On this day in Wembury 25 March — 1930
On this day in Wembury, ten Royal Artillery gunners from Fort Renney were accused of raiding the Pioneer Tea Hut at Bovisand, stealing a haul that read like a seaside wish list. Mirrors, tins of toffee and salmon, bottles of lemonade, jars of jam and sweets, even a pair of shoes and a table knife were carted off from the locked café that served summer visitors. The total value came to several pounds, a tidy sum in those lean years between the wars. The soldiers, mostly new recruits not long out of training, had little money and less sense of the trouble they were courting. When military police searched their kits, they found a mirror in one bag and a clock in another. Two of the men, Davies and Rogers, admitted prising open a window with a boat oar and were sent for trial at Exeter. The rest were spared prison but ordered to pay compensation. The case lingered in local memory as a glimpse of the idle mischief that could brew in the quiet garrisons along Wembury’s coast.
(Western Morning News, 2 April 1930)