"Prisoners Only"
"Prisoners Only."
A door in Bow Street Police Station opens on a small tiled room in which each morning all the prisoners on their way to the celebrated dock gather to await the call.
It is an exclusive apartment. Visitors are not allowed. Unless you break a shop window, punch a policeman in the stomach, or become publicly full of spirit you will never see it. It was due only to the courtesy of Bow Street that I was allowed in for a moment yesterday like an ordinary prisoner. Here I found a strange assortment of human beings gathered together by Fate—or should I say alcohol?—for Monday morning's crime originates in a bottle!
The room is tiled and looks like an ordinary waiting-room till a policeman opens the door that leads out to a courtyard and then you see a second door composed of stout iron bars. About twenty or thirty men were sitting round the room talking to the policemen who had arrested them. Most of them were weary, some of those who had been let out on bail looked smart, a few still retained traces of their fateful debauch, and all had lost the divine afflatus which had flung them into a pair of blue arms. The atmosphere was rather like that of a headmaster's study in which is gathered a group of bad boys waiting for the cane.
A stoical old man dozed peacefully in a corner. So might dear old Falstaff have bared his grey hairs in a moment of regrettable trial. A navvy with the head of a Roman emperor sat huddled in his clay-soiled clothes, silent, grim. He reminded me of Trajan's bust in the British Museum. He should have been dressed in a toga instead of sitting in Bow Street with a fine of five shillings hanging over him! A young man with a mild face sat near him, the kind of young man who keeps rabbits in a back yard. I wondered what odd circumstance had brought him in conflict with law and order. Among a group of seedy and tattered people I noticed a smart man wearing spats and holding a neat umbrella.
It was the strangest roomful you can imagine.
* * *
How wonderfully British! I do not imagine that the police and prisoners of any other nation meet together as captor and captive in the same cheery, almost social atmosphere.
In Berlin I imagine it must be exceedingly unpleasant to be a prisoner, and in Paris, also, it cannot be exactly jolly. In Cologne I once saw a German policeman draw his sword and charge a little boy who had left a banana skin on a patch of neat, cultured turf; and in Paris once I saw a gendarme do unnecessarily unfriendly things to his captive. But our Roberts are not like this, and when they are face to face with their prey in the station they seem almost apologetic about it:
"You broke the law and I did my duty, and that's that. Let's forget it!"
That is the atmosphere in the "Prisoners Only" room. Thumbs in belts, the policemen talked with their prisoners about racing, the weather, and, as far as I could gather, anything but drink and brawls. What instinctive good breeding! Here and there a prisoner who took his captivity lightly laughed and joked with the man who brought him there.
"What'll I get?" one prisoner asked.
"Oh, about twenty years without option!" replied the constable. Then a man with a notebook became busy with the day's evil-doers, a name was called, and as the first prisoner pulled himself together and strode out dockwards, a flutter of interest went round the waiting-room, and the old man awakened with a start and asked where he was.
* * *
Under the Royal Arms sat Sir Chartres Biron, white-haired and exceedingly wise to human nature. He was dealing with a pathetic collection of women prisoners who had been waiting in a "Prisoners Only" room of their own. Constable after constable described scenes of revelry in which it was alleged that certain inadequate Bacchantes in black bonnets had been urged to deeds of violence.
Some women pleaded guilty and got it all over quickly. Others clasped and unclasped their hands—appealing, thin, worn hands grimed with work—and tried to impress Sir Chartres that "two glasses of port" had been the cause of all their trouble. They were fined and went their way, some with an assumption of belated dignity, others jauntily. One old lady was so pleased with her sentence that she danced down the corridor between two lines of policemen promising never to look upon the wine again.
* * *
Then one by one my friends of the waiting-room came up for justice: drunk and disorderly, drunk in charge of a motor-car, creating a disturbance, using insulting language. They all looked sorry for themselves and exceedingly foolish. Five deaf and dumb youths had, it appeared, pushed a policeman off the pavement. The mother of one of them interpreted the case, talked to them in baby language, asked them if they had really "banged" the policeman. They nodded their heads and tried to speak, but only vague, tortured sounds, heart-rending to hear, came from their mouths. They filed out, bound over.
Then Cæsar strode into the dock, said he had been drunk, accepted his fine without a trace of emotion, and walked from the dock with an invisible cohort before him and—a visible bottle sticking out of his coat-tails!
* * *
When he has done his day's work does Sir Chartres Biron feel more like laughing or crying, I wonder?