Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

by Frank Thorpe Porter

The latter portion of my period of magisterial service was very scanty in the production of events worthy of being recorded. On the 12th of March, 1858, the Earl of Eglinton arrived in Dublin to assume the Lord Lieutenancy, as successor to the Earl of Carlisle, who had left on the 8th of that month, in consequence of the dissolution of the Palmerston Ministry. I believe that in the respective selections of Lords Carlisle and Eglinton, the Liberal and Conservative administrations succeeded in giving to the Irish community functionaries deservedly popular with all ranks and conditions. I therefore consider it a subject of great regret that the entry of the latter nobleman, on the day above mentioned, should have been attended with a riot in College Green, in which the police and the students of the University came into collision. The place of the occurrence was not within the limits of the police division to which I was attached, but I happened to be in a house very close to the scene, and had the fullest opportunity of witnessing the entire affair. It commenced by the throwing of squibs and crackers from within the rails in front of the College, which rendered the horses of the mounted police and of a few dragoons very unquiet, and irritated some of the riders. I believe that amongst the persons engaged in annoying the police there were many who were not students. An attempt to repress forcibly the throwing of the squibs and crackers produced the addition of some stones to the missiles, and the affair eventuated in the reading of the Riot Act by Colonel Browne, the Commissioner of Police, and the clearing of the space between the building and the front railing by an attack of the police, in which some severe blows were inflicted. Happily, none of them resulted in fatal or permanent injury. A very lengthened investigation supervened, during which animosity and irritation almost entirely subsided, and were replaced by feelings of mutual kindness. I think that an extract from the proceedings, dated the 10th of April, may afford to my readers a most creditable and praiseworthy manifestation by the police and the students. I may mention that Mr. M'Donogh, Q.C., was engaged in the inquiry on the part of the collegians, when Colonel Browne expressed himself as follows:—

"I am sure Mr. M'Donogh will not be displeased with me if I say that I thought the police, whom I consider a fine body of young men, had been ill-treated for an hour or two by a number of young gentlemen. They were on unpleasant duty, not of their own will; and I was more annoyed to see them so treated than if there had been fifty dozen stones showered on myself. They, too, were irritated at seeing stones thrown at me. All I now wish to say is this, I take the entire responsibility of all that occurred on myself. (Sensation.) I gave the order, and ought to be accountable for everything that happened. It is not because two or three of the men have, and no doubt did, act intemperately, that the others should be punished. The whole concern should be thrown on me; and I hope the collegians will cast it on me, and forgive me. I have a great regard for the collegians; and have always had, and to the last moment of my life I shall remember the kindness with which they have treated me. I thought that a good feeling existed between my men and them, and I think there did. I feel regret for what has occurred—regret that will go down with me to my grave, and I say none but myself alone ought to bear the consequences of what has occurred."

Mr. M'Donogh—"After that expression of regret, Colonel Browne, I, as a gentleman, shall not ask you another question." (Loud expression of approbation from the students and others present.)

Mr. M'Dermot, (Police Magistrate)—"I hope the language of Colonel Browne will be received in the spirit in which it is offered. It is as creditable to him as the ebullition of feeling which we have just heard, and at which I do not wonder, is creditable to the students of Trinity College."

Mr. M'Donogh—"And I am proud and happy that my young friends have shown how they can feel."

The applause was continued for some time longer. Colonel Browne, who seemed to be altogether overcome by emotion, retired amidst warm demonstrations of regard. No ulterior proceedings were adopted, and thus terminated the only collision or misunderstanding between the civil authorities and the students of the University that occurred from the commencement of my magisterial duties in 1841 to the present time. Colonel Browne retired from office in 1858, upon a pension of £800 per annum. He has also the half-pay of a lieutenant-colonel, and is a Companion of the Bath. He is decorated with the Peninsular medal for military service in the army under Wellington in his early Spanish campaigns. He was succeeded as Commissioner of Police by Colonel Lake, whose services have been highly and deservedly appreciated, especially in the defence of Kars, when besieged by the Russians.

Almost immediately after the collision between the police and the collegians, a song was composed, in reference to the affair, by a gentleman who has acquired by it and several other productions of a comic character, a reputation which obtains for him a most enthusiastic reception in the choicest convivial reunions. He introduces the most extravagant fictions, and enunciates them with such apparent seriousness, as suffices completely to dissolve the gravity of his hearers. His song on the "College Row" imputes the "doleful tragedy" to the resentment of the Duchess of Sutherland, Lord Carlisle's sister, consequent on his loss of the Lord Lieutenancy, and the appointment of Lord Eglinton. She communicates by telegrams with the Commissioners of Police, and remits five hundred pounds to supply their force with ardent spirits, closing the communication with an injunction, that in case of any enthusiasm being manifested by the students on the public entry of Eglinton, they should be at once subjected to the most unsparing application of swords, batons, and bayonets. The ballad describes the carnage provoked by the explosion of a few crackers and squibs, as being fully equal to the worst excesses of our Indian sepoys in their mutinous massacres. I have heard it sung in the presence of Colonel Brown and other police functionaries; and from all who heard its fearful but fictitious details, it elicited the utmost merriment. I have been informed that in his subsequent viceroyalty, Lord Carlisle and his Chief Secretary had it frequently sung by the author, who is now connected with the Dublin police in an important professional capacity.

THE COOK STREET PRINTER.

Shortly after the affair between the collegians and the police, a complaint preferred by the Crown solicitor was brought under my personal cognizance, and subsequently became the subject of a lyric production, in which it was almost impossible to determine whether exaggeration or fiction predominated. There was a printer in Cook Street remarkable for bodily deformity and mental acerbity. His trade almost entirely consisted in the publication of ballads, which were bought by itinerant vocalists, who came each evening to replenish their stocks of amatory, political, or comic productions. In proportion to the number of customers who crowded his shop and contended for a speedy supply, the publisher varied and multiplied his maledictions, and most impartially cursed and abused them all alike. His habitual vituperations were disregarded or laughed at, and were generally ascribed to mental infirmity; but he embarked in a speculation which brought him under the serious notice of the authorities as being intolerably offensive. He published an almanac, the marginal notes and memoranda of which were replete with sedition, and in which the public functionaries were grossly stigmatised. It happened that the corporation had effected a contract with the proprietor of a quarry in Wales for the supply of stone of a quality considered best adapted for the repair of the streets of Dublin, and the day on which the contract had been accepted by the civic body was noted in the almanac as the date of an infamous preference of foreign production, and an exclusion of Irish industry and material through corrupt and debasing motives. This statement, however, constituted no portion whatever of the charges preferred before me, which consisted almost entirely of references to former attempts of a rebellious character, with expressions of deep regret for their failure, and hopes that the patriotic energies of the Irish nation would, in the next encounter prove more effective in crushing Saxon despotism than had been the efforts of the glorious Sarsfield, the noble Lord Edward, the martyred Emmett, or the more recent champions of Hibernian freedom—O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchell. Colonel Browne was not even aware of the proceedings before me having been instituted; and Mr. Whiteside, the present Chief Justice, was never concerned in any case before me during my tenure of magisterial office. The printer of the almanac appeared on a summons to show cause why informations should not be taken against him, and returned for trial on numerous and deliberate seditious statements published by him. The late Mr. John Adye Curran appeared as his counsel, and proposed to give sureties for his client's appearance to meet the charges preferred, if the Crown solicitor deemed it necessary to continue the prosecution, offering also to give up all copies of the almanac remaining in stock, and to abandon its future publication. The Crown solicitor, Mr. Kemmis, at once acceded to this proposal, and, on the sureties having been produced, I allowed the accused party to leave, and entered in the summons-book that the complaint was "dismissed without prejudice." I did not manifest the slightest sympathy for the delinquent, but informed him that he owed his escape from severe punishment entirely to the lenity of the Crown solicitor, and not to any disinclination on my part to have him made seriously and severely responsible for his misconduct. In a few days he became the subject of a lyric panegyric, in which his prosecution was attributed to Colonel Browne and Mr. Whiteside, and the stoppage of the proceedings was ascribed to me and to Mr. Curran; the course adopted by the latter gentleman being the only thread of truth interwoven in a web of fiction, and sung to an old Irish air, which I am not able to particularise. It has been entitled by an additional fiction—