John Helferty or Helferty is my 1st cousin 3x removed on my maternal granny’s side. He and my great granny Sarah Helferty were full cousins.

That branch of the family, the Greenock Helfertys, were well known to the courts. There are several mentions of the family in the local papers. The article above is from the Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette and was published on 7 September 1904.

It made me laugh to picture the scene. John appears to have found a basket of discarded bananas and has tried his luck at selling them to the unsuspecting public. The public were clearly not as daft as John hoped and the police have been alerted. Now I would have thought that the evidence of witnesses and the police who attended would have been enough. The police have been super thorough and have decided to seize the rotting bananas as evidence. When presented in the courtroom, the stench of the spoiled fruit very unpleasant, particulary for the judge and lawyers, who were not accustomed to the smells of the streets. Some poor court officer would then have to clear the area as quickly as possible.

The bananas were “unsound and unfit for human consumption”. If they were as bad as described would anyone really have been fooled into buying them? The maximum fine was pretty hefty so John was lucky to get away with the 5 shillings or 3 days imprisonment. My guess is he took the 3 days. A man that desperate doesn’t have any spare cash and 5 shillings was still a hefty fine for someone in John’s situation. Prison would at least have meant a roof over his head and a meal. Or maybe he got off on “a peel”!