Or with me take a bed, Says the bells of Hampstead.
But in close London dwellins Says the bells of St. Helen's.
How do they draw breath? Says the bells of St. Faith.
Bless'd if I know. Says the Great Bell of Bow.
PENAL DANCING FOR THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN.
In a quadrille—composed, we think, by the ingenious M. Jullien—a lively and diverting effect is produced by the cracking of a whip, which forms an accompaniment of the tune which the company are supposed to dance to.
William Curtis, a tailor, according to the Police Reports, was brought the other day before the Lord Mayor, at the Mansion House, for having cruelly beaten and attempted to murder his wife; who stated on evidence—which was corroborated by a policeman—that he ripped up her stays with a penknife, took the bone out of them, and beat her with the bone till it broke in three pieces; then beat her with her hair-brush, dragged her out of bed, tried to strangle her, and beat her again with a large square-cut stick—declaring that if she dared to call out for assistance he would dance upon her body.
The quadrille above-mentioned supplies a hint in regard to Mr. Curtis's notion of a dance. Mr. William Curtis is an uneducated man. He has not been taught how to behave himself to the gentler sex. He wants a little instruction in deportment, to which dancing should be added, as his ideas concerning that accomplishment are evidently barbarous. Mr. Curtis should have been sent to Mr. Calcraft's Dancing Academy, and there have been taught to dance with fettered heels to the smack of the lash resounding on his own bare back.
The Lord Mayor consigned Mr. Curtis to Holloway Prison and hard labour for six months, to give him, as his Lordship said, an opportunity for reflection and repentance. But the dancing lessons—two, or even three, perhaps, would not have been too many—were wanting to render the reflection profitable and the repentance sincere. They would have given him an opportunity for reflecting on the nature of stripes and blows, and for repenting of having inflicted such injuries on a woman.