Many a jovial hour have I passed in St. Andrews—I don’t mean the Scotch College so called, but the Dublin watch-house of pleasant memory; and I have also occasionally favoured with a visit other establishments of the same kind, where belated gentlemen were sure to find the door open without having the trouble of knocking twice:—but who, except “upon compulsion,” would enter a modern bastile? The place is in everything an abomination, and so republican wherewithal in its regulations, as to be fitted only for the reception of the canaille. There, captains and cabmen are placed upon a par. “Look to him, jailer,” is the only order that is attended to; and whether you belong to swells West-end, or the swell-mob, matters not a brass button. The thing’s similar all through, and you undergo the same process of purification. You are cooped up all night, thermometer in summer 110, in winter down to zero—and bundled before the Beak in the morning all “unkempt” and with “marvellous foul linen.” Of course, you are not flat enough to give your real name. If you are a tradesman, why you wish to “come it genteel,” and pass for the time being as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzsnooks. If, on the contrary, you happen to be a “top-sawyer,” you descend from your “high estate,” and—though “Baron or Squire, or Knight of the Shire,”—adopt “for the nonce,” the simpler appellation of Smith, Brown, or Robinson. Well, in due course, you are favoured with a hearing—the charges are proven, and the Worthy Magistrate—he’s always so termed in the Sunday papers—runs you up a bill as glibly as the waitress of an eating-house. Imprimis, you are scored down five shillings for being drunk—forty ditto, for assault and battery—as much more for jingling some Doctor’s bell—and the tale ends in your five-pound flimsy having got a regular sickener. You fork the money out, and prepare directly to make your exit; but hold, you are not safe yet—wait for the parting admonition. Beaky having first premised that your name is neither Smith, Brown, nor Robinson, is sorry to assure you that he considers you a disgrace to your family and order—and, after a flattering panegyric upon his own nice sense of what is due to public justice, he concludes with a positive assurance, that if you ever renew your acquaintance with him, so far from standing “betwixt the wind and your nobility,” you shall have the benefit of a month’s exercise on the tread-mill, “and no mistake.” And now comes Mr. Ferdinand Fitzsnooks. He stands forward—but how different is his bearing from that of the pseudo Mr. Smith, who has just jumped into a cab in waiting, with coronets emblazoned on the panels. He does not listen to the charges with inattention; nor does he venture to meet the magistrate’s eye, as it occasionally is turned to that part of the court where he stands. He has been silly and noisy and riotous—but he has done no mischief. He is found guilty, and fined three pounds. The pale girl behind him—she with the infant in her arms—begins to sob, while Ferdinand appeals to the bench, and on the plea of a first offence, solicits a remission of the penalty. But Rhadamanthus is not sterner than his judge. Pshaw! worthy sir, let him go! he is but a drudge in a lawyer’s office—his master is strict—he will lose his situation, and what will that pale girl and her infant do? No; the upright magistrate is obdurate—and the slang of what “justice requires” is his only answer to the prisoner’s appeal. The jailer, a filthy, dogged, drunken, red-nosed brute, taps him on the shoulder and inquires, in pickpocket parlance, whether he can “stump the rowdy?” A melancholy shake of the head tells his inability, and he is committed for—what?—want of money—to the House of Correction for a fortnight. Worthy sir—pause before you send that silly young man to prison. Look at his wife—she is barely eighteen—young, pretty, and inexperienced. She has not a relative in London,—and steeped in poverty and surrounded with temptations, will you rob her for fourteen days of her protector, because he cannot command three sovereigns? True, you fined Mr. Smith two pounds more, and also talked something about the tread-mill—but, for your very life, you would not have ventured to commit him. I could show you Mr. Smith’s name in the peerage—ay, and high up, too; and he could have as easily given you a cheque upon his bankers for five thousand, as he handed you the penalty of five pounds. And this is law!—England, England! you call yourself the land of freedom!
But what has all this to do with your story? Reader,—I beg your pardon, and thank you for the hint.
The hatch of St. Andrew’s watch-house—a sort of outer-door, only breast-high, but furnished with a row of iron spikes which would bid defiance to Harlequin himself—was closed—and, a very unusual occurrence at that late hour, all within the house of durance was quiet. Peter Bradley, the captain of the hold, was seated on a wooden bench in his accustomed corner, with a little table before him, on which was awfully displayed the fatal book in which delinquencies were chronicled, flanked by a pewter vessel full charged with Sweetman’s XXX. Three guardians of the night, who formed the jail-guard, sate round the fire “drawing” a comfortable dudheine, and casting, from time to time, a longing eye at the battered quart deposited beside the elbow of the commander. There were other occupants—for occasionally melancholy faces peeped through a grated wicket in the door, which separated the dungeon-keep from the guard-room,—and from their place of captivity looked anxiously at the great man seated in the corner, whose nod could loose or bind. Indeed the task of watch and ward was easy, for the prisoners were comprised in one solitary group, namely—a drunken sailor, a fiddler with one leg, and “a maid who loved the moon,” brought there for fading through a shop-window and making smithereens of divers panes of glass, for which, as, from a lack of the king’s currency, they could make no proper compensation, they were safely incarcerated.
Peter Bradley nibbed his pen, laid down his spectacles, gave a heavy sigh, and then, as if to kill care, took a long and steady pull from the pewter. “Business,” said the commander, addressing himself to his myrmidons at the fire, “business is gone to the dogs.‘Tis twelve o’clock!” he continued, as the wooden time-piece above his head announced the “witching hour.”
“Twelve o’clock! and not a sowl picked up but devils who couldn’t muster, if it saved them from the gallows, turnpike-money for a walking-stick. Out with them varmint in the black-hole, Barney Casey; what use in shuttin’ up craters without a scultogue, * and lumbrin the place wid people who can’t stand a pint of beer.”
* “Seultogue, is a monetary phrase, used generally in the
kingdom of Connaught. Its metallic value not being clearly
ascertained, I have doubts whether it would be a legal
tender.”—Extract from an opinion of Mr. Richard Dunn, the
eminent barrister.
Barney, obedient to the orders of his chief, made a general jail delivery. The nymph as she glided out, acknowledged the favour conferred by dropping a graceful curtsey as she passed “the seat of justice;” the fiddler as he hopped across the floor, dutifully ducked his head, and bade a “good night to his Honour;” but the sailor, reckless of the merciful interposition which had restored him to liberty, and freed him from all liability incurred for broken glass, consigned all and every in the watch-house to a climate much hotter than the West Indies, for which ungrateful and irreligious proceeding, he received a momentum in the door-way which enabled him, “in double quick,” to reach the opposite curb-stone. The hatch was thereupon safely locked, and Mr. Bradley again addressed his brother officials:—
“There’s more beside that’s vexin’ me, boys. I hear they are goin’ to overhawl us—and sorra a turn, good or bad, that happens through the night, but must be entered in black and white. Feaks! I thought myself yesterday, that something was in the wind, for the magistrates were as short with me as cat’s-hair; and that divil, Artur French, was nearly hobblin’ me fairly. ‘Who’s this Artur French?’ says Mr. Jones.
“‘Ah, then,’ says I, ‘it’s himself that’s a raal gintleman. Sure, wasn’t his father Ulick French, of French Hall, and his mother’ ——— ———— ‘Don’t bother me about his mother,’ says he, mad as a hatter; ‘Who is he? what is he?’—‘A collegian, plase ye’r honour.’—‘Ay, and a promising disciple he is, if I may judge,’ says he, ‘by your watch-book. Why, he’s wid ye, Mr. Bradley, three times a week. The next time he pays you a visit, I beg you’ll be good enough to introduce him to me.’”
“Troth; and ye won’t,” observed one of the guard of honour at the fire-place, as he leisurely recharged his dudheine; “he’ll blarney ye, and git away wid the ould story of both ye’r mothers being Roscommon women.”