VIGILANT as ever, but thrown into confusion by Mr Trevor Layzell MB FRCS, the Coundon Society for the Prevention and Prosecution of Felons held its 150th anniversary dinner on Monday.

It's the village near Bishop Auckland where, 40 years ago, PC Arthur Stephenson was ordered to take ten kids to juvenile court for playing hum-dum-dum outside Ranaldi's caf.

The Society was formed in 1854, the year that the accordion was patented, that the Crimean War began and (if Mr Arthur Conan Doyle is to be believed) that Sherlock Holmes - that other renowned crime fighter - was born.

Then the president was Sir William Eden, now it's led by Dr Bob McManners and Mr Tony Fretwell.

County Durham had around 80 "Felons" societies in those days, almost as many as there were constables more officially, if not efficiently, to run them. A polliss earned 15 shillings a week, an inspector £65 a year.

Now only the Weardale society also survives, formed in 1820 but reckoned to have had a comparatively quiet life because the west Durham lead miner, while not frightfully afraid of the Felons, lived in mortal dread of the Methodist minister.

Coundon was different. "Drunkenness, civil unrest and lawlessness are frequently recorded around the 1830s-1850s," noted Monday's dinner programme and - a bit like Wild West Auckland - the society even put up "Wanted" notices.

"It is easy to imagine the potential for miscarriages of justice," added the programme, candidly.

Problems persist. In a three month period, said Inspector Kevin Tuck, police have had 120 calls to "youths causing a disturbance" in Collingwood Street, Coundon, alone. Hum-dum and dumber.

Insp Tuck, it might be added, began working life as office junior on the Teesdale Mercury, which estimable organ also marks its 150th anniversary this year.

The do was at Bishop Auckland Golf Club, the meal excellent, the PA system mysteriously missing - had someone pinched it from beneath the Felons' noses? A toast list the length of a truncheon ended with the column proposing the sesquicentennial celebration.

Like beating a carpet before 8am or showing a wound in order to solicit money - still on the statute book - there should probably be a law against it.

Fred Wilson, retired assistant chief constable of Durham, recalled that when he started in 1949, each division had only one car and that, since the driver worked 9am-5pm, they were on their bikes thereafter.

Mick Burdess, once Coundon's sergeant, recalled the difficulty of pub inspections, the landlords either too generous or too cute to take no for an answer. Not even the constabulary bicycle was advisable after that.

It was Mr Layzell, however, who induced etymological anarchy. A surgeon at Bishop General, he trained first at the Guildhall School of Music and has handwriting reckoned almost as beautiful as his singing voice.

To a medical man a "felon" was principally a whitlow, he said, and the Oxford English Dictionary corroborates his evidence - "a small abscess or sore, an inflamed boil, a whitlow".

Had they really spent 150 years simply trying to lance the county whitlow?

These days the Society does little except hold an annual dinner - more than 100 present, male to a man - and several meetings at which to organise it. They performed their duties admirably: hail Felons, well met.

LORD Mackenzie of Framwellgate, another long serving polliss with a distinguished career, has embarked on his life story, we hear.

Born in Darlington, educated at Eastbourne School in the town - his classmate Tom Sawyer became Lord Sawyer of Darlington - Brian Mackenzie rose from PC to chief superintendent, became national president of the Superintendents' Association and was awarded a life peerage in 1998.

The book's provisionally entitled The Two Lives of Brian: From Police to Politics. Sadly, he has been unavailable to talk about either.