A miner named Andrew Cosh of 4 Cross Row, Low Blantyre, was sharply fined at Hamilton Burgh Police Court in March 1920 for a brutal and unprovoked attack on a tramcar conductress.

According the statement of the Fiscal, the girl had been busily engaged in collecting her fares in a crowded tramcar, when Andrew, most bizarrely without the slightest warning, gave her a severe blow on the mouth.

What made this violent act even more strange, was not that it came out the blue, but that two police officers were standing on the tramcar immediately behind the conductress at the time.

Fortunately the two police officers were standing on the footboard of the car, and indeed the sergeant gripped the woman as she recoiled from the staggering blow. But for the timely intervention of the police officer the conductress must have fallen off the platform.

Bailie Macpherson imposed a fined of £5, with the alternative thirty days’ imprisonment and concluded by the police presence, that Andrew must have been looking to be arrested in the first place.

Pictured for illustration only: Conductress on tram