“He’s me brother, yer honour,” was the reply.
“Release the boy, and go on with the business of the court,” said the judge.
I chanced to be in Belfast at the time of the riots in 1886, and my experience of the incidents of every day and every night led me to believe that British troops have been engaged in some campaigns that were a good deal less risky to war correspondents than the riots were to the local newspaper reporters. Six of them were more or less severely wounded in the course of a week. I found it necessary, more than once, to go through the localities of the disturbances, and I must confess that I was always glad when I found myself out of the line of fire. I am strongly of the opinion that the reporters should have been paid at the ratio of war correspondents at that time. When they engaged themselves they could not have contemplated the possibility of being forced daily for several weeks to stand up before a fusilade of stones weighing a pound or so each, and Martini-Henry bullets, with an occasional iron “nut” thrown in to make up weight, as it were. In the words of the estate agents’ advertisements, there was a great deal of “good mixed shooting” in the streets almost nightly for a month.
Several ludicrous incidents took place while the town was crowded with constabulary who had been brought hastily from the country districts. A reporter told me that he was the witness of an earnest remonstrance on the part of a young policeman with a tram-car driver, whom he advised to take his “waggon” down some of the side streets, in order to escape the angry crowd that had assembled farther up the road. Upon another occasion, a grocer’s shop had been looted by the mob at night, and a man had been fortunate enough to secure a fine ham which he was endeavouring, but with very partial success, to secrete beneath his coat. A whole ham takes a good deal of secreting. The police had orders to clear the street, and they were endeavouring to obey these orders. The man with the ham received a push on his shoulder, and the policeman by whom it was dealt, shouted out in a fine, rich Southern brogue (abhorred in Belfast), “Git along wid ye, now thin, you and yer violin. Is this any toime for ye to be after lookin’ to foind an awjence? Ye’ll get that violin broke, so ye will.”
The man was only too glad to hurry on with his “Strad.” of fifteen pounds’ weight, mild-cured. He did not wait to explain that there is a difference between the viol and “loot.”
One of the country policemen made an arrest of a man whom he saw in the act of throwing a stone, and the next day he gave his evidence at the Police Court very clearly. He had ascertained that the scene of the arrest was York Street, and he said so; but the street is about a mile long, and the magistrate wished to know at what part of it the incident had occurred.
“It was just outside the cimitery, yer wash’p,” replied the man.
“The cemetery?” said the magistrate. “But there’s no cemetery in York Street.”