Volume Nine - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - The Custom House and Dock Offices . . .

Custom House officers were sometimes placed themselves inadvertently in great danger in the course of their duties as well as out of hours. The following shooting incident occurred within a house at Maughan Street which was situated just above the dock and was an area where seamen could obtain lodgings. The road was subsequently renamed Queens Road :

• June 1888 - Extraordinary Fracas at Penarth - A Custom-House Officer Shot - ' A ship's mate named Arthur Benson Peper, belonging to the American ship 'Nancy Pendleton', now lying in Penarth Dock, has been arrested at 45, Maughan-street, on the charge of shooting and wounding Mr Houlder, a Custom-House officer. It appears that Peper and another sailor visited the house late on Wednesday night or early on Thursday, and the tenant, Mrs Blackburn, resenting the intrusion, as she alleges, went outside, leaving the two men in the house with two men named Jenkins and Williams.

Mr Holder and Mr Thomas, custom-house officers, passing by at the time, Mrs Blackburn, with whom they were acquainted, told them that there were a couple of American sailors in the house who would not leave. The officers entered almost immediately, and the sounds of a scuffle were heard a few moments later. P.C. Thomas, who had been attracted to the spot a few minutes later, appeared on the scene. He affected an entrance through the back. By this time the affair had assumed sufficiently startling significance as to scare the women, one of whom fled upstairs. Looking into the main passage of the house from near the stairs, Mrs Blackburn saw Peper, who stood in the parlour doorway, strike Hodder a blow on his head, and before the latter could recover from the shock, stoop forward with a pistol in his right hand and shoot. Mr Hodder cried out, "I am shot in the side ; he has shot me ;" and then fell.

At this juncture Police Constable Thomas darted forward and arrested Peper. The revolver - a large five-chambered Colt - was found fully loaded, the only vacant chamber being that in which the empty cartridge was still smoking. An examination of the passage resulted in the discovery of the bullet, which, after ploughing its way through the fleshy part of the side, just above the right thigh, had spent its force on the wall. peper was taken to the Penarth police-station. He is said to have been the worse for liquor when the affair occurred.' - South Wales Daily News [325] [361]  1st June 1888.