BTP Looking for boys who placed concrete on track at Croston (between Preston and Ormskirk)

[LMS 4F]

You guys obviously had too much pocket money, we used pennies, and old ones at that.

It was half pennies when I did it on the Midland main line just south of Bedford station. As I recall we didn't always get our coin back.
One night a homeward bound drunk saw us and threw all the money in his pocket at us. Why I don't know but we lost all interest in the railway while we hunted this bounty.

 

[farleigh]

No it was a case from the miners strike. IRC two miners dropped a concrete block from a bridge into a taxi containing two strike breakers. The driver was killed. The pair were convicted of murder but the charge was knocked down to manslaughter on appeal.

It is an interesting technical case and can be found as R v Hancock. Irc the main discussion points are around "foresight", intent and probability

I believe a third man was aqcuitted for trying to talk them out of it.

Ta.

 

[DarloRich]

I'd say that leaving the stuff on the road (or the rail) is reckless, rather than malicious. As people have mentioned previously in the thread, if anyone were to die as a result, it's likely that the charge would be manslaughter rather than murder.

you will have to prove "malice aforethought" and intent to kill. ( see the Case I referred to above)

 

[Nagora]

you will have to prove "malice aforethought" and intent to kill. ( see the Case I referred to above)

I remember the miners' strike and it would take some fancy bit of talking to persuade me that there was no intent to kill. Miners' strikes are always like that, regardless of rights and wrongs:

So divvent gan near the Seghill mine
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat and break the spine
Of the dirty blackleg miner

 

[philthetube]

I wonder who will come back with farthings?

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

I wonder who will come back with farthings?

Or Groats ?

 

[Gostav]

I believe that deliberate destruction railway in most former socialist countries is a felony.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I remember the miners' strike and it would take some fancy bit of talking to persuade me that there was no intent to kill. Miners' strikes are always like that, regardless of rights and wrongs:

So divvent gan near the Seghill mine
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat and break the spine
Of the dirty blackleg miner

I am sure this is a lyric from the song "Blackleg Miner" that I remember being sung by Steeleye Span in the 1970's.

A commonly used 19th century practice at times of strikes was to stretch a length of strong thin cord across the colliery entrance to catch strikebreakers in poor early daylight at throat level, causing them to fall backwards and damage the spine area.