Accidents do happen but they can still result in court cases, especially if injury is involved. This was the case with Thomas Clossy, a traveller who wound up in bed with a London prostitute one night in late December 1858.

Clossy had been drinking with a woman he’d met in the City Road. Earlier Fanny Herd (described in court as a ‘handsome and well-dressed female of the “unfortunate” class’) had ‘entertained him at her rooms on Westmorland Road. Now the pair were in the Eagle Tavern sipping glasses of ‘port wine-negus’ (which is port mixed with orange or lemon, species and hot water).

At her rooms Clossy had enjoyed a simple meal and a bottle of stout (along with the other ‘entertainment’) but he seemed reluctant to pay her for that. The pair argued and Fanny threw the contents of her glass on the floor, with some of it going over the traveller’s clothes. Clossy retaliated and hurled his drink at her, losing his grip of the glass in the process. The vessel broke as it hit the woman on the head and she was rushed off to be treated in hospital.

Appearing in court at Worship Street Clossy was sorry for what he’d done; it was an accident and probably the result of how he’d been holding the glass (by its base, presumably because it was hot). It took several days before Fanny was able to attend court but when she did she seemed content to accept the man’s apology so long as it was accompanied by a suitable compensation. The pair left the court together after Clossy agreed to pay whatever he owed her along with something extra by way of compensation for the injury he’d caused.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, 7 January, 1859]