...  (wow! Just can’t argue with an adverb like that!) during the night and about twelve dozen bottles of porter and a similar quantity of beer had been stolen.

Passing along Buttercrane Quay Sergeant Connell, accompanied by Constables Lynch, Cowan and Duke had suspicion aroused on seeing a young man leaving a disused lighter which was moored on the canal.

They approached him and at the same time took into custody a young man who they found in a drunken slumber at the water’s edge. Upon entering the lighter they discerned a man in the act of breaking the neck off a porter bottle and they arrested him too. In the lighter they found nine full and six broken bottles answering to the description of the missing bottles (Yes! That’s us. We’re the missing bottles!). The labels showed that the liquor was bottled on August 16/17^th and it was ascertained that no liquor bottled on these dates had yet been despatched to the company’s customers.

A bag also found on the lighter was the property of the company.”

The above story was extracted from the pages of the Newry Reporter of one hundred years ago.

Oh for the good old days when Inspector Knacker not only solved crimes but acted too as lawyer, judge and jury.

The tale does not go on to describe the fate of the two alleged burglars but I do hope it was all worth it for them.
 

I miss this quality of newspaper reporting too, don’t you?