On This Day in Wembury — 21 June 1944
At Devon Assizes, a long-running case from the lanes of Wembury finally reached its conclusion. Mr. Justice Lawrence awarded £556 to Charles Scanes, a 60-year-old smallholder of Knighton Hill, after ruling that he had been the victim of negligent driving by the Western National Omnibus Company.
The accident had taken place three years earlier, on the morning of 14 July 1941, along the narrow stretch of road near Train Cross. Scanes was cycling towards Elburton when a bus came towards him, taking up most of the 12-foot-wide carriageway. With no room to pass, he was forced into the hedge. He remembered the bus catching his shoulder and then “knew no more.”
He was later discovered unconscious by a friend, with his bicycle propped against the hedge. His injuries included a broken collar-bone and severe concussion. He spent seven weeks in bed, and for nearly a year afterwards was too weak to return to his work.
The bus driver and conductor both swore they had neither seen a cyclist nor felt any collision. But two witnesses — William John Gosling, a farm labourer of Newton Ferrers, and Alfred Henry Newman of the RAF — testified that they had heard the bus pass, then almost immediately heard a crash. They found Scanes lying in the road, tangled in his machine.
The defence suggested Scanes’ recollection was a “delusion” and pointed out there were no marks on the bus itself. But the Judge was not convinced. He ruled that the driver had failed in his duty of care: “the bus was driven negligently, because the driver did not see the plaintiff and did not give him sufficient room to pass.”
Though the award was modest by modern standards, £556 represented a substantial sum for a smallholder in wartime Devon. For Scanes, who had lost a year of his working life and endured lasting pain, it was a measure of justice finally delivered.
This case reminds us how easily everyday journeys could turn tragic on the country lanes around Wembury — narrow, cambered, and unforgiving when motor traffic met a bicycle head-on.
Source: Western Morning News, 21 June 1944