Leeds nostalgia: Britain shelled from the sea... and the barmaid fined 10 shillings for serving her mate a glass of beer

On this day in 1918, it was Great Yarmouth taking the brunt of the German offensive, with some 30 shells fired during a night raid, which was said to have lasted a full five minutes.

Three people were killed and 10 injured as a result, with limited fires breaking out across the town and damage to buildings, including roofs being ripped off and doors and windows blown in.

In one instance, an infant who was sleeping in a cot had a lucky escape after a shell practically destroyed his entire house, even blowing apart a steel safe, but leaving him unscathed.

The shelling began at about 10.30pm and was over just as quickly as it began.

In Bradford, a magistrate fined a landlord and two barmaids, one of whom served a glass of beer to the other after opening hours. The landlord was Ernest R Hoyle, the establishment, the Osborne Hotel. It was said that while the barmaid was not charged for the beer, magistrate Beaumont Morice took the view it was still a breach of the law. He ordered the landlord and one waitress to pay ‘costs’ and the waitress who supplied the beer to pay 10s.

In another court case in Leeds, William Stead, employed by North Eastern Railway Company, was jailed for 14 days after being found guilty of stealing 17lb of sugar.

And finally, William Kershaw, a haulage boy employed by Garforth Colliery Company, was fined after an incident which left one person dead and almost killed another.

He was said to have been negligent in his monitoring of ‘tubs’, some of which spilled their contents onto a train track, killing a man, while a driver had a narrow escape.