COMEDY OF TROUSERS

Taranaki Daily News, 3 August 1931, Page 10

COMEDY OF TROUSERS

FRENCH COURT INCIDENT. If a man who appeared before a Court at Lyons, France, recently charged with petty theft had been accompanied by a piper all might have been well. He was wearing a smart, tight-fitting jacket, but was without trousers. .There was, therefore,, some ground for the first impression among the astonished onlookers that the prisoner was a. Highlander. The magistrate was both shocked and furious. “Where are the prisoner’s trousers?” he thundered. “He has eaten them,” a police sergeant informed the incredulous Bench. It appeared that when Schmidt was arrested lie became very ill-tempered, and during the night in his cell, being troubled with insomnia, he passed the wearing hours in nibbling his nether garments. The magistrate ordered the immediate production of another “pantalon,” but the scurrying of the police throughout the Court precincts was fruitless. No one was carrying about with him a pair of spare trousers, nor could anyone be found who would volunteer to lend those he was wearing. In the end poor Schmidt was removed from the Court in a police van to be properly apparelled.