The newspaper cutting above is from
The
Bucks Herald published on Saturday, December 20th, 1884
.
Edmund worked as a signalman for the
Great
Western Railway from 1879 until 1884 and as a shunter in 1885.
The newspaper cutting above is from
The
Standard published on Saturday, October 9th, 1897
.
Using The National Archives
currency converter,
the 5 shillings fine would have the same spending worth of
£36.56 in 2005 and the 2 shillings costs would be worth about
£5.99.
Luckily for me he wasn't deported!
At the time of the offence motorised tricycles were
a relatively new invention and as Edmund was an engineer's assistant he
was unlikely to have been able to afford one, so I assume he was
repairing it or trying
to get it to work. The French company
De
Dion Bouton started selling
them in 1897 and it would have been similar to those shown
below.
A working example of a De Dion Bouton motorised tricycle can be seen on
the
Vimeo
website.