Punch (24.1853)

130

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

A MIS REPORTED MAGISTRATE.

Government must take a leaf out of Louis Napoleon's
book. Our contemporaries ought not to be allowed to
publish false intelligence. A monstrous fabrication has
lately been committed by the British Press. The daily
and weekly newspapers have concurred in recording a
case that (never) occurred at the Middlesex Sessions.
According to these deceitful prints, an unfortunate person,
one Mary Hill, aged twenty-two, was convicted of
stealing a watch. Me. Serjeant Adams, the Assistant-
Judge, asked if anything was known of her previous
character. The police officer concerned in the case said
that she was the associate of reputed thieves and bad
characters, and that she was with a regular gang when
taken into custody :—

" The Assistant-Judge then S"ntenced her to seven years' transporta-
tion. The prisoner, who had gone down on her knees imploring mercy,
on hearing this rose up, and in a towering rage screamed out to the
policeman, ' You — pig, oh you —pig ! You — perjured thief !'

" The Assistant-judge: The sentence upon you now is that you be
transported for ten years."

Such a statement as this *s obviously calculated to
occasion remarks which must be unpleasant to Mr. Ser-
jeant Adams. Any one, believing it, would naturally be
inclined to say that the learned Serjeant, not content
with administering the law, made it; improvised it on
the bench; that he had discovered a new crime, that of
abusing a policeman, and instituted a new penalty for it,
three years' transportation; devising sentence for the emer-
gency : prescribing punishment pro re natd, as the doctors
say. ' At this rate, Mr. Serjeant Adams would be not
only Judge and Jury, but also Queen, Lords, and
Commons, in his own person- and therefore much too
many for the office which he so discreetly fills.

Our contemporaries really ought to be officially " warned"
to take care how they report the sayings and doings of our
Judges, and particularly those of Mr. Serjeant Adams ;
and if they neglect that warning, their types ought to be
seized and their offices shut up, and their proprietors,
printers, publisher, editor, contributors, and reporters, as
many of them as can be caught, sent to Newgate, in order
SERVANTGALISM ■ ^ia* iuay^earn to promulgate no more news calculated

' to place a Minos in the light of a Midas.

OR, WHAT'S to become of the missuses ?—No. 4.

Servant Qal. {who has quarrelled with her bread-and-butter). "If tou please,
Ma'am, I find there's Cold Meat for dinner in the kitchen. Did you expect
me to eat it ]"

Lady. " Of course I expect you to eat it, and an excellent dinner, too !"
Servant. "Oh, then, if you please 'm, I should like to Leave this day
month." [Exit Idiot. \ strated—it is the hifluence of the Sovereign.

The Old House and the New.

Before the Reform Bill the influence of the Aristocracy
in boroughs was the thing complained of. Now—as the
revelations before the Election Committees have demon-

A LIGHT DAY'S WORK FOR A HEAVY DAY'S WAGES.

Here is the most liberal advertisement we ever saw. It lately
appeared in the Law Times .-

T AW.—Salary £1 ] Os. per week. The Advertiser will pay 30s. per week
i-1 each to any number of Writers capable of copying per day Eighteen Sheets, or
Seventy Folios on Parchment, or an equal quantity of other work. Office hours from
eL;ht to eight, half an hour to Dinner, quarter of an hour to Tea.

Apply by post only, to Chichester Rents, Chancery Lane, London.

To copy eighteen sheets or seventy folios on parchment per day
would be a difficult job—a stiff bit of writing—for only two or
three people. But the generous author of the above advertisement,
aware of the Herculean nature of the task which he wants to get done,
announces that he is ready to give 30s. a week to each of any number
of persons who will undertake to accomplish it. Of course, this
Handsome and confiding proposal must be met in a corresponding
spirit; understood to mean by " any number of writers," any reason-
able multitude: and not taken as an invitation to all the scribes in
Town to rush to Chichester Rents in the expectation of getting
employment, every one of them, at £1 10s. a week each for copying
eighteen sheets between them. That the Office hours are from eight
to eight, is obviously an intimation that when each writer has finished
the little work that he individually has got to do, there will be more
lor him to turn his hand to if inclined, so as to enable him to earn a
considerable addition to his weekly 30s. The short time allowed for
meals must be owing to the necessity, from the pressure of business
lor constant attendance in the office; for the intervals for eating
cannot have been measured according to the amount of food which the
lightly worked writers might be expected to be capable of affording
out or their immense salaries.

THE NEW TALE OE A TUB.

That crazy old steamship, the Australian (by the bye she has been
scarcely launched a twelvemonth), has again, we see, been forced to put
back into Plymouth. After all the "repairs" she was reported to
have undergone, she left the Sound, it seems, in anything but sound
condition: for within a very few hours she was as full of leaks as a
Welshman's market garden, and it was only by incessant working at
the pumps that the passengers contrived to keep their heads above
water. They will now, we suppose, go to work at the Directors, and
their experience at the Pumps will here obviously assist them.

As for the ship, after breaking down so often, she should now be
broken up—unless, indeed, her owners were to sell her to the
Admiralty. Her performances are already almost worthy of "the
Service," and by the usual course of management she might soon, we
think, be made as useless as almost any other of our Government
steamers. Indeed we should not wonder if, in time, she might be
brought to rival even the Megcera.

Prospect for Paternal Rulers.

Despotism is said to have hindered the development of the resources
of Italy; nevertheless, it is probable that the Emperor of Austria,
and Bomb a, and the Pope, will very soon find that, under their
paternal systems of government, she has become a rising nation.

Theatrical Cribbage —It has been goodnaturedly said, that Mr
Sands must eventually win the game, for every time lie plays he scores
" one for his nob and two for his heels."