This week we reported on a shocking court case from October 1915 of a pair of Broughton sisters hauled before magistrates charged with attacking so-called ‘white feather cowards’ in Salford.
A related court case from the very same week hit the pages of the Salford City Reporter.
It concerns a Manchester Regiment soldier who was accused of being drunk and disorderly while home on leave – but there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.
Newton Heath man William Reynolds appeared before the court charged with smashing up The Thistle Inn – a long-demolished pub on Cannon Street in Salford.
It emerged that the accused stumbled into the pub “heavily intoxicated” and asked for a drink.
The pub licencee Thomas Loftus had seen his peers fined for allowing the same, so told Reynolds to leave.
Moments later a brick smashed through the main pub window, shattering glass over the regulars.
Loftus ran out and spotted Reynolds standing on a street corner; when he finally noticed the landlord the soldier took flight down a side street.
PC Holland was called to the scene and took Reynolds into custody.
In court, the whole sorry affair was laid out in front of magistrates.
The soldier accused the landlord of throwing a jug of water over him, then hitting him on the head with a brass stair rod.
Loftus admitted the first, saying the accused was abusive towards his niece and “deserved it”, but denied belting the man over the head.
PC Holland took the stand and confirmed that Reynolds was drunk when he was arrested, but there were no eyewitnesses to suggest he was the one who had hurled the brick.
But the Magistrate had heard enough, fining Reynolds seven shillings for the offence or offering the alternative of a seven-day prison sentence.
Strangely enough Reynolds said that he could not pay the fine as he was in the Manchester Regiment and was only paid a shilling a day and elected to go to prison. This puzzled the Magistrate, to say the least.
Fate intervened when PC Holland told the court that Reynolds did indeed have the money at home and enough to pay the fine, but didn’t want to because if he was in prison he would escape being sent out with his Regiment which was leaving the next day for France.
Reynolds was not the first and certainly would not be the last soldier to hide from the horrors of the Western Front.
Read: Salford AWOL soldiers caught hiding in Pendlebury coal shelter
Read: Swinton footballer’s heartbreaking letters on life in the trenches
His enterprising plan started to unravel.
Upon hearing this the Magistrate turned his wrath on Reynolds and called him a “shirker” and “a disgrace to the uniform that he was wearing”.
Reynolds was taken into police custody and shipped off to France the very next day.
It was a cunning ploy that nearly worked – if it hadn’t have been for the ever vigilant PC Holland.
