Mary Barrow surrendered her bail and appeared before the magistrate at Highgate Police court to answer a charge of being ‘drunk and riotous’. However, what was often a fairly straightforward example of working-class inebriation clashing with police attempts to ‘keep the peace’ seems to have been rather more complicated in this case.

Sergeant Fickling was called to an incident in the Archway Road on the 11 November 1885 because a woman, much the worse for drink, was creating a disturbance outside the house of Major Platt. A crowd had gathered and some bricks had been thrown at the major’s windows, breaking some of them.

The police sergeant asked the crowd to disperse and told Mary to go home. When she refused he arrested her, taking her back to the station where she was charged. Oddly it seemed that major Platt did not want to press any charges of damage against the woman and the reasons for this only became clear when the case was heard in court.

Mary denied being drunk that night and instead accused a clergymen (not present) of assaulting her. She said that she’d been standing at her gate on Landsdowne Terrace when a man of the cloth had run up to her, used offensive language, and kicked her to the ground. As he ran away she followed after, a crowd joining in with the pursuit. He’d taken refuge in the major’s property.

Major Platt explained that the clergyman in question was his brother, Thomas, who had been staying with him that week and had indeed come home chased by a mob led by Mary.  Given this new information Mary was bailed, the sum put up by her husband, and the case adjourned while a summons was issued to bring the Reverend Thomas Platt before the court to answer Mary’s allegation.

[from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, November 29, 1885]