Conisborough Motor Cyclist Summoned -Machine Tested Before Magistrates

August 1926

Mexborough & Swinton Times, August 27, 1926

Conisborough Motor Cyclist Summoned.
Machine Tested Before Magistrates.

After a hearing last an hour and a half, Rotherham Borough magistrates, on Wednesday, dismissed a summons against Charles Godfrey Troughton, chemist’s apprentice of Conisborough, for having driven a motor cycle with an inefficient silencer. The decision was arrived at when the machine had been subjected to a test n the Fire Brigade Station yard, in the presence of the magistrates and police.

Police-sergeant Cave said he was in Doncaster Gate, near the main entrance to the Rotherham Hospital, at 7-25 PM on July 10th, when a motor cycle came up the hill. When a few yards past him the motor cycle appeared to accelerate and made a ”terrible noise.”

Defending, Mr. A. F. Bates (Messrs, Jackson and Jackson) said the defendant was fined at Doncaster recently for a similar offence, and as a result he has had a new silencer fitted to the motor cycle. The machine was of the same type as the official ones used by the Rotherham Corporation and other authorities in the country.

Troughton gave evidence, and denied that he was making excessive noise. He was accelerating, he said, to change from low to top gear.

Walter Parker, manager of the Rotherham branch shop of Messrs. Walter Wragg gave evidence of the silencer being purchased from them, and declared that it was impossible for a machine of that description – it was only 2.49hp – to make an objectionable noise.

The Chief Constable (Mr. E. Weatherhogg) described the case as an important one, and suggested that the machine should be tried before the magistrates.

The magistrates (Alderman W. Wormald and Mrs. Emily Slack), the defendant, Mr. Bates, police and reporters then adjourned to the fire station yard. The defendant rode the motor cycle twice round the yard- once in low gear and once in top gear- and a policeman put the machine on its stand and manipulated the controls.

All returned to court, and Ald. Wormald announced that the bench had decided to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt.

They advised him to be careful how he drove in future.