July 16, 1904

JACOB Ruckstall, who formerly occupied a good position as clerk or foreign correspondent with a local fishing tackle firm but who has recently fallen on evil times, was charged with being drunk on licensed premises on July 6th.

Defendant made a rambling and almost inaudible statement, saying "he saw it in the paper but never believed he had been."

He could not remember being in the public house.

Pc Bonell stated at 9.30pm he was called to The Lamb and Flag, Unicorn Hill, by the landlord, who said that the defendant refused to leave.

Defendant was sitting inside the little bar. He refused to leave, and was so drunk that witness brought him to the police station.

Defendant had obtained employment in the town and went abroad as a traveller for a firm of manufacturers in the town, but somehow or other he lost that situation.

Since then he had been in the workhouse at Bromsgrove, and how he came to be at Redditch he (the superintendent) did not know, but he understood he had some pounds in his pockets.

Defendant was discharged on promising to go back to the workhouse.