On This Day in Wembury — 17 January 1862
At the Plympton Petty Sessions, Thomas Lobb, dairyman of Wembury, was summoned for having deficient weights in his dairy. Inspector John Cumming of Weights and Measures had visited on 17 January and found a half-pound weight three drams short and a one-pound weight twelve drams short. Lobb, represented by his son, denied earlier suggestions that he had sold butter short of weight or had butter seized in Plymouth.
The Bench fined him and ordered him to pay costs, telling him that when weights became worn he was obliged to have them adjusted rather than wait for the inspector to discover faults. In the mid-nineteenth century, such prosecutions were part of a growing national system of weights and measures enforcement, designed to protect customers and ensure fair dealing in rural produce such as milk and butter.
Source Western Daily Mercury, 5 February 1862
