This is our regular Yesterdays ‘100 years ago’ section where we’ll take clips from The Argus a century ago and share them with our readers.

TENSIONS between residents and overseas visitors have been in existence long before Ukip and their yellow and purple rosettes ever become a factor in the UK political scene.

One hundred years ago this week, Argus readers were gripped by a bizarre coming together of a St Leonards resident and a Japanese visitor.

Walter Siviers, of Avondale Road in St Leonards, was accused of making a charge at a Japanese man in Seaside on May 30, 1914.

The defendant’s wife claimed the man had pushed papers in her face before using abusive language, provoking her husband’s angry reaction.

A PC Austen dismissed the claims by saying the Japanese man could not speak a word of the Queen’s English.

The clinching argument in the case was provided by a Frederick Charles Barry who said: “A foreigner learns bad language before he learns English.

“I have noticed it particularly in India.

“All the natives use bad language first there.”

The argument was enough to persuade the chairman of the court that “evidence was against conviction” and discharged the defendant.

Readers’ heartstrings were also being tugged by the sad tale of the death of 21-year-old Ernest Jenner who went to bed on Saturday night “apparently quite well” only to be found dead in his bed on Sunday morning by his family.

His father Joseph, from Stonefield Road in Hastings, told an inquest that his son came home from work at the local grocers on Saturday evening.

His son was used to a lie-in on Sunday and so his father did not worry too much when Ernest did not emerge on Sunday morning.

But the Sunday idyll was destroyed at 11.15am when his daughter came crying to him after finding her brother dead in his bed. Local surgeon AE Baker said the cause of death was acute gastric enteritis but could find no cause for the condition in the youngster’s stomach.