Midnight Alarm at Conisbrough

July 1956

South Yorkshire Times July 28, 1956

Midnight Alarm at Conisbrough.

When Mrs Elizabeth Jackson, licensee of the three horse shoes Hotel, Conisbrough, woke her husband up just before midnight on Friday because she heard the striking of matches in her kitchen downstairs, she fetched her 11-year-old son, Colin, into the front bedroom, locked the door, and would not let her husband, Mr Norman Jackson, go downstairs.

Mrs Jackson told a reporter: “I wouldn’t let my husband called downstairs. There was nothing in the bedroom to defend himself with. Nowadays you don’t know what these types will do. You hear about knives and razors so often,” she added.

The front bedroom in their house looks out onto Low Road, so Mr Jackson tried to attract the attention of passers by, in the hope they could fetch the police.

After 15 minutes the Jackson family managed to attract a man in a car, by lighting matches and flashing them in front of the window.

Signs were made to the men to fetch the police, by telephoning from a nearby kiosk, which he did. Unfortunately the intruder either heard the family in the upstairs room and decided he had better make his getaway, or he had decided himself that he had taken all the money obtainable, because as the man was telephoning for the police jumped out of the kitchen window and made his way up New Hill, Conisbrough.

Appearing to be a young man, the thief, wearing no coat, only took the money from the hotel. Cigarettes and beer were untouched. Fortunately the money from the hotel is kept in another room and the only money the thief was able to lay his hands on was Mr Jackson’s days takings at his head pressing business in Doncaster. This money was left in the pocket of Mr Jackson’s coat, which he left in the kitchen