Mexborough and Swinton Times August 5, 1911
Receiving a Deserter’s Uniform
Denaby Woman let off Lightly
Elizabeth Swaby, married woman, Braithwell Street, Denaby, was charged with receiving a deserter’s uniform.
PC Barnes stated that at 2:45 AM on Saturday, July 22, he was on duty in Braithwell Street, Denaby, when he received information which led up the to the arrest of an army deserter. The deserter was dealt with the same day.
About 4 o’clock the same morning (after he had arrested the deserter), witness visited 20, Cliff View, when he had arrested the soldier, and asked his wife for her husband’s uniform. She refused to tell where the clothes were, but said she would fetch them.
She left the house, and went to a house in Braithwell Street, and then knocked the occupants up. Witness heard Mrs Mollart (wife of the deserter) asked Mrs Swaby, the defendant, for Fred’s clothes, meaning her husband’s. The woman then produced a kit bag, and was handing it to the other woman, when the witness intervene, and took possession of it.
The bag was a black one, and on it was printed in white letters, “G.Q.E.” Yorks, 8048, Mollart” – the initials and numbers of the East Yorkshire Regiment. He told the woman she had no right to keep the clothes, and she replied that she knew that, and asked him to look over it.
The defendant pleaded innocence, stating that she received the world clothes 11 months ago from the other woman, who asked her to take care of them while she went away. She had never examined the kit bag, and was unaware that she was committing an offence.
The chairman said she had committed a serious offence, and warned her to be more careful in the future, this time they would let her off lightly with paying the costs.