamish about the highroad in those days. Housewives threw their refuse iuto it, grooms swept stable litter into it, butchers flung' half their horrible waste stuff from the shambles into it, and timber nrerchants left the trunks of trees lying across it, liappy in the thought that no one could steal a tree. Even in the cathedral city of Norwich an order had to be issuedforbidding citizens to dig up the marketplace for sand. In short, no one would have blamed Master Boose for making a clay pit of the highroad but for an unfortunate accident. Just before Christmas, when the p!t was filled with water, a glover came from Leighton Buzzard sitting astride a horse with laden panniers. He hoped that half the citzens of Aylesbury would buy gloves for Christmas presents, and his head was fult of pleasant calculations. T-n the dusk he did not see Master Boose's pit, or if be did cateli the gleam of water in tho highroad he thought it no Dioro than a broad puddle. In that eight-foot pit horse and man were drowned. Much to his indignation Richard Boose was accused of causing the glover's death. He had two line 9of defence— tirst that he did not prepare the pit on purpose to trap people, and second that he did not know of anv other place where he could dig the soil called ramming clay. Ho was acquitted. We can imagine hew his friends gathered round him outside the court saying, 'It would be a pretty thing if a man could not do as ho would in the highroad! This is a victory for freedom." So_ for some time longer the streets continued to be swamps and garbage heaps and the towns were raw.ged with oestilencc. Centuries had to pass before T?n«land produced citizens who objected to bad smells and holes in the roadway. When railways superseded the coach the roads were allowed to deteriorate, but only for a while; the comim? of the motor car has changed all that.

An Irishwoman was charged with assaulting a neighbour, and pleaded "ziofc guilty." The prosecutor leant forward, shook his finger at her, and said harshly; I? w© prove you guilty, as we shall do, will you tell the Court why you committed this assault? "I will not:'' shouted the defendant loudlv. "I had me own reasons."'