The £200 court case

Doctor Williams’ pink pills for pale people, and a piano tuner clinging to a car grill for 30 metres, are two of the amazing facts behind a £200 court case from 96 years ago. I told a version of this story in my 200th episode on West Bremer Radio.

In 1928 a claim for £200 was brought against Ipswich man Thomas Albert Rock. That’s not an unsubstantial amount because it was enough to buy a house back then.

The claim was brought by Brisbane man Cecil Herbert Dowd. It was for “pain and suffering” after Rock allegedly drove his car into Dowd riding his motor bike and sidecar. This was near Albert Square which is now King George Square in Brisbane. Judgment was entered for the plaintiff for £181 6s plus costs, which means Dowd won and Ipswich’s Rock had to pay up.

But like so often with history, scratch the surface and you’ll find some really interesting people.

Firstly, the man Cecil Dowd. Before making the £200 claim, he was in arrears in child maintenance payments to his wife for co-incidentally not a dissimilar amount of £131 5s. For Dowd it was a case of receiving money with one hand and paying out with the other.

He was divorced after his wife gave birth to a third child that neither of them could account for. He was also convicted of having been drunk when driving his car into a milk cart. And if life wasn’t bad enough, Dowd then got fined by the tax office for getting behind with his taxes.

Back to our man Thomas Rock who lived in Pine Street, North Ipswich. His mother Margaret was anaemic and claimed to have been cured by the quack Doctor Williams and his amazing Pink Pills.

Rock was convicted at the Ipswich courthouse (pictured top of the page) of riding his bicycle along footpaths, and of using obscene language on The Terrace in North Ipswich. But in 1923 before the £200 claim was made against him, Rock got a divorce from his wife who had become familiar with another Ipswich man Vance Bartholomew Runge.

Runge himself was a colourful character. At the time of his indiscretion with Mrs Rock, he was an Ipswich taxi driver. But not a very good one.

In 1924 he was charged with driving his car into a piano tuner on a bicycle on Annerley Road. Runge had allegedly been drinking and had five passengers when he ran into the back of the piano tuner who was then forced to cling to the radiator of the car for about thirty metres as the car came to a halt. Runge got off that charge but wasn’t so lucky with others.

In 1925 he was fined for driving a car on the wrong side of the road in North Ipswich. In 1926 he was bringing three passengers from Goodna to Ipswich, when his car left the road near Redbank, ran down the embankment and into an electric light pole. This was hard to do because there weren’t that many light poles around back then.

Thankfully Runge then changed careers and became a wharfie. In that job he was fined for steeling fencing wire, attempting to steal a bag of potatoes, and again for being in possession of a parcel of sweets and groceries that were suspected of being stolen.

Thomas Rock, Cecil Dowd, and Vance Runge were three interesting characters who were totally lost to history, and only remembered now thanks to a £200 claim for the 200th episode on West Bremer Radio. And then then is the piano tuner and the pink pills for pale people, both deserving of their own research.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.