The pages of the Salford City Reporter newspaper continue to throw up fascinating stories as this one from April 1916 shows.
PC Lamb a well-known, oft-quoted and well-respected Salford policeman was doing his rounds through the streets one evening when he decided to pop his head into the Rob Roy pub on Blackfriars Road to make sure that the customers were behaving and finishing their drinks on time.
Much to his horror he was met with the sight of five women and three men all still drinking, and to make matters worse one of the men was obviously inebriated.
Drinking rules in 1916, as we’ve elucidated elsewhere, were much stricter than what we have to put up with today.
100 years ago in Salford: Landlord fined under Defence of the Realm Act for serving up WW1 lock-ins
When PC Lamb approached an unnamed man at the bar, the wag said: “Hello, here you are,” and offered him a button.
The policeman declined his offer and turned to the landlord John Henry Murch to ask what was going on, allowing drunken people on the premises and after 10.30pm.
Mr Murch came back with a staggering response: “He’s only been in a few minutes, besides he is only drinking Oxo [a beef drink, more popularly known today as stock cubes], he is a discharged soldier and has been at the Front, I thought it would do him good.”
PC Lamb thought otherwise and arrested the man, who proceeded to call him a ‘slacker’ an insulting name used at the time for people who hadn’t or wouldn’t join the armed forces.
The disgruntled drinker was taken to the nearby Silk Street police station and charged with being drunk on licensed premises, furthermore the landlord of the pub John Henry Murch was also charged with permitting drunkenness.
The pair appeared at Salford Magistrates Court where the unnamed serviceman was found guilty by Mr S.G. Carnt and fined 20 shillings
The landlord stuck to his task and continued to protest his innocence.
He told the court that the man had come into his pub along with his wife and several other people and ordered four cups of Oxo.
His niece informed him that the man looked either unwell or was drunk as he looked unsteady on his feet.
Mr Murch went to ask the man to leave but before he could speak to him, PC Lamb had entered the premises along with Sergeant Tickle and removed the man from the pub.
Mr Hislop, defending, asked PC Lamb if the man appeared drunk and the officer stated that he didn’t appear to be, a tad odd after being offered a button by the man.
He was then asked about the landlord Mr Murch and who had a reputation of being of ‘irreproachable character as a licencee and a well respected man’.
PC Lamb replied that a licencee was required to take measures to ensure that there was no drunkeness on his premises and ‘reasonable steps’ could be taken to ensure this.
I can imagine what interpretation P.C. Lamb could have put on ‘reasonable steps’.
The Magistrate then decided that Mr Murch was of a reasonable character and no blame could be attached to him and it was a credit that he was serving temperance drinks in licenced premises.
He discharged the case against him and Mr Murch left the court without a stain on his character and no doubt continued to dispense vital Oxo to the residents of Blackfriars.
Main image: (composite) Rob Roy, Blackfriars © Neil Richardson/britishmetalsigns.co.uk
