ONE hundred years ago, Michael Kelly, 36, of Model Place, Darlington, appeared before the town’s magistrates charged with illegally snipping off young girls’ ponytails in the crowded Market Place.

In its report of the case published on March 15, 1915, The Northern Echo said that the phantom hair-stealer of Darlington had been troubling young girls since the previous November, but amid the jostling crowds of the market, the victims had noticed nothing amiss until they had got home where, to their horror, they had discovered they were not as hairy as when they had gone out.

All that changed at 8.40pm one evening when young Winifred Calvert felt her long hair being agriculturally shorn. She got a good look at the phantom, rushed home, told her mum, who informed the police. Armed with the description, Detective Hedley proceeded to the Market Place where, outside the Covered Market, he apprehended the culprit just as he was about to clip a 16-year-old girl’s long hair.

“It is because I’m Irish, I think,” explained Kelly, who had recently married a Neasham lass.

At Kelly’s home near the River Skerne, 32 samples of hair were discovered neatly packed inside leather leggings. Some had labels attached to them stating where and when they had been clipped.

“I had nae object at all in view,” said Kelly, who was employed as a slinger at Thomas Summerson’s foundry. He had previously been a groom to Lord Southampton on the Rockliffe estate at Hurworth.

Kelly’s defence solicitor said: “There’s no market for hair of this description – the pieces of hair cut off were absolutely useless to him and he seems to keep them as trophies.”

The fetishist was fined £1 plus costs, and if he couldn’t pay, he faced one month in prison.