I remember once a fairly well-to-do working man—he was the doorkeeper of a public institution in Manchester—had an action brought against him by a street tout because his dog, an Airedale terrier, had bitten the prowling fellow as he was coming in at the back door. The man was badly mauled, and the dog having been proved to have bitten several other people of a like nature, I had, much to my discontent, to give judgment for the plaintiff.
About a year afterwards—having forgotten all about the matter—I was visiting the institution where the defendant was employed, when, as the gentleman I wished to see was engaged, the doorkeeper asked me to step into his lodge and sit down and wait.
“I’ve often wanted to see you, Mr. Porry,” he began, “about that there dorg case.”
“What case was that?” I asked.
“That case where you fined me five pounds over an Airedale what tried to gobble up a tally-man.”
“I remember,” I said doubtfully.
“Well,” he continued, “you seemed to sympathise with me like, but you found against me. You see I had bought that dorg for the very purpose of keeping those fellows off the premises whilst I’m away. So I said if the law don’t let ’im bite ’em, what’s the use of the dorg? and what I wanted to arsk you was, may my dorg bite ’em within reason or did I ’ave to pay five pounds ’cause ’e mauled ’im too much?”
I explained the law in relation to dogs and tally-men as well as I could, and my friend was good enough to say when I had finished:
“Well, I quite see you ’ad to make me pay as the law stands, but it don’t seem to me just. If you can’t ’ave a dorg, how can you keep them fellows out of the house?”
That was more than I could answer. We parted friends—and there was, I think, a mutual feeling between us that the law of dogs in relation to tally-men was not all it should be.