Mosbro’ Schoolboys’ Theft from Colliery Office. Two Mosbro’ school boys. John Batty and Harold Attenborough, were summoned before the Eckington magistrates on Monday. for stealing £3 5s. from the Streetfield Colliery Office, Mosbro’. The latter boy’s mother, Elisabeth Attenborough, was also summoned for receiving £1 of the money, knowing it to have been stolen. John Joseph Worrall, manager colliery, of which his father the proprietor. said that on 24 May he missed three 10s. Treasury notes and some silver and copper from a drawer in the office. Half-an-hour later he missed some more silver. On reckoning up the total amount that should have been in the drawer found that £3 5s. had been taken. During the morning he saw the two lads in the colliery yard and noticed that they kept turning around to look where he was going. Afterwards P.c. Ford handed him £2 .6s 4 1/2 d of the money. Herbert Buxton, a deputy, said he put a 10s. note the drawer and afterwards missed it.
P.c. Ford, who went to see the two lads, said that Batty at first told him he had no money and that he knew nothing about the matter. On being pressed, however, handed over some money which he had wrapped his handkerchief, “I did not take it.” then exclaimed. Harold Attenborough took it and this my share.’ Attenborough also denied that he knew anything about the money, but later handed him 4s. 4d and said had spent some money and had given the rest to his mother. Afterwards saw Mrs. Attenborough, who was in bed and she reached to a drawer and handed him two 10s. notes. She told him that she was keeping the money until the lad’s father home from work. Mrs. Attenborough pointed out that she was ill in bed and as the constable called within a few hours of the theft she had no opportunity of seeing her husband and telling him what had happened.
The fathers of the two lads were present and were asked the Chairman (Col. J. K Butler Bowdon) whether they had thrashed their lads. “I broke a stick over his back.’ said Batty’s father. “And I gave him some belt.” was the reply of the father of the other lad. The magistrates placed the boys on probation for six months. They gave Mrs Attenborough the benefit of the doubt and dismissed the case against her.
© Derbyshire Courier – Saturday 23 June 1917 Typed up by Linda Taylor nee Staton. January 2021
