Punch: Punch (84.1883)

April 28, 1883.1 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

‘201

AT BOW STREET.

(Among the Dynamitists, April 19th.)

I paid the Cabman his exact fare, and he drove off quite cheer-
fully. I knew that for once I had had the best of him, that the
locality and the local colouring,—chiefly blue, with silver buttons
and stripes,—would be too much for him,
for it was Bow Street, and he had de-
posited me at the Police-Court door,
within view of the Police, within imme-
diate hearing of a Magistrate. On such
an occasion I boldly paid that Cabman his
exact fare, with such a sense of confidence
as I have never previously experienced.
But this feeling was to be of brief dura-
tion. Once within the precincts of the
Court, though armed with a card to the
Chief Magistrate, I became suspicious
of everybody ; but, strange to say, chiefly of myself. I presented my
card to the Policeman at the door. Only one Policeman visible,
and yet there was a crowd of ragamuffins outside, and the Dyna-
mitists were within ! I knew that extra precautions had been taken,
yet every moment I expected to hear an explosion. The Constable
did not eye me suspiciously, he did not ask me my name, age,
station, when last vaccinated, why I wanted to come in on that par-
ticular day, and. so forth, but merely let me pass in, and told me to
go to the third room on the left. Just as if this were an ordinary
day, and as if no extra-ordinary scrutiny was requisite 1

Then it occurred to me that everyone about, whether hustling or
apparently doing nothing in a listless way, in the passages, was a
Detective in disguise. I began to suspect myself of treason, of com-
plicity in something or other, I didn’t know what; I felt a dread
of myself, and somehow began to keep an eye on myself, and watch
my own movements closely. If anyone in plain clothes had suddenly
walked up and arrested me, I should not have been in the least
astonished, but should have said, “ Certainly—1 don’t know what
it’s about—but probably you’re right—I admit I oughtn’t to be
here—I acknowledge I have no business here, I dare say I am in
disguise—take me away, search me”—and if they had found nitro-
glycerine, done up as pills, in one pocket, and a revolver disguised
as an anti-stylograph pen in another, I simply should not have
been surprised. In such a place, it is exactly what I should have
expected. Outside, I should have protested; inside, it was quite a
different matter. The atmosphere of the place did it; it was my
first visit to the chief Police-Court. I was in a sort of dream, and
seemed to be Criminal, Magistrate, Counsel for Prosecution, Solicitor
for the Defence, and Prisoner at the Bar (guilty, of course) all in
one. If I had been left long alone in that passage, I should have
given myself up in sheer despair, and requested anybody to make
some sort of charge against me and have done with it.

Nervously I entered room Number Three, which at once suggested
to me that I was only separated by a couple of walls from “ Number
One.” Here I had expected to see the Gaoler of the Jack Sheppard
era, illustrated by George Cruikshank, with jangling keys at his
waist (for 1 had got the scene mixed up with Newgate of the past),
and several beetle-browed, lynx-eyed Inspectors in full uniform,
armed, standing with folded arms, watching every new-comer.

To my intense surprise, there was no one there except a small boy
—a very small boy in knickerbockers—who was apparently doing
sums on a slate. Was this a Detective’s boy in disguise F Was he
a young Detective in training ? Was he put there to engage the
unwary in conversation, and then run out suddenly and denounce
him ? I viewed him with distrust. If he had looked up from his
employment, or amusement, I was prepared to have given him a civil
nod by way of salutation, in a mean spirit (I admit it) of currying
favour with even the smallest representative of the Executive. But,
like the “ Good St. Anthony ” in the old song, he “ never took his
eyes off the old black book,”—I mean, in this instance, the slate.

Keeping my glance fixed sideways on the boy, I sat down and
began my game, too, of pretending to be interested in the adver-
tisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, which was lying on the table.
I had scarcely settled myself into the assumption of an easy attitude
when a pleasant-looking person (Usher, I believe) came in, took my
card, examined it carefully, then looked at me as though failing to
associate me with some description he had had of the individual to
whom the card really belonged. (I shouldn’t have been in the least
angry, indeed I should have taken it as quite a matter of course, had
he handed the card back, shaken his head knowingly, and observed,
“ It won’t do—this has been tried on before here, you know—you
ain’t the person you represent yourself to be ”—and I should have
acquiesced, bowed politely, and gone away, only to wake up when
once more in the open air, and alive to the fact of my own
identity. After remarking that the case would not begm for
another quarter-of-an-hour or so, he retired with my card, returning

in a few minutes to inform me that he would show me into a seat
as soon as I liked to go in. In the meantime the calculating boy had
disappeared—a mysterious bell had sounded somewhere, and. the
boy had vanished.

As I went down the passage I caught a glimpse of him laughing
and talking to a black-bearded Inspector, with an intelligence and a
free-and-easy manner far in advance of his years. I have no shadow
of doubt about it,—that boy is the future English Lecocq, and be is
here in training for the Detective Department. If I had been taken
up and charged there on any count, no matter what, the evidence of
that boy, I am convinced, would have been damning.

I was, as the papers say, “ accommodated with a seat on the
Bench.” I was painfully wide awake to everything that went on,
but for all that I was in a dream. I seemed to recognise all the
prisoners: I seemed to be familiar with every face in Court, no
matter where he was, or who he might be, or what he was there for.

People annoyed me by sneezing and coughing at the most interest-
ing moments. A Police Court should be the quietest place possible,
so that the attention of all may not he distracted by any “ irrele-
vant issues.” But to begin with, there are as many doors in the
Bow Street Court as there are in a bustling scene in a Criterion
Farce, where everybody hides all at once, and each person comes out
at the wrong moment. All the doors being perpetually opened and
Bhut—until even the patient Sir James Ingham could, stand it no
longer, and had, at all events, one of them locked,—constituted of
themselves so many irrelevant and distracting issues. Then the
whispering ! Heavens ! it seemed as if everyone had come in here
for the express purpose of whispering to everybody else,—not neces-
sarily about the case, but about anything. The sneezing, too,
was most distressing, causing the Usher to rise up, and call out
“ Silence! ” in his loudest voice, while looking daggers in the
direction of the sneezes, which seemed to come from somebody
in the crowd near the door in the furthest corner. The sneezer
—a most irritating person, who broke out spasmodically at quite
irregular intervals—remained invisible; and, in spite of the pre-
sence in Court of a select body of Detectives, the sneezer remained
undetected. The only man in the Court who had reduced
sneezing, coughing, and the use of the pocket-handkerchief to a
perfect art was the Usher, who, when afflicted in this manner,
suddenly disappeared below the edge of his box, buried his face in
his handkerchief, as if overcome by a burst of irrepressible emotion,
and, so, to speak, kept his spasm to himself without annoying any-
one, recovering so quickly as to be up again with the rapidity of a
spring-toy figure, fresh as ever, a trifle red in the face, perhaps,
after the struggle, but ready to attend to the Chief Clerk, and to
shout “ Silence ! ” once more to the invisible sneezer, to whom he had
just been setting so excellent an example.

Of the Preliminary Examination itself, of the links in the chain of
evidence slowly and surely forged by Mr. Poland in his cool, unim-
passioned manner, of Sir James Ingham, ready to listen to and to
answer courteously and wisely any objection, of the marvellous pre-
cision of the Clerk of the Court in taking down, and, more wonderful
still, subsequently deciphering his own handwriting when reading
over the evidence to a Witness, of the fainting of the Witness, of the
demeanour of the Prisoners, of the faces of the Prisoners themselves
individually, of their Counsel, of all this I can only say that it was
a very vivid night-mareish dream from which I awoke once, partially,
for luncheon, and to which I went back immediately afterwards, and
took up the dream where it had left off.

When it was all over for the day, and I was quite awake again, it
was with the greatest difficulty that I could tear myself away from
Bow Street. I tried to shake it off—I went for a walk—but, as in
Shelley’s poem, there seemed to be “a spirit in my feet,” which
insisted on taking me back again—no matter in what direction I had
started, or how far I had got on the road away from the place—to
Bow Street.

I walked about with assumed boldness, with a sort of vague feel-
ing that I was either a Criminal escaping from justice, or a Detective
in disguise. On the whole I think the latter sensation predominated.
In everyone I met I fancied I recognised either a Prisoner or a
Policeman. The lineaments of three of the Prisoners 1 couldn’t get
out of my head. They seemed to be photographed on my eyes, and
were perpetually mixing themselves up with the features of friends
and acquaintances. Wherever I went I was a haunted man, and
saw Prisoners everywhere. They seemed to have got into tbe Club ;
they lurked about the street; I came upon them unexpectedly round
corners. The Police appeared to regard me slily, as much as to
say, “All right, I know him: he’s just come from Bow Street
Pass, friend, and all’s well.”

With the hurry of dressing for dinner, and after the first glass
of Champagne—tne dream had gone. But I can recall it all,—and
shan’t in a hurry forget my first Dynamite Day at Bow Street Police
Court.

The Original Cab Radius.—A Spoke of Phoebus’s Chariot-wheel.