RESEARCH carried out at Trafford Local Studies has unearthed a century-old 'cause celebre' involving a Sale soldier.

It was a case that caused a massive outcry when Gunner Vivian Coryton was sent to prison for attempting to murder his wife's lover - leading to mass protests against his sentence, including a 40,000-name petition being sent to the Home Secretary.

These protests came after Vivian Coryton was found guilty in 1919 of attempted murder and sentenced to seven years in prison for shooting a man, Walter Davies, who was having an affair with his wife, Mary.

The details of the case were unearthed by Sale resident Julie Lee, who is a volunteer at Trafford Local Studies Centre.

It wasn't the first time a jealous Coryton, of Cross Street, Sale, had shot at Davies. Previously, thirty-five year-old Coryton, who was serving as a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War, had returned home on leave in the early hours of April 22, 1917, to find Davies in bed with his wife.

An argument followed, and Mary restrained her husband while Davies fled.

But 24 hours later, Coryton turned up at Davies’ house and started firing at him with a revolver as he made off. Davies escaped unharmed and Coryton was arrested - but he showed no remorse.

After describing the incident, the Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian reported he said: “It was deplorably bad markmanship.’”

However, he was acquitted and returned to the Front until the end of the war.

Then in January 1919, yet to be discharged from the Army following the end of the war, Coryton was again on leave.

Davies was now living with his Mary. Coryton pursued Davies once more and after firing several shots, he wounded Davies in the side. He was again arrested.

At his trial for attempted murder, the Manchester Guardian reported him saying: "I have done nothing I am ashamed of. The law provides no real punishment for scoundrels like this. If one values the honour of one’s home one has to take the law into one’s own hands and put up with the consequences."

But he was found guilty and the judge was reported as being keen to 'fight the notion of the unwritten law' that a soldier is entitled to take the law into his own hands.

The Manchester Guardian reported the Judge as saying: “I treat you as rather a poor, misguided fool, with a villainous temper. Still, as a warning to you… and as a warning also to other people the punishment must be a substantial – even a severe – one. You will go to penal servitude for seven years."

A few days later, between 1,200 and 1,500 men - most of them soldiers - met in Manchester to discuss how to fight his conviction.

That led to the National Federation of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers - later to become part of the Royal British Legion - collecting a petition that was signed by 40,000 supporters in just three weeks and sent to the Home Secretary, Edward Shortt, in July 1919.

But the Home Secretary refused to intervene and Coryton remained in prison.

The case had drawn press interest from as far afield as Singapore and New Zealand.

Coryton, who had his campaign medal taken off him, died in Manchester in 1943, aged 61.

Before the war, he and his wife had both worked as tobacconists.

Trafford Local Studies Centre volunteer Julie’s interest was sparked when she spotted a reference to the 40,000-name petition in a 1919 edition of the Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian.