Evidence suggesting a prominent pre-war Bradford magistrate was years ahead of his time by being tough on domestic violence has come to light, thanks to the Telegraph & Argus.

Last week the T&A reported that Saltaire-based second-hand bookseller Clive Woods had found a link between Beaumont Morice - Bradford's Stipendary Magistrate for 20 years until 1934- and notorious turn-of-the-century fraudster Horatio Bottomley.

Mr Woods had bought a rare first edition of Horatio Bottomley: Hys Booke and turned detective to uncover the identity of the man to whom a personal message inside was dedicated.

After hours of painstaking research at Bradford Central Library's local history section he discovered Beaumont Morice was a barrister and Stipendiary Magistrate for Bradford who had once given legal advice to Bottomley.

Now Mr Woods has been contacted by a woman whose memory was jogged by the T&A story.

The woman, who is 79 and lives in Brighouse, wrote: "When I was a child a neighbour who had a rather violent husband told my mother she had threatened to take him in front of Beaumont Morice.''

When she had asked what that meant she was told that when cases came before him in the domestic courts Morice's sympathies lay with the women - he came down hard on men guilty of domestic violence.

The woman added: "Therefore, this threat did carry some weight''.

Mr Woods, who runs Falcon Books in Victoria Road and is chairman of Saltaire Village Society, said he would be passing the letter on to the library's local history section for filing with Morice's obituary.

"We already know that on his birthdays he took children out for tea and on to the cinema so he must have been a very considerate and caring man," said Mr Woods, a keen local historian

"But this is another fascinating little bit of history coming to light.

"At a time when domestic violence was more or less swept under the carpet it's nice to know a Stipendiary magistrate in Bradford was having none of it.

"When domestic disputes came before him he took the side of the women which, for the time, was quite remarkable.''

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