“Did you start up and scream?”
“Well, so would you.”
“But hadn’t you told him your thigh was numb and had no feeling?”
“What’s the good of telling ’im onything?” said the witness, pointing contemptuously at Collier. “That’s where doctor made ’is mistake. I told ’im I were numb i’ front, and what does ’e do but go and stick a pin into my backside. ’E’s no doctor.”
When the case went to the medical referee Collier’s views were upheld, though I always used to warn him against the danger of sticking pins into the wrong part of the human joint.
I could fill many columns with pleasant memories of our works and days at Quay Street. The Registrar and his clerks and the high bailiff and myself were a very happy family, and despite our somewhat gloomy surroundings we managed to put a good deal of cheeriness and heartiness into our work. It is not for me to say how far we succeeded, but this I may say for the Court, and I chronicle it with pride, that I believe it was the only Court in England that had a cricket team with a card of fixtures, and regularly played a high bailiff and a judge.
And, on the whole, I think the staff, from lowest to highest, worked hard to make an efficient machine of it and certainly the affairs of the poorer people were thoughtfully administered, and the Registrar and chief clerks did a lot of work in looking after the estates of the widows and orphans in cases under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Personally I used to see each of the widows once a year at least, and by keeping in touch with the family doings we were often able to give a child an appropriate start in life which he or she would never have had if the money had merely been invested and automatically paid over. Not every experiment was a success, of course, but the experience satisfied me that the death payments at least were a very great boon to the working class, enabling a widow to save her home and the home life for her children in a way she could not have done before the passing of the Act.
No one dislikes grandmotherly interference more than Manchester folk, unless it be Salford folk, but in dealing with large and unaccustomed sums of money it is a good thing that the widows and orphans should have the co-operation of the Court. Naturally many of these poor widows have short views, and cannot see far enough ahead to the days when what to them is indeed a bottomless purse shall be found to be empty. It is very difficult to prevent them rushing into businesses for which they are ill-fitted. They are surrounded by agents and friends, who have some unsuccessful business—generally a fried-fish shop—to sell at a high price, and both buyer and seller are
indignant with the hard-hearted and unbelieving judge when he wants to see books and invoices, and to have proof of the weekly takings before he will allow the widow to invest her money. To the widowed soul, fried fish is synonymous with fortune; to me it always smells of fraud.
I cannot say that all our battles with ignorance and shiftlessness were victories. We got badly hit on occasion. I remember in my early days a young widow, who had re-married, coming with her husband, a handsome young fellow, with letters from relations from America, and a scheme of going out there, where work was plentiful. It seemed an excellent plan, and after some discussion all the figures having been put before us by the young man in a businesslike manner, a big sum was handed out for the equipment and travelling expenses of the family, and the remainder was to be sent over when they arrived. Months passed and we heard no more of them, and at length one day the clerk told me the woman had turned up in the office, with a black eye and a new baby. They had not been nearer to America than Blackpool, and the man had never done a stroke of work until the money was spent. That was one of our failures. Since then we have worked through an emigration society or taken the tickets ourselves. It has been notable that on several occasions when I have told the applicants that we would take their tickets and make all the arrangements they strongly persuaded me not to go to the trouble, and seemed quite pained that they should be the cause of so