ALL-NIGHT SIEGE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3279, 26 July 1911, Page 8

ALL-NIGHT SIEGE.

POLICE REPELLED WITH SHOWER OF HOUSEHOLD GOODS.

How four men kept a crowd of people and twenty policemen at bay for a whole night was told at Birmingham when Edward Madden, John Rudge, George Henry, James Dunn, and Annie Dunn appeared at the police court. The accused had been spending the day at a birthday celebration, and when the public-houses closed went to a house in Brass Street to keep up the carousal. A disturbance took place in the street, and the men escaped into the house and locked themselves in.

Then the seige started. Operations began by a brick being thrown at the door; the inmates retaliated from the windows, and soon the battle waged fast and furious. An enormous crowd gathered. All the windows were soon broken and the doors battered in. Two sofas and a couple of mattresses were requisitioned as barricades, but when these were no longer of any use for protection the men retired to the first floor.

The police continually made efforts to rush the building, but as soon as they showed themselves on the staircase they were met with a storm of bricks. Several of the constables received nasty bruises.

Dawn was breaking when the inhabitants of the house retired to the attic, and their they made their final stnad. When there wa3 nothing movable left one of the besieged descended and capitulated.