THE SEAMY SIDE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20012, 1 December 1927, Page 3

THE SEAMY SIDE

TALES TO MAGISTRATE TICKET INSPECTOR'S FRAUDS (By R. E. Corder, in London Daily Mail). “I do not like thee, Mrs. Fell," murmured Henry, the docker, us he hit her over the head with a teapot. Mrs. Fell was merely seeking to prevent Henry from strangling the woman with whom he lived in the stern and wild Caledonian Road, N., and she was valiantly supported by young Fell, her 11-years-old son, who had his finger bitten and his shirt torn in the struggle. According to the story told to Mr. Pope, the magistrate, at Clerkenwell Police Court on Saturday, Henry, who used to be a tramway conductor but “got the hump" after he lost his wile, went to live with. a woman separated from her husband. The family, which became somewhat complicated, included his children, the woman's children, their one child, and an old woman wno had been taken in from, the workhouse. Henry said it was really the old woman who began the trouble because she would not cook his dinner, but it was pointed out that a feast of fried bacon, potatoes and tomatoes was awaiting his pleasure. Henry promptly threw the dinner on the fire and the woman who shared his home on to the table, and it was her screams that brought up Mrs. Fell from the flat below in time to receive the teapot on her head. The woman who lived with Henry said she did not want to see him tny more in her home and he was remanded in custody for sentence. Also in the Caledonian Road, now even more stern and wild as it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, Police-Constable 570 heard a scream and running to the rescue found a girl struggling with Robert. The girl clung to the railings; Robert clung to the giri> and Police-Con-stable 57 C clung to Robert, who was

taken to the police station, followed by the girL “It was my young lady," declared Robert indignantly “and she would have been here thus morning if she had not to attend to her newspaper stands. There was no need for the constable to interfere, and (with increasing indignation) there was no need for the doctor to ask me to put my feet together and close my eyes. Silly, 1 call it." The lovers’ quarrel ended more or less happily by Robert reluctantly consenting to pay the doctor’s fee, IDs 'ld. fe ♦ * * John Waller, a ticket inspector, found a way of making money while travelling between Birmingham and Crewe, but he spent it so recklessly that he was suspected, tested, and discovered. His plan was to take fares from passengers who had not taken tickets at the two open stations, and omitting to give receipts, to put the money in his pocket. For a long lime, it was alleged, he had lived beyond his known income, and had also taken to drinking heavily, and so test passengers journeyed on his train and he was arrested. He pleaded that he was in the hands of money-lenders and was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment by Mr Pope, who observed that people were not tested unless there was a good reason for 'it. The police had been searching for months for a husband who owed his wife £42 10s. The wife also had been searching, and it was she who ultimately discovered her missing husband at Brixton after the police had given up hope.