POLICE COURTING.

Southland Times, Issue 638, 1 March 1867, Page 3

POLICE COURTING.

. (From "Headings by Starlight.") Any one strolling past a police-court at the hour when the Court rises for lunch will see a curious sight — the witnesses, the public, the discharged prisoners, and the police, a crowd of strangely-con-trasted persons are pouring out of the narrow passage &nd down the dirty steps on their way to the nearest public-house. There is the ill-favored Irish laborer, with the protruding lower jaw, who has been giving Judy " a bating," and against • whom Judy has refused to appear ; there is Judy herself, looking every inch a milkwoman, and their neighbor who made it up. There is the foolish young gentleman with the battered hat and the wellcut, though mud-stained, clothes, who last night listened to some foolish song to the effect — That we six magnificent bricks Hare made up our minds for a spree. - And whose spree,' poor baby — a very mild one, by the way — has ended with the usual caution and the usual fine. There are the three low-browed lads with shaven necks, who, to use their own words, narrowly missed " copping it," for tossing by the river side on Sunday -last. There is the nuisance who was summoned for keeping a savage dog to the annoyance of his neighbors ; there is the dog in a muzzle as quiet as a lamb, as his master said he was; and there are several policemen who have had something to do with these several cases, and who, now that they are over, are congratulating their several clients on their escape, explaining that they "was obliged to do their duty," and engaging in other amenities which will probably lead up to ah offer of refreshment. Opposite to the court, and fringing the pavement outside the public-house, stand persons interested in the results of the examinations. They have been double shuffling to keep their feet warm up to the present time, but now, as their friends emerge, they run over to congratulate them. Two Paddies" of the hod persuasion, who have lost a day for the purpose, rush up to the wife-beating Paddy and wish him joy; the cabman mounts the box of the vehicle which has been hired to convey young Forcible Feeble, the magnificent, yet repentant, " brick " home to his mamma ; other boys, chiefly distinguished by tight corduroys, join the three gambling boys, who now politely tell the constable what he ought to have advanced against them in order to have obtained a conviction ; and even the gentleman with the dog nuisance is met by another nuisance (scientific) from the next street, who thinks it is " high time these attempts at social tyranny were noticed in the newspaper ;" and they all troop into the public-house together. Let us follow them. "We see at a glance that among a certain class of people there's no telling how many friends a man has till he is taken before a magistrate. Before Pat got into trouble through beating his wife, Mike and Corny were simple acquaintances ; he met them in society and got tipsy with and fought them occasionally at the gin palace on Saturday nights, but beyond these common courtesies of court life, he gave them nothing and looked for nothing in return. Yet from the handshaking and embracing now going on it. is manifest that where he had formerly but two acquaintances he has now a pair of friends, and to this gain must be added a kind of renewed affection on the part of Misthress Judy, which has been stimulated by " the bating." I leave them to turn to look at a policeman holding a kind of preliminary examination of his witnesses in a case that is coming on. Now, a policeman on court days is a very different person from a policeman on active duty, with his band upon his wrist — he is a feted man, and he is, like all feted persons, dignified but weak. He nods on this side, smiles on that, and has a deprecatory look, as if he really cannot help being a policeman and swearing men's liberties away, but wishes he were anything else. He is everywhere on the present occasion. Here he takes a sausage and a potato at a prosecutor's expense; there he suffers himself to be treated by a prisoner's friends, who implore him "to lay it on as lightly " as he can. ' To see him eating thus is pleasant, because his wants identify him with our common humanity ; to see everybody feeding so heartily, careless of the future, forgetful of the past ; to hear the loud discord, made up of thirty or forty men and women talking, laughing, whispering, quarrelling, kissing, crying, eating, drinking, is also pleasant, and one wishes lunch-time might last for ever ; but it does not — the half-hour glides away, and those who have business there troop back into the court again. "When we enter the court and find ourselves actually in the presence of the Queen's representative upon the bench, our demeanour suddenly changes, the boldest of us become nervous, and even the policeman, who seemed to have the power of three legal gentlemen rolled into one, tones down wonderfully, and learns to keep his place. We are all like boys at the return of the schoolmaster whom they have defied behind his back. Though quite conscious of our innocence of anything in particular, we have a strange apprehension i;hat any of us may be pounced onin a minute, and committed for a crooked look, so we all try to look straight before us and as pureminded as we can. Yonder greasy gentleman, who burned to enter the witness box " and give the old 'un a bit of his mind/ now seems as if he would like to

I hide himself under the solicitors' table ; and the smart lady with a bony hungry face, in a setting of yellow ribbons, looks as demure as if she had never fought a a battle royal in Baldwins-gardens in her life, as demure as her hard mouth and fierce grey eyes and high cheek bones will allow her to look. You see, we say " sir" to the usher, and the policemen, they say "sir" to the solicitor, and the solicitor says " sir "to the magistrate ; therefore the grandeur of that person is a thing quite beyond us. As for his worship, he cares little for our worship, he lolls lazily in his chair, sometimes closes his eyes as if he were asleep, sometimes makes a note, sometimes looks at his nails, but never looks at us, never even looks at the three prisoners who have just been brought before him for forgery. They are three foreigners, Spaniards, I believe, brown as berries, respectably dressed, and deadly quiet. Everything is deadly quiet when they march into the dock, for at present we are all too much interested to talk. As you j look at the Spaniards that strange feeling arises — part savage exultation, part curiosity, part pity, which you experience, at the sight of a hanging fox, a captured mouse, or any other trapped creature "you very often hear about but very seldom see." Presently the charge sheet is read over, and up jumps the prosecuting solicitor for his preliminary remarks. There is a cold. h&rcLnoDß ttbmrb -bbiis gentleman which frightens me ; he doesn't seem cross with anybody, but he has a cool surgical way of thrusting his proof in as if he were only dealing with so much dead flesh that is in the highest degree terrifying. He calls as witness an engraver who executed part of the plate for the forged note, and when, in answer to questions artfully put by the lawyer, this man gives the substance of a conversation which clearly criminates the prisoner whom he designates as the " middle one," I look at the middle one's face, and find that it turns a sickly green, though otherwise he doesn't seem affected. Indeed, nobody does, neither the magistrate, nor the witnesses, nor the prosecuting solicitor, nor the stolid policeman, nor the clerk that books the proceedings for the court, nor the reporters that . book them for the public. You might fancy that they were all playing at police court were it not that from time to time things come out which speak terribly of real life, and movement, and craft, and energy, and passion. From this witness, and another who follows him, we learn how the stupid " middle man " ran from wood engraver to die engraver, and from die engraver to wood engraver a#ain on this miserable business of the forged notes, and how they, acting under the instructions of Scotland-yard, spoke him fair, and cut his blocks for him, and pulled proofs, and made alterations, till at last, just at the critical moment that separates certainty from doubt, down pounced Scotlandyard upon him, and brought him here, blocks, proofs, copies, dies, impressions, and all ; and as it all comes out, and the poor wretch listens to this tale of lawful treachery, he gets greener and greener, and can only shake his head when asked a question by reason of his rapidly gathering tears ; and he turns round, as if thirsting for one kind glance — for his companions are so absorbed by their own sorrow that they have no eye for his — and there sits a woman waiting to smile upon him, as women ever wait when all the rest of the world desert us. This is the only incident, the witnesses go on, the magistrate listens, there is dead silence below the dock, and you might fancy that mirth and hopefulness were banished from the world, were it not that to the right of us, at a garret window overlooking the court, sit two young women laughing at the whole proceeding, and even mimicing the officers of justice. A day or two after I go down to another police-court, and find a large crowd about the door waiting for a "most interesting case." It appears that in Bethnal-green, that hotbed of every sort of crime that springs from drink and misery, a man has just murdered his wife, and he is to be brought to court this morning for his first examination. The report of this crime has brought out a good many people interested in wife-beating eases, and most of the female idlers are relating their dismal experiences to one another. I pass into the court, and obtain a seat there. There is nothing done yet — only a policeman, a reporter, and the usher" are present — and I am left to look at the dreary Law Almanac, the only piece of printed paper on the wall. Presently there is a buzzing noise outside, and in another minute or two the court has become full, the magistrate is in his place, the clerk below him, and the prisoner — guarded by four policemen — in the dock, here made of iron, the space for the public being railed in with the same metal, like a large cage. This prisoner will well bear describing as repulsive ; he is a large, heavy, bloated man, with puffy cheeks, that look as if they had been fattened on gin, and now that the " Dutch courage" which comes from drink has left him, through his enforced abstinence in the police-cell, he seems wretched enough. His face has certainly a dogged expression, but the hand with which he clutches his billycock hat trembles in a way that tells a tale. One gentleman takes a seat at the solicitor's table, and announces that he appears for the prisoner; and proceedings are about to begin, when another gentleman, quite out of breath, hurries into the court with the same announcement. " How's this ?" says thefirst gentleman, looking very uncomfortable, "I thought that I" , but the second gentleman cooly elbows him aside, takes his place, borrows a bit of paper from the poseeuting solicitor, seizes my blotting-paper without a word of apology, and prepares to write. Meanwhile the first witnes — a sister of the dead womanhas come into court. She is the most .grief-stricken creature I ever saw, and there she stands, helplessly staring around her at magistrate and clerk, but

not at prisoner, as though she were entranced. Two or three times they tell her to walk into the witness-box, and at last she slowly totters there and is, allowed to sit down. The usher then, proceeds to swear her — not, I am pleased to hear, in the slapdash way peculiar to ushers, who take a long breath at beginning and then do the whole oath without a pause between the words — but distinctly and impressively, and the sad tale begins, the witness moaning occasionally in utter weariness, for she has had to tell the same story before the coroner this morning. It runs thus: — The prisoner was always drunk and always beating his wife, who drank too. Latterly he beat her worse than ever. She became very ill ; he still continued to beat her. The witness was called in to see her one morning. She found her lying on the hearth-rug, and covered with old and new bruises. She put her into bed. " And what then ?" says the examining solicitor. " And then she died ;" and so the testimony ends. A few formal questions are put by the opposing solicitor, but he elicits nothing. The next witness is a servant of the prisoner, who is a tripe-dresser by trade. This man, with every desire to make himself intelligible, can hardly do so, for he talks nothing but slang, and he has a constant tendency to run off into narrative aboni maiioro -fcLntf Jkt«-© "M l/oaaillg on the trial, "Henry John So-and So," says the prosecuting solicitor mildly repeating the name which the usher had just bawled. "Yes, sir; that's my name," says the tripe man defiantly, as though his right to it was being called in question. "What did you see the prisoner do, then ?" says the lawyer, after a few more questions. " I see him chuck her down." You saw him throw her down ?" Yes, chuck her down," repeats the witness, as if determined to have his way. " And what happened then? " " Which I chucked him down too." There would be applause at this if it were permitted, and the usher knows there would, and his warning look frightens everybody from beginning. " Did you call anybody in ?" says the solicitor. " Yes, I called a lady in, which she bought three-quarters of a pound of tripe of me the day before about eleven o'clock, when I was standing at the door as it might be." "Never mind about that," interrupts Mr Solicitor ; and then with much bungling, infinite repetitions, and involuntrry contradictions, we get at the rest of the testimony, and learn how the man sleeping overhead heard the noise made by the master as he jumped out of bed to kick the poor creature whom he had already thrown upon the floor, and now, when all was nearly over, and the husband looked at the dying wife, he could think of no other way of making his peace with her than by ordering the man to fetch her half a quartern of gin. This and much more I heard at the police court, but I did not wait for the remand of the prisoner. Outside I found a lrHy inquiring about a summons, and carrying as proof of her right to it a dirty envelope full of grey hair, which had been plucked from her head by another lady with whom she had had a difficulty the day before. I had seen enough to convince me that if a man wants to be cured of optimism, to understand how contemptible human nature can be, how mean in its reverses, how insolent in its triumphs, he cannot bo better than pass a few hours in the police courts.