A Sentinel photographer captured images of two women fighting in public – but veteran reporter Alan Cookman is not shocked by this display of violence...

IT'S midday in Fenton and an unedifying incident is unfolding.

Arms flailing, their underwear exposed, two young women engage in a catfight outside the magistrates' court.

A man in spectacles and a hooped shirt tries to intervene as the set-to rages on. But the combatants are not to be separated. Their faces contorted with rage, the two girls are soon rolling on the pavement, pulling at each other's clothes and hair.

The would-be mediator is himself drawn into the melee, dragged off his feet and left on his back.

Sentinel cameraman Steve Bould took this remarkable sequence of pictures last week.

"It was quite shocking, and rather disgusting," he said. "You don't expect to see something like that in broad daylight."

It was by chance that Steve captured the incident on camera.

He'd been sitting in his car waiting for the defendant in a court case to arrive when it all kicked off.

"It might have started with one pushing the other, but suddenly there was all this effing and blinding," recalls Steve. "There was a slanging match and then they started fighting."

It is not known why the two women were outside the court.

We have no idea why this vicious fight started, but for whatever reason, it doesn't make the spectacle any prettier.

After 40 years on the press benches for The Sentinel, nothing surprises veteran court reporter Dianne Gibbons any more.

She said the magistrates' court at Fenton is a different world from the one most of us inhabit. She said: "Defendants turn up drunk and sit on the steps of the court building drinking.

"They urinate on the pavement or against the doors of the church across the road.

"They used to shoot up in the toilets, and I've heard of couples having sex by the dustbins round the back.

"The steps of the court are covered in spit, beer, broken bottles and fag ends, and yet some women bring their children into this squalor.

"The wives and girlfriends of defendants bring babies in pushchairs. The other day I was told to f*** off by a curly-haired two-year-old who looked so innocent I couldn't believe what I'd heard. I was shocked.

"With all this going on, I'm afraid a disagreement between two women is nothing. I feel sorry for the witnesses who have to come here.

"I've never known it so bad. I sometimes come home feeling so dirty that I take off all my clothes, wash them and peg them out."

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