Conisborough Miner in Trouble – Heavy Fine for Northampton Speech

October 1926

Mexborough & Swinton Times, October 8, 1926

Conisborough Miner in Trouble
Heavy Fine for Northampton Speech.

At Northampton, on Friday, Jess Jerram (35), a miner, of Barnsley Avenue, Conisborough, was charged under the emergency regulations with making a seditious speech likely to cause disaffection among the civil population at Northampton on Sunday.

The prosecution alleged that the accused said: “I do not believe in murder. It would not be murder to wipe these people off the face of the earth for the murder of innocent women and serving children, which they are doing.”

A police witness, who heard the speech, cross-examined for the defence, said accused before making the statement, had said, “management had led to the loss of the lives of many people who worked in mines.” And that he said, “I think that humanity would suffer very little if these owners were removed from the faces of the earth,” or words to the effect.

Jerram gave evidence and said that what he said was that he did not believe in murder, but on account of the poverty coal workers had caused to the miners wives and children he might begin to think otherwise. He did not remember saying such a thing as “wiping them off the face of the earth,” and he had not the slightest desire to cause sedition or disaffection.

The bench found accused guilty, and he was fined £40 or one month on the front charge and bound over on the record.