PICTURES AND PROBLEMS
FROM
LONDON POLICE COURTS
BY
THOMAS HOLMES
POPULAR EDITION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1902
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE |
| I. | 1 |
| II. | 15 |
| III. | 23 |
| IV. | 39 |
| V. | 60 |
| VI. | 80 |
| VII. | 94 |
| VIII. | 115 |
| IX. | 132 |
| X. | 161 |
| XI. | 180 |
| XII. | 188 |
| XIII. | 213 |
PREFACE
In the various chapters that make up this volume I have made no attempt to deal with the whole of the humanity that finds its way into London Police Courts: I have but selected a few individuals who strikingly illustrate human or social problems. Each of those individuals was well known to me, and many of them have cost me anxious thought and prolonged care. It is in the sincere hope that the knowledge I have slowly gained of these individuals, of their characteristics and environments, may lead more influential persons to inquiry and study that I have written of them.
I am also exceedingly glad to have an opportunity of expressing publicly the debt of gratitude I owe to many; for surely no one has received greater kindness than myself. First, to the various magistrates under whom I have been privileged to work I tender my sincere and warmest thanks for the consideration and kindness which they, without exception, have shown to me. To the chief clerks and police-court officials also my thanks are due for their unvarying courtesy and kindness. To the police generally I owe many thanks for the confidence they have so liberally accorded me.
To the representatives of the Press in the North London Police Court I owe much for the publicity they have freely given to the many cases in which I have been interested, and with which I should have been unable to deal without their aid.
To the unknown friends at home and abroad who have cheered me with kind letters, and sometimes with liberal assistance, I tender also my grateful thanks. But to one ladyMrs. Perry Herrickmore than thanks are due. Without her kind help much that I have done I could not have done, and much that I have learned I could not have learned. For a long period of years she has supported me in my work, and in her the poor and the unfortunate, the demented and the outcast, have had a sympathizing and liberal friend.
To Mrs. Perry Herrick, then, I beg respectfully to dedicate this imperfect account of my work among the poor and the outcasts of London.
Thomas Holmes.
12, Bedford Road,
Tottenham.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
It would ill become me to allow a new edition of this book to go forth without expressing my grateful thanks to the public for the kind manner in which the book has been received.
Public and Press seem to have vied with each other in showing kindness to me and gentleness to the book, while to its faults they have been more than a little blind. If I judge rightly, this is not because the book has of itself any excellence, but because of the particular work in which I am engageda work that appeals to the oneness of the human heart. I have received many letters filled through and through with sympathy; and while I rejoice to know that the book has been of interest, I rejoice still more to know and feel that it has in some degree helped to draw the human family nearer together. This was my hope and my aim; that it may still continue to do so is my heartfelt desire.
I have been compelled to add a new chapter, for so many have written to me on the subject with which the chapter deals that no choice was left to me. By the kindness of the Council of the London Police Court Mission of the Church of England Temperance Society I am henceforward to devote a portion of my time to special work among the poorest of all Londons toilersthe home workers. For them I have hopes and aims. If I can bring some rest and joy into their lives, if in some small degree I can forward the day when a much better state of things shall prevail, then indeed my joy will be great.
Thomas Holmes.
12, Bedford Road, Tottenham ,
March, 1902.
PICTURES AND PROBLEMS FROM LONDON POLICE COURTS
CHAPTER I
HOW I BECAME A POLICE COURT MISSIONARY
You have missed your vocation in life; you ought to have been an actor, or a writer for the Daily Telegraph, so I was assured by an eminent professor of phrenology. The professor had expressed a wish to meet all the London police court missionaries, with a view of ascertaining their fitness or unfitness for the position they hold. Mine was the last head he measured. He had passed all my colleagues, and had found no unfitness among them. Not being sure of my fitness, I waited till last; but when all had been declared good men and true, I submitted myself to his tape and measurements with some confidence. I wished afterwards that I had taken the precedence to which my age and length of service entitled me.
Now, I knew very well that as a missionary I had often made a fool of myself. I knew much better than the professor my unfitness for the work, for, gracious me! it has knocked me out of time too often for me not to have realized it. Still, I was a bit nettled when I found that I was the only one in a wrong place. I had not even the comfort of a partner in distress; but I recovered from the shock, and comforted myself with the thought that they must be a splendid lot of men when I was the worst among them.
Yet it gave me pause. What if he were right? Fifteen years I had been blundering among poor humanity, hoping and fearing, racking my brains, never knowing when to give in, though often lifeless from the expenditure of nervous energy. Fifteen years I had been realizing that I could only move others to the extent I felt for them, and that there is no healing without loss of virtue. What if the professor were right? It troubled me, for I thought of the poor, the unfortunate, the downcast, and the heterogeneous mass of humanity one meets with in our London police courts. Some other fellows might have done them so much more good, might have comforted more broken hearts, and might have rescued in a wholesale fashion what time I had been peddling and meddling with solitary individuals.
Still, I felt I had done my best, and I knew that there were eyes that brightened when I looked into them; I knew that I had made some little ones happy, that I had strengthened some despairing wretches, and had helped in some degree to lift the great burden of sorrow that presses upon the human heart; and besides, was there not the delicate compliment conveyed that I might have been an Irving or a Toole, orecstatic thought!a writer for the Daily Telegraph? I began to think the professor was right, and though I had never been in a theatre till I had passed my fortieth birthday, I felt I had dramatic instincts and a relish for comedy.
My mind went back forty-five years, and I remembered that from a poor, starved, and small Sunday-school library I had got Defoes History of the Plague. How it thrilled and absorbed me! Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! ever rang in my ears, so with a rattle (lads made them in those days) in a little old Staffordshire town I ran about the streets shouting out: Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! I remembered, too, that I emulated the poor half-witted drunken piper in the dead-cart, and blew unearthly noises on a tin whistle, innocently asking: I aint dead, am I?
