Title: The Times, 23,006 11c
Date: 29 May 1858
Place: London

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, WESTMINSTER, MAY 28.

(Sittings at Nisi Prius at Guildhall, before Mr. Justice BYLES and a Common Jury.)

This was the first day of the first sittings for London in Trinity Term.

PLUCKROSE V. STRONG.

Mr. Sleigh and Mr. T. Salter were for the plaintiff, and Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Tompson Chitty for the defendant.

This was an action brought by the plaintiff, a boy of about 10 years of age, in the name of his father, as his next friend, to recover damages under the following circumstances: - In March last the plaintiff was standing in Ada-street, Hackney, with a child in his arms, listening to the music of two Scotch bagpipers, when the defendant’s son, who was driving a milkcart, came up, according to the plaintiff’s case, at full pace, knocked the little boy down, and inflicted upon him some scalp wounds, from which, however, he has now recovered. The defence was that the whole affair was accidental, that the defendant’s son was not to blame, and that the plaintiff himself contributed to his own injuries by backing against the cartwheel negligently.

Witnesses were called on either side, and their testimony was, as is usual in similar actions, very contradictory.

Mr. SALTER having replied upon the whole case at some length and very minutely,

The learned JUDGE summed up, and the jury eventually found a verdict for the plaintiff - Damages, 5l.

It might be possible to track down this boy or his family if they were living in Ada Street at the time of the 1851, or more likely, 1861 census. Alternatively, a birth, marriage or death certificate for the period would help. There were a lot of Pluckroses living in Hackney at that time, and some lived in Ada Street in 1881. This family Joseph Pluckrose, [PL1954, butcher], however, were living in Goring Street in 1861.