It was a ‘typical case [that] occurred early one morning’ between 1932 and 1933; an LVA patroller was at her usual position at Liverpool's Landing Stage, quietly observing passengers as they disembarked from the latest boat into port. Her eyes scanned the people as they passed by, assessing their age, their state of dress, the amount of luggage they carried, and she listened to catch snippets of conversations, to flourishes of English and Irish accents; this was one of the regular boats that sailed between Liverpool and Ireland. Amongst the scene, the LVA patroller found her attention ‘attracted by two young Irish girls’. It was a familiar sight for the LVA patroller, who was used to monitoring the area looking for vulnerable girls arriving in Liverpool. The Irish girls who piqued her interest that particular morning seemed to have already made the acquaintance of a suspicious character. The girls were ‘in the company of a well-dressed, middle aged woman, about whom [the LVA patroller] did not feel quite happy’. Propelled by her intuition, the LVA patroller strode over to the trio and enquired about their journey and their relationship to one another. At this inquisition, the older woman insisted that she was looking after the girls; then she turned to her young acquaintances and ‘strongly advised them to have nothing to do with our [the LVA] Worker’.

The LVA could not apprehend people on the grounds of their suspicions. Yet what the LVA worker lacked in official powers she made up for in resourcefulness, as she quickly sought the help of a nearby ‘official’, probably a member of the ferry company's staff. Faced with further questioning, this time from someone with more authority, the welldressed woman refused to answer any more questions and she walked away from the party and climbed into a taxi. The girls then confessed that they had in fact only just met the woman. She had offered to take care of them after one had felt ill on the boat. The LVA representative considered her suspicions about the woman to be validated when it transpired that the woman had lied to the girls, telling them their eventual destinations were close to hers and suggesting that they should share a cab. With no geographical knowledge about where they needed to go the girls had trusted the woman.