At Bow Street Police Court.
"Take down our sentence as we speak it."—Iolanthe.
For a period of twenty years I had the distinguished honour of being decidedly "well known to the police." When I between seventeen and eighteen years of age, and still at the North London Collegiate School, I received instructions from my father, who was just starting for Liverpool, that as Mr. Courtenay was ill I must go and "do" Bow Street. Mr. John Kelly Courtenay used to do all the reporting at Bow Street Police Court during my father's absence on his lecturing tours. I had learned shorthand (the Lewisian system, I believe it was called) some two or three years previously.
Off I marched to Bow Street with the greatest sang-froid to report a case, at which in after years I should certainly have shied. It was a most important bank fraud, and meant enormous complications in figures. Mr. Burnaby, the chief clerk, was kind enough to let me correct my figures from the depositions which had been taken by him; Sir Thomas Henry repeated to me the gist of his remarks on remanding the case, and the result was I turned out a report on manifold for all the evening and morning papers, and the usual special report for The Times—in this instance over a column long—with which my father was delighted.
I received a most encouraging letter from him after a few days' interval. The interval was merely to give time for the arrival of any complaint from the papers. Editors are not in the habit of sending letters of congratulation, only of complaint. No complaint arrived, however, and my only disappointment was the complete absence of important and interesting cases.
At last another opportunity arrived which enabled me to distinguish myself. I wish it had not. A poor woman was charged with purloining a shirt which was hanging outside a cheap hosier's in Clare Market somewhere. It was a windy day, and the end of the shirt was apparently flapping round the corner of the shop; so the prisoner, unable to resist temptation, filched it after the manner of a clown in a pantomime. Inspired by the punning humour of Tom Hood, I parodied one of his poems for the heading of my police report. The heading was "The Tale of a Shirt." This had a most undesired effect. The serious papers wrote to complain of the flippancy of the title; the refined papers of its vulgarity; while the vulgar papers inserted the title, which they emphasised by printing the word "tale" in italic.
This caused sarcastic paragraphs to appear in other papers directed against my father, who, of course, was the responsible reporter, and who, consequently, wrote me a second letter anent my talents for reporting which differed widely from the first.
Fortunately for all parties, Mr. Courtenay got well and returned to his post, and in 1866 it was decided I should thoroughly learn the business from him, so as to have some remunerative occupation while studying, and eventually following, the profession of the bar. Circumstances, however, ultimately prevented me from doing either. There are several, if not many, barrister-reporters in London; I know my friend Mr. E. T. Besley was one, and so were Mr. Finlayson and Mr. Corrie Grant, and I could mention three or four others.
My parent, with an eye to business, pointed out the absolute advantage that would arise from my being able to support myself by the press during the years I should, in all probability, be waiting for the arrival of a brief. His suggestion was adopted, and for the next three years I stuck entirely to the work, assisting Mr. Courtenay, who, in his turn, often assisted me in revising little occasional articles or verses which I wrote for humorous periodicals, &c., some of which were inserted to my great delight. He used to write prologues for amateur performances in which I took part, and at which he was always present. He was very kind to me, and I became very much attached to him, feeling great grief when he died in October, 1869.
The whole of the work then fell upon my shoulders during the absence of Grossmith, senior; and very hard work it was sometimes. When there was no work to do,—that is, nothing of consequence to report,—then the life of a reporter resembled that of a superior loafer—at least, that was my feeling. A reporter is not considered a sufficiently important person to be allotted a room for his own use. Sir Thomas Henry promised that the gentlemen of the press should have a room to themselves in the new Court, but he was unable to carry his promise out, as he died soon afterwards.
Therefore, when nothing was going on, the reporter became a kind of Micawber hanging about waiting for something to turn up. I used to sit in Court and write the opening chapters of three-volume novels which were never published, or extra verses to comic songs which were never sung.
When tired of this I used to loiter about the passages, or sit in the usher's room in company with solicitors, solicitors' clerks, witnesses with and without babies, detectives, defendants, and equally interesting people. Sometimes I meandered into the gaoler's room and gazed at the police and the prisoners. Sometimes I would go out to lunch and take three or four hours over it, and on returning find a most important murder case had been disposed of in my absence.
On one occasion I returned and found Mr. John Brown giving evidence in a charge against a lad for an attempt upon the life of our Most Gracious Majesty. However, I have managed to write a case just as well when I have not been present as when I have. The Court was a miserable one for sound, but the clerk was close to the witnesses and could hear them; so that his notes, which with courtesy I was permitted to copy, were, at all events, most reliable.
It must not be inferred from my absence that I was not interested in the work. On the contrary, there was so much variety in the important cases that one could not be otherwise than interested: but one never knew when they were coming on. But people of all classes would come day after day, and sit out (especially on a Monday morning) dozens of simple charges of drunk and disorderly, or of fighting and disturbing. This I could not quite understand. The days on which Mr. Flowers sat were certainly the most amusing, and consequently selected by the visitors. Mr. Irving, Mr. Toole, and the late George Belmore have often in bygone days sat by my side watching the more important cases.
Sometimes the monotony of the proceedings would be varied by my seeing one of my own acquaintances in the dock. Then an awkward question of etiquette arose. The dock joined the reporters' box. Now ought I to have shaken hands with him? As a matter of fact I never did, but I do not see why I should not have done so. However, I thought it best to follow the footsteps of the magistrates—they did not shake hands with their friends when charged.
I have heard of an instance of a metropolitan police magistrate who, upon recognising an old friend in dock, ordered him immediately to be accommodated with a seat on the bench and declined to hear the charge of embezzlement that was to have been preferred against him. Soon he was no more a magistrate, and subsequently was "no more" in the term's other sense.
The most disagreeable case of recognising a friend in the dock that I ever experienced was some years after, when I was combining the professions of journalist and entertainer. I accepted an engagement at Margate to give a couple of sketches nightly at the Hall-by-the-Sea, which was then under the management of the late E. P. Hingston, who had been formerly the manager of Artemus Ward's lecture at the Egyptian Hall in 1866. [By-the-by, the only other humorist who took part in the concert was J. Hatton, the composer and author of "To Anthea," who used to take his seat at the piano and sing his song, "Old Simon the Cellarer" and "The Merry Little Fat Grey Man," his resemblance to the latter being somewhat pronounced. He used to reside at Margate, and was an immense favourite.]
One evening I was introduced to a young gentleman of good manners and appearance, who begged I would sup with him. I did. We afterwards became rather intimate and I lunched with him. Like most small stars, I was surrounded by a lot of satellites. They were all eventually introduced to my new acquaintance, who seemed to have plenty of time and money to spare, and who was the essence of hospitality. As my engagement was terminating he gave us all a parting banquet at one of the principal hotels. Some old friend of mine had advised me particularly not to go. What reason he gave I do not remember, but I fancy it was that the young fellow had not paid some bill. However, I did not go, but heard there was much to eat, more to drink, and any amount of conviviality.
It was one of those parties where everybody talked, nobody listened, nobody cared, and every man's health was proposed by somebody else: the health of the host, I believe, was proposed about half a dozen times.
I returned to Bow Street, and a few days after this poor fellow, who turned out to be a clerk in a warehouse in Southampton Street, Strand, at about 35s. a week, was placed in the dock on a charge of robbing his employer. He was committed for trial and ultimately convicted; but in consequence of his previous good character and the kindness of his employer in not wishing to press the charge, the sentence was one of months when it might have been years.
I spent part of the spare time, in my earlier days at Bow Street, in editing a paper called Ourselves at Home. It was published by a printer for me, and consisted of eight pages, a little larger than the Bristol Library Series, with very little matter—much spacing out and very big type. The cost was ten shillings a week, for which we had fifty or a hundred copies.
Two of my friends contributed each two shillings and sixpence a week towards the expense, with the privilege of inserting articles. The contribution of their specie was more valuable than that of their brains; but as their contributions were not so bad as mine, no complaint was made. The periodical terminated after thirteen numbers, because our friends could not be induced to read it, nor buy it. It died a natural death on March 8th, 1867.
At this time the chief magistrate was Sir Thomas Henry, the other two being the kind and genial Mr. Flowers, who died only a few years ago, and Mr. James Vaughan, who still sits in the new Court. The old Court was adjacent to the Floral Hall, Covent Garden.
Having sat in that Court so many years, it seemed odd to me to pay it a visit under such different circumstances. Last summer (1887) I was advised to go to Mr. Stinchcombe, the theatrical costumier, on some little matter. I entered the front door of the old familiar Police Court. Instead of the idle, motley crowd one was accustomed to see blocking up the passages, there were rows of shelves with carefully-packed costumes.
In the Court, the dock, attorneys' table, barristers' bench, my old reporters' box, every partition in fact, had been swept away to make room for shelves of costumes, armour, and tons of theatrical paraphernalia. Out of curiosity I asked to see the cells and was politely shown them. There they were as of yore—the iron doors, with the little window or grating; but the doors were not locked, barred, and bolted—they were wide open, and the prison cells were occupied with sock and buskin.
Sir Thomas Henry was the main instrument in getting erected the spacious new Court opposite, in which he was never destined to sit. It was his ambition. Frequently had he said on the bench that the old court was a disgrace. I could not help thinking what Sir Thomas's opinion of the old Court would have been if he had seen it as I had just now. I could not help thinking the faithful old Court had followed my example, and gone in for the stage.
Now it is razed to the ground, and there is not a brick left of the old place which, in my time, saw the preliminary examinations of the Flowery Land Pirates; Muller for the murder of Mr. Briggs; Barrett and others for blowing up Clerkenwell Prison; Burke and Casey; Dr. Hessell, who was acquitted on the charge known as the Great Coram Street murder, and on whose behalf Mr. Douglas Straight............