Breach of the Explosives Act – Sale and Display of Fireworks

October 1896

Mexborough and Swinton Times October 2, 1896

Breach of the Explosives Act – Sale and Display of Fireworks

Leonard Lawcock, postmaster, Conisborough, was charged with illegally exposing fireworks at Conisborough, on 21 September, and with selling fireworks to a child on September 15.

A boy named Harold Moody said that the defendant’s daughter sold him half pennyworth of fireworks and a boy named Haigh collaborated.

Defendant called his daughter, who denied that she had sold the fireworks to the boys in question, but she admitted that she sold some to a boy named Bartholomew.

On the 21st, inst. Sgt Brown went to defendant’s shop, and found a bottle full of fireworks in the window, but the bottle had a stopper on. On the counter was a wood case with a glass top, containing 13 boxes of Chinese crackers, and other fireworks, there was no lid on the box.

Arthur Haigh also gave evidence for the police on the charge of selling fireworks, and Bertha Lawcock, Lily Warren, Mary Oxley, and Leonard Lawcock, Jr, denied that on the day stated the lad Moody ever entered the shop, or was supplied with fireworks.

The charge of exposing fireworks was admitted, it defendant stating that the lid had been inadvertently left sitting in which they were kept.

The magistrate said the first case would be dismissed. But in the second case the defendant was ordered to pay the costs. And he was told to make himself acquainted with the regulations.