On this day in 1897, London taxi driver George Smith, an employee of the Electric Cab Company, drove into the frontage of a building on Bond Street, Mayfair and became the first person in the United Kingdom to be charged with drink driving. He was spotted by PC Russell 247C driving his taxi erratically, onto a pavement and into the front corridor of the home of Sir Henry Irving. The Morning Post reported that at about 00:45am on Friday 10 September 1897, 25-year-old Smith’s vehicle ‘swerved from one side of the road to the other, and ran across the footway into 165 New Bond Street’. Taken to Marlborough Street Police Court, Smith admitted having drunk ‘two or three glasses of beer’, pleaded guilty and was fined 20 shillings (£1)!
It was lucky for the police that he was so forthcoming as they had no way of proving scientifically that he was too drunk to drive. Drunken driving had been made an offence under the Licensing Act of 1872, which imposed penalties for being drunk in charge on any highway or other public place of any carriage, horse, cattle or steam engine.
