Criminal Appeal by Stated Case:-The appellant was convicted following trial at Hamilton Sheriff Court of the following charge:- "On 7 January 2010 at 50 Kenilworth Avenue, Wishaw, you did conduct yourself in a disorderly manner, shout, swear, place Lorraine Hatcher in a state of fear and alarm and commit a breach of the peace". The incident related to a row between the appellant and his wife, at their home address, in which the appellant was the aggressor and shouted at the complainer calling her "a fucking whore", "a fucking slut" and "a cunt". Their children, aged 12 and 15, were in the house during the disturbance but were in their respective bedrooms. Following Harris v H.M.A. 2010 S.C.C.R. 15, which over-ruled the decision in Young v Heatly 1949 J.C. 66, and W.M. v H.M.A. [2010] HCJAC 75 the court held that "a public element" was required in conduct before it could amount to a breach of the peace. Following his conviction the appellant appealed here by way of stated case on the grounds that the sheriff should have sustained a motion that there was no case to answer and acquit him because his conduct lacked any public element. It was conceded on behalf of the appellant that there was sufficient evidence that the appellant's conduct was genuinely alarming and disturbing to any reasonable person, however, the second element of the conjunctive test for breach of the peace was absent. It was submitted on behalf of the Crown that, referring to Harris, a "potential disturbance of a small group of people in a house" may suffice as the public element for a breach of the peace and, here, the presence of the children in a different part of the house during the incident, was a factor for the court to consider in determining the discoverability of such conduct. Here the court considered the circumstances in which conduct in a private house may provide the necessary public element for a charge of breach of the peace. It also considered a lacuna in the criminal law following Harris which means that where a partner abuses the other in private, in a way that would cause serious distress to a reasonable person, then that abuser is not criminalised.