SHE was passing a gap in a fence on her way home when she felt a savage blow to her head.

“The next thing I remember was being on the ground,” said Carolyn Fleming.

“A man was dragging me by the arms towards the fence and another man was standing behind me.

“I screamed several times and some men came to my assistance. The man who was dragging me released his hold and both men ran away towards The Avenue.”

She had suffered a swollen jaw and her face was bruised for several days. She had also sustained a cut lip, an injured shoulder and bruises to an arm and her knees.

“My fur coat was torn in three places. I received massage and that treatment is still continuing.”

The American was recalling to Southampton magistrates the horror of being attacked late at night by two strangers a fortnight earlier as she walked down Archers Road.

Her story was corroborated by Herbert Pinch who had just turned into Archers Road when he heard screaming.

“I quickened my pace and a few yards from the junction of Archers and Carlton Roads, I met two men who were walking rather quickly on the path.”

Further down Archers Road, he came across several other people and eventually he got into a car to pursue the two men he had seen.

In Carlton Road, they saw PC Siney and together they drove down a series of roads before spotting the two men in Rockstone Place.

The police officer demanded to know where they had been.

London Road, said one who was found with a bottle in his coat.

“Are you sure you have not come from Archers Road?” he asked.

“Yes,” he firmly replied. “Why?”

The officer pressed him further.

“A woman has been hurt down there and you two men have been seen coming from that direction.”

The suspect was defiant.

“You are trying to accuse us of something we know nothing about. I will go down to the Bargate (police station) about you.”

PC Siney asked for their names and addresses.

William Coe, who had done all the talking and found with a bottle in his coat, claimed to be ‘C J Prince from Millbank Street, Northam,’ and the other – in reality John Harding – said he was ‘J C Smith, of Radcliffe Road.’

Siney released both men but a few days later kept observations on the Employment Exchange in Havelock Road and saw Coe standing in a queue outside.

“Did I not stop you and another man in Rockstone Place last Saturday?”

Coe replied; “No, it was not me. You have made a mistake. I was indoors at the time.”

However, the officer took him under arrest to the Bargate station where he was recognised by two witnesses who had been in the car that pursued him and his alleged accomplice.

Harding was arrested the same evening and when charged, Coe said: “Not guilty.”

Turning to Harding, Coe ordered him: “You say the same” – which he did.

It was the same stance the men adopted when they appeared before magistrates on November 24, 1930, charged with causing grievous bodily harm.

In a statement from the dock, Coe admitted they had been drinking and he did not know why he had given the police officer a false name and address.

“I suppose it was because we had been accused of that offence.”

The court clerk interjected: “But you had not been accused of anything then.”

Harding had nothing to say.

Both were swiftly convicted, with Superintendent Lacey then revealing Coe had once received six strokes of the birch for larceny and had been fined for damaging a railway truck. He had also received one months hard labour for assaulting a police officer.

Ten months earlier, he added, the pair had been charged with stealing a car. No evidence was offered against Coe but Harding was bound over.

“This was a very bad case,” chairman William Bulpitt commented before sentencing them to six months hard labour.