Digest of stories from the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: June 9th, 1917.

The wife of a soldier who had been serving in Egypt for a year was described as "a menace to public health" when she appeared at the Borough Court this morning. Nellie Smith, of 15 Park Place, Luton, was charged with neglecting her three children, aged three, five and seven, in a manner likely to cause them unnecessary suffering or injury to health.

The NSPCC had been asked to investigate the conditions under which the children lived. They were found to be locked in the house all day, clotheless and in a filthy condition, while the mother was out working at the picture palace in Park Street.

While the mother herself looked respectable clean and nice, an NSPCC inspector who visited the house said the stench on entering was abominable and the children, while well nourished, wore clothes that looked as though they had not been washed since bought. Two of the children were suffering from scabies, and all three had now been taken into the Workhouse.

The house was swarming with flies, there were rags and "downright filth" throughout and such furniture as there was was broken, including the bed in which the mother and children slept.

Had her husband known of the conditions in which the children were living he would have been broken-hearted, the court was told. The mother was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.

• Annie Brightman, of 39 Cromwell Road, Luton, was on Tuesday at the St Albans Police Station, charged with absconding from the Home at Stratford to which she had agreed to go, and to which she was ordered for two years, to be followed by three years probation. Mr W. Mundin, police court missionary, explained that the young woman was charged with exposing her three-week-old daughter in such a way as to cause unnecessary suffering [abandoning the child on a doorstep]. On being taken to Stratford from the St Albans Shelter on April 19th she absconded, giving no satisfactory account of herself. Det-Sgt Paine arrested the prisoner at Luton the previous day, when she said: "I don't want to go into a Home. My father will have me back and said I was silly to agree to go into a Home." She was then remanded to appear at St Albans Police Court on Thursday, when she admitted committing a breach of her probation order. She had nothing to say in her defence and was sent to prison for three months.

• The report of the Luton Borough Prisoners of War Committee, from the inception on June 1st, 1915, to May 31st last, show that receipts had totalled £1,001 1s with expenditure of £648 5s 1d. No fewer than 1,043 parcels had been dispatched to prisoners and in only one case was there a complaint of goods having been abstracted from parcels. Parcels were now sent to 17 men three times a fortnight, the average weight of each being 10 lbs and the average cost 6s 6d.

• Pte Alfred George Titmuss (Beds Regiment), a son of Mr and Mrs Titmuss, of 40 Milton Road, Luton, has been reported by the War Office to be missing. A letter received from Lieut Dudley said their son had been missing since an advance during the battle of Arras on April 28th. He was afraid he must now be dead or a prisoner of war.

• A letter from Pioneer Sidney Valentine Sillence-Lovell, Royal Engineers, to his fiancee Miss Winifred May Bloomfield, of 63 Stuart Street, Luton, detailed his incredible escape from the torpedoed troopship Transylvania in the Mediterranean on May 4th.

• A presentation was made at the Fire Station on Wednesday evening to Mr E. A. Mander, who recently resigned the office of brigade secretary after many years service. Chief Officer Andrew said Mr Mander had been connected with the brigade officially for over 17 years and about five years unofficially before that. Mr Mander was presented with a silver wrist watch.

• This afternoon a large crowd assembled around the bandstand at Wardown Park to witness the performance of a concert troupe from the Ampthill Command Depot, a collection being taken for the Local Prisoners of War Fund. The collecting boxes were handed round by the wounded soldiers from Wardown V.A.D. Hospital. Another concert is being given in the bandstand this evening.

• At the annual meeting of the Football Association on Monday night it was decided that football should be resumed next season on the same lines as last season. The London Combination will undoubtedly undergo rearrangement, and Luton's position is by no means secure, although promised good support. Southampton, Portsmouth and Watford are not likely to resume. The Athletic News said: "On last season's form there can be no doubt that Luton would make an excellent club in any new formation."