On the last day of September 1870, Two 'Fightable Females' were up before the Magistrates at the Castle of Exeter: "Sarah Anne Bastin and L,ouisa Smith, two young women of Exeter, were charged with being drunk and riotous. About half-past ten on the night of Septemver 17th P.C.Hall was meandering near the Topsham Barracks, when the quietness of the night was disturbed by wild screams and the most unearthly yells. On nearing the barracks he discovered the two defendants locked in each other's arms, and they only loosed their embrace to pull each other's hair and clothes, and occasionally the one brought her fist in unpleasant proximity with her antagonist'd face. The battle had waged with fury for some time, the language accompanying the blows being of a sort not to be mentioned to ears polite, and the peaceable residents of the neighbourhood were all out to find a reason for the unusual disturbance. None, however, was given by the belligerents either then or now, and to teach them to live quietly in future the Bench fined each of them 10s 6d. The alternative was a week in prison; one was able to get the money together, but the other marched away, in company with a policeman, to the gaol."
How glad we should be that we live in an enlightened time and place when and where people can be drunk and riotous and may fight each other in the streets of Exeter and issue wild screams and unearthly yells - I hear them all the time! - and use foul language in the certain knowledge that no one has the authority to interfere with their liberties!
It might reassure 'peaceable residents' of Exeter if a few constables, like P.C. Hall, were meandering along the streets at half-past ten at night .
Two women fight! One can pay a fine and goes home. The other spends a week in gaol. In principle this alarming discrimination between the rich and the poor, the poor and the less poor, still operates.
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