When William Canham returned to the livery stable in Moorgate where he worked he was irritated to find that the two horses he had asked to be prepared for him were not ready. The stables provided carriage horses for London’s well-to-do, and the stable hands needed to have animals in tip top condition for when they were required to pull carriages and traps about the city.

Canham held William Pells responsible and called him out for his negligence. Pell, a young man, bit back and Canham swore he could smell drink on his breath. Was he drunk, he asked? The stable hand denied it and gave his superior a mouthful of abuse and squared up to him. The argument died down as Canham led his horses away to be fed and watered.

A little later Canham saw Pells emerging from one of the stalls looking furtive, and saw him hastily hide a handful of horse hair under his jacket.

‘Beware!’ Canham called out to him, ‘That’s horse hair. I’d like to know where you got that from?”

Pells said he ‘had combed it out of a horse’ but the older man was suspicious and went to check the animals in the stables. He soon found a poor horse that had been plucked (as he put it). The horse’s tail had been so attacked as to make it look as if it had been docked. Not only was this animal cruelty, it had devalued the animal:

‘from being a magnificent long-tailed carriage horse, it became a mere bob-tailed colt, only fit to run in a cart’.

Giving evidence at the Mansion House a few days later the livery owner, Mr. Wragg, said he put the amount of damage at £30-40 (or £2,000-3,000 in today’s money).

In his defence all Pell would say was that he wasn’t drunk but was irritated with his boss because he hadn’t been paid for two days. He might have found a better way to express his unhappiness however, as the very least he could expect now was the loss of employment and being black balled by all livery stables in London.

The Lord Mayor bailed him to appear to answer the charge at a later date where – given the facts stated against him – I rather suspect a loss of employment was to be the least of his worries.

[from The Morning Post , Saturday, August 30, 1852]