DUSTCART driver Colin Smith, who was booked for parking on his rounds, wasn’t the only person to be involved in a bizarre court case.

Four men were fined by magistrates for playing cards for money on a grass verge.

Their ‘crime’ took place near The Grapes pub at Yarnton, now renamed The Turnpike, 50 years ago.

The four men, John and Joseph Kavanagh, Jerry McGrath and James Leary, who were lodging in the village at the time, were accused of gaming on the highway.

Woodstock magistrates fined them each 10 shillings (50p). All wrote to the court apologising for the offence and expressing ignorance of the law.

Pc McMiken said in evidence that he was on motor patrol along the Oxford-Woodstock road one Sunday.

Near The Grapes, he saw four men playing cards on the grass verge, questioned them and took possession of the money, £1 9s 10d.

According to the Oxford Mail report at the time, Mr McGrath told him: “It was only a twopenny nap. We had nothing else to do.”

The report didn’t explain what gaming law the men had broken.

Was it that card playing for money in public was banned, or was the fact that they were playing on the Sabbath significant?

As we recalled (Memory Lane, April 19), Mr Smith, of George Moore Close, Donnington, Oxford, found a parking ticket on his dustcart after he popped into a coffee shop in Little Clarendon Street, Oxford, to collect refuse in 1972.

A traffic warden pounced after seeing the vehicle on double yellow lines.

The £4 fine and £6.50 costs imposed by Oxford magistrates were paid by his union. It later transpired that the city council, Mr Smith’s employer, had forgotten to include dustcarts in the list of vehicles exempt from the traffic order.