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Volume CXXXII, Number 9 |
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Research diversion: the case of the egg
KATHERINE CRANE
COLUMNIST
As I was looking through microfilms of The London Times
the other day for a research project, I came across the following article
from November of 1936.
Shopkeeper's Offence
An egg was the subject of a long legal argument between a solicitor appearing
for the London County Council and Mr. Frank Powell, the magistrate, at
Greenwich Police Court yesterday, when a Sydenham shopkeeper was summoned
for serving an egg after 8 p.m.
A Shops Act inspector said the egg was ordered, he was told, before 8
and served at 8:30. The shopkeeper was serving customers with cooked meat,
which he was entitled to do, but it was unlawful for him to sell an egg
at that time.
Mr. Powell: Well, how is it an offence for him to keep open?
Mr. J. Else (the solicitor): The shop should have been closed for sale
of non-exempted articles. A theoretical closing, I agree.
Magistrate: A shop can't be open and shut at the same time.
Solicitor: That is a matter of opinion.
Magistrate: If you buy an egg before 8 o'clock and leave it at the shop,
the shopkeeper is looking after it as bailee.
Solicitor: If he is looking after it as bailee he is doing a service.
Magistrate: Was this egg a cooked egg?
Solicitor: No, Sir.
Magistrate: How do you know?
Solicitor: It was taken from a basket.
Magistrate: It might have been hard-boiled.
Solicitor: Even then it would not be cooked meat.
Magistrate: Isn't an egg full of meat?
Solicitor: No, sir.
In the end the solicitor won his case, and the shopkeeper paid a fine. Somewhere else in the microfilms from the same year I found an account of a trial for poisoning, in which a man confessed to having sent a gift of poisoned tarts to another man, and insisted that the poisoned man's wife had had nothing to do with it. This raised two questions in my mind: first, why send several poisoned tarts to one person? Wouldn't one do the trick? Second, if the wife was innocent, how did she know not to eat the remaining tarts, or let anyone else eat them?