ALARM CLOCK EPISODE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 458, 11 May 1909, Page 4

ALARM CLOCK EPISODE.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN IT WAS SET AT THE WRONG HOUR. Two police constables and a gardener have been seriously injured in an extraordinary conflict, the result of a trivial error and a ludicrous series of cross-purposes, in the grounds of a residence in Eeighara Court Road, Streatham. One of the maids at the house rises at six o’clock by the aid of an alarm clock, and opens the side gate for the milkman and other early callers. East Wednesday (January 20) this maid by mistake, set the alarm for three o’clock and on being awakened by its clamour dressed as usual and went out to the gate. It is, of course, as dark at six o’clock as at 3 a.m. at this time of the year. The noise of the clock and the opening of the aroused the master of the house, and he not understanding the cause, and attributing it to burglars, who have of late been busy in the neighbourhood, threw open his bedroom window and blew a police whistle. The noise and the alarm also roused the gardener, who sleeps in a small lodge. The gardener, scrambling into some clothes, ran towards, the house and his arrival synchronised with the advent of a plain - clothed policeman, also running. Each mistook the other for a burglar. The gardener was armed with a thick stick, and made so tierce an attack that the constable in selfdefence felled him to the ground with his bludgeon. The sou of the owner of the house now appeared with a mountaineer’s axe, and at the same moment another policeman arrived. Dire confusion was the result, for the young man with the axe, arriving while the first constable was bending over the fallen man, never doubted that the gardener had been assailed by burglars. He struck out with the axe at the second policeman, who was also in plain clothes, cutting his head badly and stretching him on the ground. As others arrived on the scene something of a free fight developed, and before an understanding was arrived at ten constables —of whom half were in plain clothes, and one had come a a distance of nearly two miles—were on the scene. The gardener and one of the constables are badly hurt, the gardener’s condition being serious. The other injured man has temporarily lost the use of one hand, and is also somewhat bruised. Others of the combatants received serious damage. No one is to blame, and it is plain that the owner of the house can certainly complain neither of the laxity of the servants nor the inattention of the police. —Observer.