Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

by Frank Thorpe Porter

A CHARGE OF FELONY.

I was frequently invited to the hospitable and joyous table of my cousin, the late Anthony Hawkins of Leopardstown, Stillorgan. On one occasion he entertained about a score of guests, of whom I was unquestionably the senior. Choice viands and generous wines sustained and stimulated the utmost hilarity; and when some of the company expressed apprehensions that further indulgence might bring them under the cognizance of the police, the host remarked that they would have a friend in court, for it could not be supposed that the jolly old magistrate would lean heavily in the morning on those who had been his boon companions on the preceding evening, and that each of them would get off for a song, which he would suggest to be given in advance. Two young fellows, reminded me that they lived on Merchants' Quay, and as that was in my division, they entertained no fears. The company separated in time to avail themselves of the latest train to Dublin, and the two sparks travelled in the same carriage with me. Neither of them was in the slightest degree "the worse for liquor;" and when we parted at Harcourt Street Station we shook hands, and one said, "Good night, your worship, I hope you'll not be hard on us to-morrow." Next morning I was on duty at Exchange Court, and when the charge sheets from Chancery Lane were laid before me, I was astonished beyond description to find my companions who had bespoken my leniency brought forward on an accusation of Felony. A constable stated that he had seen one of the prisoners get on the shoulders of the other, and pull down a large gilt salmon, which formed the sign over the door of a fishing-tackle establishment on Essex Quay. On taking down the salmon, they were crossing over to the quay wall when he intercepted them, and with the aid of another policeman and a civilian, he captured and brought them to the station-house. Another witness proved that the prisoners stopped at the door over which the sign was suspended, and that one of them said, "Let us give the poor salmon a swim." This evidence induced me to believe that the transaction was not a deliberate theft, but a wanton, mischievous freak. The proprietor of the shop expressed the same opinion, and urged a summary adjudication. They offered to pay for the sign, as it had been broken by an accidental fall; and the court was convulsed with laughter when the proprietor observed that the salmon had been taken "out of the lawful season." The spree cost the two delinquents the moderate sum of six pounds. The subsequent banterings which they had to endure amongst their festive associates completely deterred them from any further manifestation of fishing propensities.

POOR PUSS! WHO SHOT HER?

A friend to whose inspection I submitted the preceding pages suggested that as they detailed many mistakes and peccadillos of others, a reader might consider it an agreeable variety if I inserted a couple of errors peculiarly mine own. In accordance with his opinion I have to mention that shortly after I assumed magisterial duties at Kingstown, the proprietor of an extensive hotel in the immediate vicinity of the police-court received several letters threatening speedy and fatal violence to him and his family, unless certain demands on the part of his waiters, postillions, and carters, were complied with. He was justly incensed and alarmed at such threats, and submitted the obnoxious documents to the consideration of the authorities and to the detective agencies of the police force. His garden wall was close to the yard of the police-court, between which and the sea no building at that time intervened. It happened that an official, connected with the fiscal business of the county of Meath, had embezzled a considerable sum and attempted to abscond, but was captured on shipboard at Kingstown, and committed for further examination. The delinquent had provided himself with a most ample outfit for emigration and residence abroad; and the articles found in his possession were deposited in a room adjoining the police-court and overlooking the hotel garden. Amongst them was a rifled air-gun of great power, and after the business of the court had been disposed of, I was, along with the chief clerk, Mr. Lees, indulging my curiosity by pumping and discharging the weapon. There was a bag of small bullets, of which we directed two or three at the wall of the yard. An unfortunate cat chanced to make her appearance in the hotel garden at a distance of fifty or sixty yards, and exclaiming that "I would give puss a start," I sent a bullet in her direction, without the slightest expectation that the shot would be fatal. The cat fell dead on the garden walk; we closed the window, locked up the gun and bullets, and departed. Next morning, I was about to commence the charge-sheets, when the proprietor of the hotel applied most earnestly for a private interview. He was greatly agitated, and declared that he felt convinced of his life being in danger from those who threatened to assassinate him. "Your worship," he added, "they are manifestly bent on mischief, for our poor cat was found dead in the garden, and on examination she was found to have been shot. The fellow who killed her, did so only to show that I might expect the same treatment if an opportunity offered for shooting me." The poor man little knew that the weapon which inflicted the injury was in the apartment where he was expressing his direful apprehensions, and that he was seeking the sympathies and protection of him who had done the mischief. I took means, through a particular channel, to disabuse his mind of the feeling that the cat's fate was intended to precede a similar termination to his own existence.

BAXTER AND BARNES.

The carriage complaints were usually disposed of at the Head Police Office in a court upon the ground floor. The light was derived from windows opening on a yard, and they were so near to the magisterial bench as to enable its occupant frequently to hear observations and conversations of an extraordinary nature. It was my custom to remain after the carriage cases were heard, and when the criminal charges or summonses were, in the upper court, brought before some of my colleagues. I was thus enabled, in comparative quietude, to prepare reports on memorials referred by the executive or revenue authorities, or perhaps, to enjoy an occasional leisure hour over a magazine or newspaper. When the upper court was crowded, persons would betake themselves to the yard and frequently engage in conversation close to the windows, which in warm weather were generally open; but there was no indication to those outside of the presence inside of a listener to their communications. In the summer of 1854, I was sitting alone, and reading the latest news from the Crimea, when two women took their stand outside the open window, and one of them proceeded to impart her sorrows to her sympathizing friend. At the time to which I refer, recruiting was very rife in Dublin, and it was not uncommon for us to attest one hundred persons in a week. The utmost vigilance was exercised to prevent or detect desertion, and in the apprehension of deserters, a police sergeant named Barnes had particularly exerted himself, and had consequently received rewards to a considerable amount. This was the reason why his name was introduced into the narrative which I happened to overhear, and which I inscribed on a blank leaf of an interleaved statute. There is not one original idea of mine in the production, and I should not submit it to my readers if I did not consider it essential to the appreciation of the criticism subsequently pronounced by Mr. Barnes.

Musha! Katey Doyle, do you know what?

Shure Jem has took the shilling,

And off he's gone to Aldershot,

It's there he'll get the drilling.