AT THE POINT OF A HAY FORK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 88, 13 December 1913, Page 5

AT THE POINT OF A HAY FORK.

FARMER AND UNION ORGANISER

At the Wagga (N.S.W.) Police Court last week, before Mr Helm, P.M., Win. Felix Woods, A.W.U. organiser, proceeded against a farmer named Geo. Henry Mendham, for alleged maliciously wounding. Woods, accompanied by ten or eleven rural workers and strikers visited Mendham's farm, where chaff-cutting operations were in progress, and requested permission to address the men. This Mendham refused, and, it is alleged, ordered Woods off at the point of a hay-fork. Evidence was given that Woods had twelve punctures in his shoulder from the fork, and that Mendham tried to poke his eyes out. On hearing the case for the prosecution, his Worship suggested Hiat complainant reduce the charge to one of common assault. This complainant's solicitor refused to do, whereupon his Worship remarked that it was a ridiculously trivial affair to send to a higher-court, but as a case had been' made out Mendham would be committed for trial at the Wagga Quarter Sessions on March 9. Hail was reduced from £2OO to £BO.