Two brothers-in-law named Andrew Clyde, miner, Netherfield Place, Blantyre, and Richard Murphy, miner, Glasgow Road, Blantyre, appeared before the Justices at Hamilton on Saturday 3rd March 1923, on charge of fighting.
The Fiscal explained that the attention of the nearby police at Victoria Street had been drawn to a back field of Netherfield Place, where both men were engaged in battering at each other in a savage manner with bare fists. A large crowd had gathered, and disorder prevailed.
The police had the utmost difficulty separating and apprehending the combatants.
Clyde had recently been in the hands of the police, when he appeared in the uniform of an officer of the Irish Free State Army. Since then he had been discharged. He had a wife in the Blantyre district, and it was in consequence of some dispute in regard to her that the men had fought.
The Justices fined each of the men 30s, with the alternative of fourteen days’ imprisonment.
From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka (c) 2018
Photo: For illustration only.
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