ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE OCTOBER 17, 1946

THE proprietor of the Grosvenor Court Hotel, who slapped the face of one of his chambermaids, yesterday had his action endorsed by the Margate Recorder. Reginald Arthur Alltoft’s counsel told the court the maid was shouting and screaming in a dispute with another maid. Alltoft slapped her face, not with hostile intent, but as a method of First Aid for hysterical people.

OCTOBER 17, 1967

THE Queen’s bedroom may have been bugged by a Russian spy as she stayed at a hotel near Bonn two years ago. A waiter at the hotel, 41-year-old Martin Marggraf, was one of five suspected Soviet spies arrested in West Germany. He used to fix micro-bug radio transmitters in State visitors’ rooms.