Beach bungalows bombarded.
Night search with torches.
Bullet on bed.
Mysterious incidents at Pagham Beach are being investigated by the Bognor Regis police. During the weekend residents of Pagham Beach, about two miles from Bognor, were wakened by heavy crashes. At first the noise was believed to be gunfire. At one bungalow the fusilade lasted half an hour. Several windows in the bungalows were smashed. The police believe that the noise was caused by showers of stones falling on the roofs, and there is no doubt that heavy stones were among the missiles.
One resident declares that a bullet went through the bedroom window of his bungalow and was found on the maid’s bed. It is suggested that the raiders made use of a catapult, and that the bullet may have been projected by this means.
Mrs Fitzwater, of London, who is on holiday in the bungalow, Sea Shell, told a reporter that they were aroused from sleep by a fusillade of stones. “My bedroom windows were broken,” she said, “and the bed in which a little girl was lying was covered with broken glass. It appears that other bungalows further west had been raided before ours, and the raiders evidently moved round towards our end at the back of the bungalows, always keeping out of sight.”
A number of men from adjacent bungalows left their beds and, armed with torches and sticks, went in search of the mysterious gang. They searched under the foundations of the bungalows, but found no one. Even while the search was in progress stones continued to rain on the roofs.
The police were summoned by telephone, and when P.C. Smith, of Pagham, arrived, he was greeted with another fusillade as he stood in the light that came from a bungalow window. One stone, considerably larger than a man’s fist, narrowly missed him.
The police officer and volunteers from among the holiday-makers started to search the beach and the near-by sandhills in the early hours of the morning with lanterns and electric torches, but the raiders evaded capture. “At first,” said one of the residents, “it seemed that the raiders were concealed in some bushes on the landward side of the beach. Sometimes the stones came singly and sometimes in threes and fours, and they pelted the policeman just as they had pelted our windows.”
Some of the residents were so concerned that they were afraid to go to bed, and P.C. Smith kept guard until 6 a.m. Nothing more was seen of the mysterious attackers, and no clue has been found to their identity.
Gloucester Citizen, 12th August 1932.
Beach ‘shots’ mystery.
Bungalows bombarded.
Bullet through window.
From our special correspondent, Bognor Regis, Thursday.
The Bognor Regis police are investigating mysterious incidents at Pagham Beach, details of which have just come to light. During the week-end, residents of Pagham Beach – which is about two miles west of the well-known holiday resort – most of whom were asleep in their bungalows, were roused by heavy crashes, which were at first believed to be the noise of gunfire. The fusillade, which at one bungalow alone lasted half an hour, smashed several windows in the bungalows along the fringe of the high beach.
The police are of opinion that the noise was caused by showers of stones falling on the roofs, and there is no doubt that heavy stones were among the missiles. one resident, however, declares that a bullet went through a bedroom window of his bungalow and was found on the maid’s bed.
It is suggested that the raiders made use of a catapult and that the bullet may have been projected by this means.
Mrs Fitzwater, of Camden-square, London, who is on holiday in the bungalow, Sea Shell, told me that they were aroused from sleep by a fusillade of stones. “My bedroom windows were broken,” she said, “and the bed in which a little girl was lying was covered with broken glass. We went out with torches and found a lot of other residents from nearby bungalows out as well. The stones seemed to come from all around at first, but afterwards they came from the east side of the road that leads past the Beach Club to the bungalow. It appears that other bungalows further west had been raided before ours, and the raidres evidently moved round towards our end at the back of the bungalows, always keeping out of sight.”
[as above]
During the fusillade a pistol with a blocked barrel, firing a blank cartridge, was discharged from a bungalow in the hope of scaring off the raiders. This probably was responsible for the rumour which alarmed many of the holiday makers that shooting had taken place along the beach. Some of the residents were so concerned that they were too frightened to go to bed, and P.C. Smith kept guard until 6 a.m.
Nothing more was seen of the mysterious attackers, and up to now no clue has been found to their identity. One woman living on the beach front states that she saw four men at the back of the bungalows between 11 and 12 that night.
The bungalow in which the pellet, or bullet, was found on a bed, is in the occupation of Mr J.W. Chester, a London solicitor. It is presumably from an air gun and made a hole through the window and was found on the bed occupied by a maid.
Another resident said to me: “It was a night of real terror for our women. The first we heard of it was when someone came on to our wooden veranda and began to roll boulders from one end of it to the other, making a noise like thunder and waking everybody up. After that came the rattle of stones on the roofs, and this was followed by bullets which were undoubtedly fired from air rifles. Several windows were broken and several bungalows were pelted with stones. A part of between 30 and 40 men was formed from the bungalows and this party split into several sections, but wherever we went with torches stones followed us without our being able to tell where they came from. None of these parties found a single trace of the assailants, although we searched everywhere. The raiders were undoubtedly using stones, catapults and air rifles.”
Daily News (London), 12th August 1932.