AS part of our weekly Crime Files series, we are taking a look back at the archives to bring you stories from Herefordshire's history.
The following story dates from 1898.
A HEREFORDSHIRE vicar was arrested on suspicion of indecent conduct in 1898.
The Reverend Frederick Hamilton Lovibond, rector of How Caple and Sollers Hope, was reported to have been taken into custody by Superintendent Cope of Ross-on-Wye on a warrant charging him with indecent conduct with another male on Thursday, January 21 of that year.
The Reverend Lovibond was committed for trial on three charges of indecent conduct at the Ross Police Court.
On a fourth charge, he was remanded for a week, with bail to the amount of £4,000 tendered but refused.
The vicar appeared before Hereford Assizes in March, where the court heard he had been a curate at Much Marcle in February 1895, taking rooms at New House Farm.
It was there that he became acquainted with a boy who went into his employment as a servant and who was alleged to have shared his bedroom and, on several occasions, his bed.
Later that year he was presented the living of How Caple and Sollers Hope, moving in to the Rectory House in November.
But while is was a large house, he was alleged to have still shared a room with the boy.
That same month, it was alleged, a woman moved in, also as a servant. But in December, she reported, she had seen an offence between Lovibond and the boy whilst in the garden.
A second servant also claimed she had seen the two in "a certain position" in the garden in 1896.
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The boy denied all the offences and alleged that statements in a document produced which bore his signatures were untrue and that he had answered "yes" when questioned by policy because they frightened him.
He said officers had kept him unwillingly at the Post Office for two hours.
Lovibond denied the charges, telling the court his means were not sufficient to furnish the whole house and so he furnished one bedroom for himself, giving the boy a bed in that room, and one for his housekeeper.
He said he had in early life had half his foot cut off and it required a great deal of attention, which was given by the boy, who would bandage it for him.
He was acquitted of the charges.
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