IF he wasn't drunk at home, then he would return from work drunk. Naturally his family suffered and as he frittered away his wages, then food on the dinner table became more and more scarce.

“The children would have starved if it had not been for my help,” Henry Hayward's mother-in-law lamented. “In seven weeks they only had one Sunday dinner.

“We all tried our best to help but he ignored us. “I don't care' he sneered. 'They must want.”

A horrified jury at Hampshire Quarter Sessions in 1919 heard how NSPCC inspectors found the family so destitute they had to bring in food, groceries and clothing.

By this stage, his wife had been forced to go into service to try and provide the merest essentials.

Eventually she and their three children left him.

“I couldn't live with him anymore because of his drunkenness and laziness,” she told them. “Then one day, when he was sober, he pleaded with us to come back. He made promises, he said he would reform but he didn't.”

She was supported by Hayward's uncle who described him as a very good bookmaker - when he wasn't on the bottle.

“He could work if he liked but he neglected it. He was a good workman and could earn good money, even more up to 8s a day.”

The court heard the NSPCC issued a final warning about his conduct and kept under observation but he ignored it and was eventually arrested.

Hayward denied neglect and being an habitual drunkard, claiming his wife of impropriety with another man and thus “breaking up a happy home.”

He never mentioned the word drunkenness in his speech to the jury and his defence was so hollow it took them little or no time to convict him.

The chairman, J Lindsay Johnson was scathing in his remarks.

“Your wife says you are incapable of managing your own affairs. You are a danger to yourself and to her, almost a madman.”

Hde then jailed Hayward to one month's hard labour and directed notices banning him pubs shoud be given to the police for their enforcement.