On This Day
On This Day, 20 December 1917
On 20, Dec 2017 | In On This Day | By Nicola Gauld
Birmingham Mail
Thursday 20 December 1917
THEFT OF NEWSPAPERS
In the Birmingham Children’s Court, today, Henry Kirby (13) and Leonard Kirby (12), brothers, of 91, Pritchett Street, pleaded guilty to stealing parcels of “Mails” from tramcars. Henry was seen by a tram-driver named Henry Collingwood to take a bundle of “Mails” destined for a newsagent at Selly Oak, from the driver’s platform of a car. The value of the papers was 29s. Next evening the lad was pointed out by Collingwood to Police-constable Cashnells, who arrested him. He told the officer he had sold the “Mails.”
The younger lad was seen by Clifford Mackay, a watchman in the employ of the “Daily Mail,” to take a bundle of four dozen “Mails” from a car in Moor Street bound for Alcester Lane End. In reply to the Chairman (Mr. Lloyd Wilson) Detective Williamson said boys jumped on the cars after they had left the terminus and told the drivers that the papers had been put in the wrong car. On the strength of this statement some drivers had handed bundles over to the boys. At the other end lads got the papers by representing that they were from newsagents to who the parcels were directed.
The lads were each fined.