Known to the Police

by Thomas Holmes

There are no "women" to-day. Times have improved so greatly that every woman has become "a lady." The term "woman" is one of reproach, and must only be used as indicative of scorn or to impute immorality. Magistrates have tried hard to preserve the good old word and give it a proper place, but in vain. "Another woman" always means something very bad indeed; she is one that must be spoken of with bated breath. Even the word "female" carries with it an implication of non-respectability.

Indeed, so far have we progressed in this direction, and so far does the politeness of the Force extend, that when giving evidence against a woman of the worst possible character an officer will refer to her as "the lady," not as the prisoner. Sometimes, as I have already hinted, the magistrate intervenes at this point, and tries to preserve some of the last shreds of respectability that still attach to the once-honoured word.

Here again one might speculate as to what has produced this change, and ask whether the development of obscene language has anything to do with the abandonment of the words "woman" and "female." Personally, I am inclined to believe that it has. "What did he say?" peremptorily asked an irate magistrate of a young and modest constable. "Your Worship, the words were so bad that I don't like to repeat them." "Write them down, then." The officer did so. "Well, they are pretty bad, but you will soon get used to them. They don't shock me, for I hear them all the day, and every day." The magistrate was correct, and, more the pity, his words are true. The old oaths were far less disgusting and far less demoralizing. The invocation of the Deity, either for confirmation of speech or for a curse upon others, argued some belief in God, which belief has probably suffered decay even among the coarse and ignorant. Still, if police-court habitués and their friends continue to embellish their speech with obscenity, then their last state will be worse than their first. Likely enough, this fashion in speech has much to do with the substitution of the word "lady" and the abandonment of the word "woman." It may be, after all, only a clumsy attempt to speak courteously, without casting any imputation on the moral character of the person referred to. That, however, is the only redeeming feature I can find in the matter, which is altogether too bad for words. I only refer to the subject because I wish to be a faithful witness, and these changes cannot be ignored, for they are full of grave portent.

Profoundly I hope this fashion will change, and if appeal were of any use, I would honestly and earnestly appeal to all my poor and working-class friends to set themselves against this vile method of expression, and to encourage a higher standard of thought and speech.

But I must now give a little consideration to some legal changes that have taken place, from which much was expected, and from which much has followed. Whether the results have been exactly what were expected, and whether the good has been as large as we looked for, are moot points. It is, of course, true of social problems, and peculiarly true of humanity itself, that evil defeated in one direction is certain to manifest itself in another, so that standing still in social life, or in individual life, must and does mean retrogression, when the old evils assert themselves differently, but more speciously guised. Briefly, the new Acts that have had most effect in London police-courts are the First Offenders Act, the Married Women's Protection Act (1905), and some clauses in the Licensing Act of 1902.

The former Act has undoubtedly kept thousands of young people from prison, for which everyone ought to be supremely thankful. It was, perhaps, impossible for us to have a reform of this magnitude without some evil attaching to it, for we have not as yet discovered an unmixed good. This beneficent Act has been much talked of and widely advertised. The public generally have been enraptured with it, and magistrates have not been slow to avail themselves of its merciful provisions, though generally exercising a wise discretion as to their application.

But human nature is a strange mixture, for while excessive punishment hardens and demoralizes a wrong-doer, leniency often confirms him. It is, and must always be, a serious matter to interpose between a wilful wrong-doer and the punishment of his deeds; but the punishment must be just and sensible, or worse evils will follow. The utmost that can be urged against this well-known Act is that it has not impressed on the delinquent youth the heinousness of his wrong-doing, and this is the case. True, he has been in the hands of the police, and he has been admonished by the magistrate; he has also been in the gaoler's office, and bound in recognizance to be of good behaviour. But this is all, for nothing else has happened to him. He has not been made to pay back the money stolen, neither has he been compelled to make any reparation to those he has injured. The law, then, has considered his offence but slight, and his dishonesty but a trivial matter. In his heart he knows that, though he has purged his offence as far as the law is concerned, he has not absolved his own conscience by any attempt to put the matter right with the person he has wronged; consequently, he is quite right in arguing that the law has condoned his offence. Frequently, then, he goes from the court a rogue at heart. Hundreds of times I have tried to persuade young persons, who have been charged with dishonesty and dealt with as first offenders, of the duty and necessity of paying back the money dishonestly obtained, but I never succeeded. The law had done with them; nothing else mattered. The wrong to the individual and to their own conscience was of no consequence.

Human nature being, then, so constructed, it cannot be a matter for surprise that the First Offenders Act failed in conveying to young persons who had fastened around themselves the deadly grip of dishonesty that the law considered dishonesty a most serious matter. Many of the young offenders could not realize this, for, to use their own expression, "They got jolly well out of it." But such results might have been foreseen, and ought to have been foreseen.