Sussex advertiser - Wednesday 13 June 1866

A PRECIOUS PAIR.

James and Elizabeth Ann Ludby, fishmongers, but charged with being drunk and disorderly at Cuckfield on the previous night.

The male prisoner pleaded guilty, and was fined 8s 9d, including costs; But his wife refused to do so, and the case against her was taken, she saying that the policeman in taking her into custody used unnecessary violence and injured her arm.

P.C. Taylor, E. S. C., deposed that at about 10:00 o'clock he was on duty at Cuckfield and saw Mrs Ludby in Church Street. She was very drunk, and standing at her front door opposite the police station swearing at some women who were in the street. He went to her, when she asked him what he had locked her husband up for? He told her, when she abused him and continued her foul language to him and to the women. He then took her to the station, when she produced a ginger beer bottle, and struck him on the head three times, cutting it much, and drawing blood. As he was unlocking the door, she threw herself down, and he was obliged to drag her into the cell, but did not use any more force than was necessary.

Prisoner denied this in toto, and repeatedly interrupted witness, notwithstanding she was cautioned by the magistrates, but would not be quiet.

Superintendent Akehurst said she was a most intolerable nuisance, and was fined a short time since for the same offence. There were constant complaints from the neighbours, and he had cautioned her repeatedly without avail, for she would insist on getting drunk and wandering about the town in a filthy state.

Finding that ‘cheeking’ the bench and the witness would not do, prisoner made a most piteous appeal for mercy, promised to reform, and implored the magistrates to spare a poor old woman, who would ‘never do so anymore’; but the chairman said it was of no use, and she had made that kind of promise so often and could not be relied on. He had remonstrated with her himself at least 20 times. She was fined £1 and costs, and if she came there again, they would put on the full punishment of three months’ imprisonment.