“Two young women as visited the missis during ’er confinement coom one neet as we were at tea. They takes the baby down to parish church and they brings it back ‘Ferleatta,’ an’ I wants to know what are my rights.”
I counselled consultations of a kindly nature with the young ladies, foreseeing litigation of a complicated and painful ecclesiastical nature.
Another poor fellow told me his adventures when I was sitting as Recorder in the Minshull Street Courts, and he was summoned as a witness. “First I went down to the County Court an’ they tells me to coom up here, an’ I gets into the Police Court and an officer tells me to cross the bridge, an’ I lost my way an’ got into the Coroner’s Court, and they sent me out o’ that and unfortunately I got among the solicitors, and they told me to go into the hall and wait till my name wor called—which it never wor called.”
I forgave him all the trouble he had caused for sake of the word “unfortunately.”
I am very sorry for a man who gets to the wrong court; the summons is generally clear enough for the ordinary citizen, but to the less literate of the community it seems often a difficult problem.
If one had the faculty of painting genre pictures of “Our Street” in Hulme or Ancoats the County
Court is the place to find the incidents. A good lady, a little, short, fussy woman, was describing to me how she got a plumber’s job done in her house. I could see the picture.
“Landlord tells me ’e couldn’t get Thomas to do it, ‘and,’ says ’e, ‘if you can I give you luck.’ I went to Thomas’s missus, an’ I says, ‘Where is ’e?’ She says to me, ‘If you don’t find ’im in the beer’ouse you won’t find ’im at all.’ With that I went to the beer’ouse an’ I got ’im out, and I takes ’im up to the ’ouse. ’E wasn’t for coming, but I sauced ’im all the way down Pimblott Street, an’ ’e kept telling me whot ’e’d do if I was ’is wife.”
Here is another recollection of a graphic story told by a woman witness. If unreliable at times, the evidence of women is generally full of good advocacy. This good wife gave me a very dramatic account of her husband’s dealing with a Jew jeweller. The tallyman tempts women with drapery and men with jewellery. The wife turned up to defend the case, very wisely leaving her husband at home. The tallyman produced an order form with a cross on it alleged to be made by the absent husband. I asked the woman if her husband was a scholar. “No,” she said, “David wasn’t brought up to scholarship; he was brought up to hard work.” Then she told her story. “Yon man,” she said, pointing to the plaintiff, “his name is Isaacs, and he’s by way of being a Scotchman, and I’ve had a shawl off him. Many a time he’s tried to sell David a watch, and I told him I wouldn’t have it. Well, he comes in Saturday
afternoon for a talk with a box of joollery. I remember the day ’cause he tripped over our door-mat and nearly spilt hisself, and he says to me, ‘I’ll have to be selling you a new door-mat, missus,’ and I says to him, ‘Our door-mat’s plenty good enough for the folks that comes across it.’ With that he laughed and gave me a shilling to get a quart at M‘Ginnis’s vaults, and when I comes back they was handling the joollery, and knowing how soft my husband is about joollery I made him put it back in the box afore I gave him the beer, and I can swear there was no watch there then. We all talked a bit and supped the ale, and then he and David went out. It was very late when David came home, and he came home drunk with a cigar in his mouth, but he never had no watch on him ’cause I put him to bed myself.”