An unusual story culled from the pages of the Eccles and Patricroft Journal from July 1916 concerns what at first glance to be the tale of a light-fingered soldier who took a fancy to a gold ring but didn’t fancy paying for it.
William Patrick Byrne appeared at Eccles Magistrates Court charged with the theft of a lady’s 22-carat gold wedding ring, valued at 36 shillings.
This seems a really sad case, as this man had probably endured more than most on the Western Front.
He was deemed fit to return to his unit and continue fighting despite what today would be considered obvious and serious mental health problems.
The court heard that Byrne went into Mr Johnston’s shop at 90 Liverpool Road, Patricroft and asked if he could look at a tray of gold wedding rings.
He selected one and told the owner that it was too small and then asked to look at a larger more expensive one, he went to the door to’examine it in the light’ and promptly bolted out of the shop without paying.
The owner ran after him and apprehended him on nearby Mather Road, grabbing him by his overcoat, determined not to be caught he slipped out of it and kept running only to caught again by Mr Johnston.
Bizzarely when caught he asked the shopkeeper if he was ‘going to punish him’ to which came back the answer, ‘Yes if you don’t give me that ring back”!
Byrne then said that the ring was inside his trouser leg and if he had a knife he could cut his trousers open to retrieve it.
Mr Johnston was confused to say the least, at this point the wily Mr Byrne made good his escape into the backstreets of Eccles.
The long arm of the law would soon catch up with him.
The next day PC Pye visited Gillow Street, off Deansgate in Manchester where he found Byrne in a drunken condition and arrested him despite pleas from his wife and five children.
Byrne told the Magistrates a rather sad story which he hoped would explain his actions.
He said that he was a sapper and a miner in The Royal Engineers and had been invalided home from France suffering from shell shock and had been treated in Nettley Hospital followed by a spell in a military hospital in Paisley, Scotland.
He had been granted a four week furlough to see his family and recuperate, sadly he went on the drink and didn’t remember a thing of the events in Patricroft the evening before.
He told the Magistrate he hadn’t been in trouble with the authorities before and for his and his families sake he asked not to be locked up for he feared that he would go insane.
Sadly the Magistrate didn’t agree with the poor man and ordered him to be remanded in custody for a week whilst enquires could be made into his background.
The following week Byrne appeared before the Bench and he was sent back to his barracks under a military escort to rejoin his unit and the criminal proceedings were dropped.
I know nothing about the Magistrate who sent Byrne back to his unit.
But I feel certain that he had never endured the things that Byrne had and was no doubt nice and safe in Blighty dispensing ‘justice’ to lesser mortals in such an off-hand manner.
Sadly this was an attitude all too prevelent in those times.
Read more fascinating history stories from across the ages in Tony Flynn’s Salford History section.
