Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

by Frank Thorpe Porter

Perhaps another case would disclose the appalling fact, that Denis Reilly was "pisened by a young doctor that we got to sponge his nose with some Prooshun stuff, and it kilt him." Such calamities have been averted from the Foleys, Caseys, Dempseys, and Reillys of the present time, and the magistrates have been relieved from having to listen to such murderous details from the lips of the gentler sex by the magical effect of canine registration.

WHIPPING YOUNG THIEVES.

In a few years after my appointment, a statute passed authorising the infliction of corporal punishment on boys convicted of thieving. The Act empowered us to order the offender to be flogged, if we were of opinion that his age did not exceed fourteen years. There was a lad named Lowry, who was an inveterate thief, and who received five or six castigations by my directions. The instrument employed was a birch rod, with which a constable gave the delinquent six heavy lashes. As soon as Lowry appeared before me, he seemed to disregard the details of the charge preferred. There were no protestations of innocence, no admissions of guilt; but the moment he entered, he commenced the loud and continued assertion, "I'm beyant fourteen, I'm beyant fourteen." On each occasion I differed from the opinion so forcibly enunciated, and ordered the application of the birchen correction. Finally, he withdrew from my quarter, and restricted his delinquencies to the B and C divisions. I was informed that he expressed his disgust at my decisions by saying—"If I was to live until I got as grey as the owld rascal himself, he'd still insist that I was not beyant fourteen."

One day there were a number of packages lying in a heap on the floor of a shop in Parliament Street, and rather near the entrance. A label upon each stated the contents to be three pounds of tea, of the finest quality, offered by the proprietor of "The Golden Teapot" to his respected customers, at the unprecedented low price of seven shillings. The parcels were covered with bright tin-foil, and had on each end a large seal in red wax. A detective passing at the opposite side of the street observed a boy stoop forward, just inside the door, and possess himself of one of the packages of "splendid tea." The young thief was seized at once, and brought before me, in about five minutes after he had stolen the article. I ordered him to be taken down stairs, to have six lashes administered, and to be discharged. I then directed the office messenger to run over to the establishment, and tell them to send some person to claim the property. On his return he said that the people were making fun of him, and laughing at the result of the young thief's attempt. I then raised one of the seals slightly with an office knife, and found that the parcel was a dummy, made up for show, and that the contents were sawdust. I told the messenger, when I had closed the seal with another touch of wax, to take it down and give it to the delinquent on his departure, as the owners had not claimed the property. The whipping was just over, and the sufferer issued forth, having under his arm the cause of his punishment, and for which it was to become his consolation. I was standing at the window, and just as he passed the external rails, he stopped suddenly, and proceeded to examine the package. Instantly he tore the cover, and flung up the contents. The pain of the flogging seemed to return with augmented force, and he screamed forth the most vituperative comments on my decision. "It wasn't tay at all. I was beat for sawdust, and there's no law for that. I'll get a letter wrote to the Lord Leftennant, you owld rascal, and he'll larn you the differ between sawdust and tay." Inspector O'Connor told me that the case was very fully discussed amongst the young thieves, and that the general conclusion was, "not to be too ready to steal parcels out of shops, without knowing what was inside of them."

GARDEN ROBBERS.

My immediate predecessors generally resided in Dublin, and they were considered by the proprietors of orchards and gardens in the rural portion of the district, as too lenient to depredators of fruit and vegetables. At the time of my appointment, there was no safety for such crops unless they were closely watched, and during the night, the discharge of firearms, to deter marauders, was almost continuous in Dolphin's Barn, Kilmainham, Harold's Cross, and Crumlin. Any cessation of strict vigilance was certain to produce consequences which might be fairly termed calamitous to those whose fruits and vegetables were depended on for the maintenance of their families. There were many persons who followed garden robbing as their avocation, and the injuries inflicted by them frequently extended to the succeeding year. If they feared interruption, they would tear or cut the branches of the larger fruits, and entire gooseberry and currant bushes would be abstracted, to be picked at leisure. Small fines or short imprisonments had totally failed to check such offences. At the time to which I refer, I resided at Roundtown, and although I had gardens and a fine vinery there, they were never spoliated, so that in adopting towards fruit-stealers stronger measures than they had previously experienced, I was not actuated by any personal feeling. However, I had the birch very liberally used amongst the boys, and the more mature offenders were, when convicted by me, deprived of any opportunity for continuing their depredations on the growing or ripening productions of the season. Personal motives were, nevertheless, sometimes ascribed to me, even by those who were highly pleased with my decisions. A very extensive orchard and garden at Harold's Cross were entered by three habitual thieves, and they were captured whilst hastily filling two sacks with the choicest apples, pears, apricots, &c. They had taken the sacks from premises adjoining, and I convicted them of two distinct offences. Each was sent for four months to Kilmainham, with hard labour. Mr. Cox was engaged in drawing the informations and committals, when the proprietor exclaimed, in a tone of the highest gratification, "Oh! Mr. Cox, is it not a blessing from God that we have now got a magistrate who has a garden of his own?"

Two musicians belonging to a regimental band were observed one night to cross a wall at Inchicore, into a garden abounding with every description of choice fruit. The police were quietly apprised of the offence, and the delinquents were apprehended coming out of the premises precisely at the place where they had entered. They were both Germans. Their pockets were crammed, and each had a handkerchief containing as much as could be bundled in it. They had not taken a peach, apricot, or plum; even the pears and apples were disregarded; and the produce of their daring raid consisted entirely of onions. I committed them for a week, and they were dismissed from the service by the regimental authorities.

REFORMATORIES.

Previous to my retirement from magisterial duty, the offence of fruit-stealing had greatly diminished, and I believe that it does not now attain one-tenth of its former frequency. When the magistrates were empowered to send juvenile thieves to reformatories, corporal punishment ceased to be administered. I preferred having a boy flogged and discharged to sending him to prison, to be kept, at the public expense, in baneful associations. As soon, however, as a reformatory became available, I transmitted the juvenile offenders, after a few days' imprisonment, to the care and instruction which, in all those institutions, have produced most beneficial results. My first consignment to Glencree Reformatory was made under circumstances rather extraordinary.

I was invited by my kind and valued friend, the late Mr. George Evans, of Portrane, to spend a week at his hospitable mansion. Arrangements were made by me with my colleagues to admit of my absence for that time, and that I should take the duty on the Monday of the succeeding week. Accordingly, I came to Dublin from Donabate by an early train, and commenced the custody cases about ten o'clock, a.m. A constable prosecuted a lad whom he had met on Rathmines Road about four o'clock on that morning, carrying a coarse bath-sheet, in which two check shirts, three pairs of cotton socks, and a washing waistcoat were wrapped. The prisoner was charged with having those articles in his possession, they being "reasonably suspected of having been stolen or unlawfully obtained." I called on the prisoner to account to my satisfaction how he came by them. He declined any explanation, and produced a laugh in court by saying "that I would know time enough." I ordered him to be imprisoned for a week, and then to be transmitted to Glencree for three years. On my return home to Roundtown in the evening, I was told that my bath-sheet, nightshirts, &c., had been stolen on the previous night from a bleaching-line in the back yard, over the wall of which my first envoy to Glencree had managed to clamber. The articles did not remain long in the police store.