This rather incredible story comes from the early 50s, when I lived in a village in the south west of England. Some of the details of what follows I only got to know much later in life, courtesy of my mother.
It was a pretty typical English village for the time, just a couple of shops and a school, and less than 300 inhabitants. By and large it was a safe, tight-knit community – however, by the time of this story it was also feeling the effects of the emergence of the teenager, and there were some issues with youngsters in the community. Nothing very serious, but still not what the village had been used to in the ‘good old days’.