Wanton Mischief.
Some persons who have not, we are sorry to say, been apprehended, were, on Friday evening, the 8th inst., guilty of very disgraceful conduct. In the dusk of the evening certain individuals appear to have disported themselves by throwing stones at some of the houses in the Queen’s Crescent, and the inhabitants were also frighted from their propriety by having the bells of their domiciles rung in a furious manner.
It is needless to say that on opening the doors nobody was discoverable, nor could those who threw the stones be seen, though diligent search was made. Some people were actually foolish enough to think that the bell-ringing and the stone-throwing was done by a ghost or ghosts.
The police were sent for, and enough constables arrived to apprehend any reasonable number of ghosts, but in spite of every effort, the villains, natural or super-natural, were enabled to avoid detection; the most probable thing is, that the stones were thrown from the timber-yard opposite, but of course the offenders, when they made themselves scarce in some other way, and no doubt the ghosts were in great “spirits” at having eluded the vigilance of the police.
It is to be regretted that the inhabitants were exposed to such annoyance; but it is still more to be deplored that people should be found in this town, and not for the first time within the last year or two, who are sufficiently asinine to attribute such a disturbance to such a cause as that we have mentioned.
Berkshire Chronicle, 16th August 1862.