WILLIAM Futcher marched into Winchester City Magistrates' Court under escort and dressed in his full naval uniform to answer a charge of being a deserter from his ship, HMS Goliath, stationed in Portsmouth.

He denied the allegation.

The chief witness in the case was PC Simmonds, who stated how he had gone to a house in North Walls shortly after midnight and found Futcher asleep.

"I told him to get up and he did so," the officer recalled. "When I charged him, the prisoner replied, That was what I was expecting'."

PC Simmonds told the hearing that day in 1906 that on the way to the police station, Futcher told him, "I did not mean to go back".

The officer told the magistrates that he had seen Futcher the previous evening after receiving a message from his captain ordering him to return to the ship.

The city's head constable then produced a telegram from the captain confirming what the officer had said and a statement ordering Futcher to be detained.

The rating accepted the circumstances of his arrest but claimed that he had not been a deserter but was absent without leave.

"I have not been adrift for seven days," he explained.

The court ordered Futcher to be returned to the Goliath, and he left the court under escort.

It had been an extraordinarily quiet week in court business in the county town that week. There were only three cases before the bench - a second involved a drunk, the other featured an allegation of dangerous driving.

Only a couple of days earlier, the city's Quarter Sessions had been abandoned without a single case. The clerk, Walter Bailey, made the formal announcement in court that there were no prisoners for trial and no appeals to be heard. He said: "I have also been authorised to countermand the attendance of the grand jury and petty juries as a matter of convenience to all those who have been summoned."

That included the judge, Recorder C A Spencer Garland, who had been notified about the lack of work and had not attended.

It then left the mayor, W H Forder, with the task of adjourning the next sessions to a date to be fixed, before congratulating the city on the extraordinary scenario.