| Description | This was an action brought by Millar Johnstone McVittie (plaintiff), proprietor of the Pop-In Picture Hall, Hollinwood against the Chief Constable of Oldham (Mr D H Turner) and Inspector Longson and Sergeant Jones of the borough police force (defendants). Mr McVittie claimed that he had suffered from the actions of the defendants in trespassing and wrongfully entering his picture hall and causing certain police constables to enter and remain there even though he had forbidden them to and whereby he 'had undergone great annoyance and suffered humiliation and damage by the public from being prevented or deterred from entering the hall'. The defendants had seized and taken goods of the plaintiff and had destroyed parts of the film by fire, burning matches and taking away other portions. The defence was a denial that the defendants had trespassed on the property or that they were prohibited from doing so. They also denied the allegation that they knew McVittie carried on business at the hall as a kinematograph exhibitor with non-inflammable films. Also included is the court case McVittie (plaintiff) versus The Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the County Borough of Oldham (defendants) relating to the conversion of the building in Manchester Road, Hollinwood formerly a Nonconformist chapel (Girah Chapel) to a Picture Palace and two shops and of obtaining a licence for using the main part of the building when altered for the purpose of a Cinematograph Exhibition under the Act of 1909. Eventually Mr McVittie managed to generate support from the Hollinwood public and at a meeting in his proposed picture house a resolution which considered the building suitable in every way for ehibition and that the public would be perfectly safe from danger of fire was sent to the Clerk to the Justices and Town Clerk and Hollinwood subsequently got its picture house |