RATHER HARD.

Evening Star, Issue 3583, 17 August 1874, Page 3

RATHER HARD.

About five and twenty years ago a police-constable, numbered and lettered as 184 B in the Dublin metropolitan force, was unlucky enough to arrest and get fined a gentleman of the fourth estate for being drunk and disorderly. The reporter vowed a vow that he would blot the offending constable off the face of the earth, and well did he keep his resolve ! Day after day and week after week the police reports of Dublin were filled with misdoings of 184 B. He was represented as appearing to prosecute for the most improbably absurd offences—now arresting men for stealing the gold off a child’s gingerbread—lying in wait for days to detect the fraudulent philanthropist who habitually dropped a bad sixpence into a blind man’s hat—making cases out of men who sniffed without payment the rich perfumes from a pastrycook’s shop-windows. The magistrates were represented as constantly inveighing against the crass stupidity and intense wickedness of 184 B. One report that I particularly remember stated that the presiding justice remarked, at the conclusion of the case, that, “ Verily the devil had taken possession of 184 B!” The constable bepame a byword apd a reproach to the whole force. He used to be followed by crowds on his “ bate,’’ anxious to sep him give vent to his diabolical propensities, and no one ever looked on his number without laughing. The authorities held out for a long time, but at last, in the interests of civic order, had to give way, and 184 B, as such, ceased to perambulate the streets. A circumstance like this shows the power of the Press very strikingly, and I hope it will be a warning to policemen on this side of the world to take no notice of drunken or disorderly reporters, if there be any such, unfortunately, in our midst.