Messrs. Theodore Planque (a very tall gentleman), Hugh Jackson (a very short one), and Robert Thomas Huff (neither tall nor short, but, as it were, between both), and a bamboo cane, almost as long and large as a little scaffold-pole, were brought before the magistrates from the subterraneous saloons of St. Martin's watch-house, charged with dreadful doings among the Charleys.[13]
It appeared by the statements pro and con., that the prisoners are very respectable people, and that on Friday night they went to sup with an unquestionably highly respectable tradesman in Long-acre. This supper was given on the occasion of his brother, who is a captain in the navy, having returned from a long and perilous voyage; and, of course, on such an extraordinary occasion, they drank deeper than ordinary. It is really surprising what a quantity of thirsty sentiments an occasion of this kind gives rise to. At last the tall gentleman—or, as one of the watchmen called him, "the long one"—was found stretched out at his length on the pavement before the door, completely done up. It was a charley who found him, and a very honest charley too, as times go; but whilst he was endeavouring to gather him up, the short gentleman came behind and floored poor charley himself, with the great bamboo, above mentioned. He was soon up again, however—though, as he said, he never was floored by such a queer thing in his life before, nor half so clanely. Once on his legs again, round went his rattle, and in half-a-dozen seconds up came half-a-dozen of his brethren. The short gentleman with his bamboo, seeing this, laid about him lustily—ribs, canisters,[14] or lanterns, it was all one to him. But "who can control his fate?" or what can one single arm do against a dozen? He was bundled up, or enveloped as it were, in a posse of charleys, all in full tog, enough to smother up a Hercules; and after some little ineffectual sprunting, he, and "the long one," and the "middle-sized one," and the great bamboo, were all safely lodged in the watch-house; where the long one, having shaken off his drunken slumbers, committed divers outrageous assaults upon the night constable and his men, as they were putting them down into the cellars.
In their defence before the magistrate, they admitted the drunkenness, but denied the violence; and begged his worship to believe that it was "entirely a case of simple intoxication."
BUNDLING UP.