Newspaper Cutting - PC Loveridge

FOUND IN A CELLAR

THREE MEN RAID A NEWPORT CANTEEN

Important evidence for the prosecution was given by a boy of 15, in a case at Newport Police Court, in which two soldiers and a sailor were accused of breaking and entering a Great Western Railway workmen's club, and stealing a pint bottle of gin, a pint bottle of whisky, 22 bars of chocolates, six boxes of matches, three small packets of cigarettes, valued £1 16s. 5d., the property of the committee and members of the Club, at about 8.30 p.m. on Saturday, May 10. The accused were Lance Corporal Roland Hendy, Private Stanley Vernon Clarke, and Franklin Lewis Badgley, a sailor.
Mr. R. J. Rowlands, from the Town Clerk's Office, was for the prosecution, and Sir John Moxon, O.B.E., held a watching brief for the Club.
P.C. Loveridge. of the G.W.R., said the padlock of the cellar entrance was missing. He saw lying nearby an iron pike about seven feet long. He went into the cellar and saw the three accused. They were helplessly drunk and falling about.
A fifteen-year-old boy said he saw the sailor pick up a piece of iron and a stone. The sailor lifted the cellar door.
P.S. Thomas said on the way to the Police Station, seven packets of chocolates fell from the clothes of Badgley.

FLAP WAS RAISED

Edward James White said he saw the cellar flap of the canteen raised. The head and shoulders of Lance-Corporal Hendy appeared.
Alfred John Marsden Lilford, Steward at the Club, 49, Capel crescent, Newport, said he found in the cellar a bottle of gin and a bottle of whisky, both partly consumed. The bottle had been removed from the saloon bar upstairs.
Hendy, whose home is in Halifax, said in Court "I am quite vague as to my activities on that day." Badgley, a Canadian, replied, "I, too am vague, but do not doubt my guilt." Clarke, whose home is at Doncaster, said, "No doubt I'm guilty."
They were committed for trial at the next Monmouthshire Assizes, and were allowed bail in a surety of £10 each.


Kindly sent to us by David Loveridge whose grandfather, PC Loveridge, is mentioned in the report.

Of course as a docks and railway policeman PC Loveridge dealt with far more serious cases, the following being an example:

On the 13th July 1939, just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, an explosion occurred on the SS Welsh Rose at Newport Docks. The Chief Officer was trapped below decks. One of the first people on the scene, within just a few minutes, was PC Loveridge. He worked untiringly amongst the burning debris, and at great personal risk, trying to reach the Petty Officer and succeeded in finally extricating his lifeless body. Pc Loveridge was commended for his exemplary conduct.