MILK BOTTLE “GANGSTERS”

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 July 1933, Page 2

MILK BOTTLE “GANGSTERS”

“WAR” ENDS IN COURT LONDON, June 1. A Brighton “milk bottle war,” in which “Chicago gangster” methods were alleged to have been used, was transferred yesterday from the battlefield to the police court, where fines were inflicted impartially on four milk-roundsmen, representing both sides of the hostilities. It was stated that after a milkroundsman, Alfred Barber, had hit a boy named Rose, who was employed by another firm, three of the lad’s colleagues drove to Barber’s dairy in a closed motor-van and forced their way into the premises, where Barber was working, alone.

One of the men held him, it was alleged, while the others pummelled him with their fists. They fought him breathless, and as they were leaving one aimed a milk bottle at his head, but he dodged it? and it was shivered into fragments on his shoulder. Mr. Alban Gordon, for Barber, said it was a 'brutal, cowardly and deliberately planned assault by “these three gangsters” engineered in complete Chicago manner. A milk bottle “war,” he added, was at the bottom of the trouble.

Harold Victor Barling, Charles Frederick Blunden and Herbert David Norman were fined £3, £2 an(l £1 respectively for assaulting Barber, and Barber was fined £2 for assaulting Rose.