Mexborough and Swinton Times August 15, 1925

The Denaby Affray.
Institutes “Unfortunate Start.”

Arising out of the recent trouble at the Denaby Miners Welfare Institute, seven Conisborough men, George Steadman, Thomas Jeffcoat, Benjamin Hinchcliffe, Osric Gascoigne, Alan Fenn and Harry Turner, were charged at Doncaster on Tuesday with using violent and abusive language.

P. C. Dowding stated that at 10.5 p.m. on May 24th, he was on duty in Tickhill Square, Denaby; with other officers, when there was a disturbance outside the Welfare Institute. The officers found a large crowd outside the Institute and bricks, stones, bottles and pieces of iron were being thrown about. The accused men made use of abusive language to persons inside the Institute. He asked them to go away. All the men complained that they had been assaulted and he told them that they could have their remedy by taking out summonses.

The men, continued the witness, made a rush to get inside the Institute but the manager turned the hosepipe on them and kept them back. At 10:20 PM they managed to get the men further back into the road and at 10:30 PM they got the crowd dispersed in Loversall Street and found the accused outside a house occupied by a man named Backhouse, a member of the Welfare Committee. Witness and the other officers were dealing with the crowd until 1. 30 the following morning.

Sgt Huck said the defendant were in a crowd of three or four hundred, and in reply to Mr. Furniss, admitted that other people were using bad language. Mr. Furniss asked why it wasn’t that no one else was brought out of the crowd beside the defendants, and the sergeant said that the men were brought to court whom the officers knew.

The Chairman (Mr. G. E. Cooke- Yarborough) said: “this miners’ welfare Institute at Denaby seems to have made an unfortunate start. You men must understand this institute has been built for your own benefit, for recreative purposes and not as a place for rival gangs to meet and cause rows.”

All the defendants were bound over for 12 months.

Three Denaby miners, John Clark, John Coupe and Arthur Setters were summoned by John Butler for an assault of the welfare club on 28 July.

Butler said he came out of the Welfare Club about 10:10 pm. Setters came round a corner and assaulted him, and then the other two defendants hit him, he had been offered money to withdraw the case.

Complainant had been bound over last week in connection with a disturbance at the club, Mr. A. S. Furniss, defending, suggested that this was nothing but a counterblast against a summons which had been taken out against complainant last week.

John Clark said that he had asked to pay 25s towards Butler’s solicitors fees so that the case could be stopped. He did not assault Butler, but Butler and his friends hit him. The case was dismissed.