On This Day, 10 May 1917

Birmingham Daily Post

Thursday 10 May 1917

SHEEP BOUGHT FOR 12s. 6d.

BIRMINGHAM BUTCHER WHO EMPLOYED 17-YEAR-OLD BUYER.

At Bedford Police Court on Tuesday Edgar Howard Grimsley (17), of 173, Brighton Road, Birmingham, was fined £5 10s. for cruelly ill-treating a sheep by causing it to be travelled in an unfit state at Bedford.

The R.S.P.CA. inspector said Grimsley travelled for a Birmingham firm of butchers, buying up animals. The sheep in question was bought by him in Bedford market for 12s. 6d., and when being driven to the station it fell down exhausted. It was very weak, and nothing but a skeleton. On the same day he had bought seven or eight calves, but the majority were very poor. He went about buying up the “old crocks”.

Mr. Woolston, a veterinary surgeon, said it was utter cruelty to drive this sheep; it was absolutely worn out, and as the idea of putting it in a railway truck to travel to Birmingham did not appeal to him as humane, he ordered the animal to be destroyed. The Chairman said it was a serious thing to allow a youth like defendant to go about buying food of that kind.

Grimsley said bid and bought this sheep and another for 12s. 6d.

The Chairman; Do you usually buy these poor sheep?— There was nobody there to buy them, and thought they might come in for the value of the skins. He added that he had bought sheep low as 1s., but he usually bought good animals. The Chairman said the Bench were sorry they could not deal with the employer.