 In 1966, Stella North was at the centre of a legal case in which three men were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud after trying to sell the CEGB poor quality coal when contracted to deliver high quality coal. The three men involved were D.C.P. Brooksbank, a salesman for a coal firm; J.W. Patterson, a sampler at the power station, and M. Ridley, a contractor. Their scheme was for Patterson to substitute samples of reasonably good coal for the samples of poor coal taken from the lorries. However they were found out only two days after starting the scheme, when a foreman at the station saw Patterson dropping a bag of cement into the sampling bin, and reported the incident. Ridley was found to have planned the fraud, and was jailed for a year, while Brooksbank was fined £ 150 and Patterson £ 75.
