ODD OFFENCES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3175, 1 September 1881, Page 4

ODD OFFENCES.

(From Chambers' Journal)

Lovers of liberty as they were, our forefathers had little patience with propounders of novel notions. When Henry Crab , suddenly a .'jg to the fact that success in business was not to be attained without much lying and deceit, forswore his calling of haberdasher of hats, and betook himself to playing the hermit and practising vegetarianism, he was "~:; ; in the stocks, ousted from one refuge after another, and finally lodged in prison," to prevent others imitating hi 3 evil example. ' Sir George Carteret,' says Pepys, ' showed me a gentleman coming by in his coach who hath been sent for up out of Lincolnshire. I think he says ho is a justice of the peace ther:—that the Council have laid by the heels here, and here lies in a messenger's hands, for saying that a man and his wife are but one person, and so ought to pay but twelvepence for both to the Poll Bill, by which others were led to do the like; and so here he lip* prisoner.' The justice, however, received gentler treatment than was accorded twenty years earlier to a woman of Henley-on-Thames ; who, venturing to speak her min-1 respecting the taxation imposed by Parliament, was bound fast, and cruelly, to a tree one market day, and a placard tied on her back setting forth the enormity of which she had been guilty. In all times and in every land, an overfree tongue has proved troublesome to its possessor In Plantagenet times one man wa< sent to prison for twelve months for offering to call the chief magistrate of London a scoundrel, and fight him too, if anyone would pay him for his pains. Another was pilloried for saying the Mayor had been sent l;o the Tower. And Roger Jorold, for foolishly boasting that if he caught that dignitary outside the city bounds he would ensure his never getting within them again, had to present the insulted Mayor with a hundred tons of wine. King James T. ordered two Londoners to be whipped from Aldgate to Temple Bar for speaking disparagingly of Spain's unpopular representative, Gondemar; and Recorder Fleetwood let everyone know that liberty of speech was an offence against the Commonw Jth by sending a saucy fellow to gaol for venting his enjoyment of a hearty bread-and-cheese meal by swearing he had supped as well as my t.ord Mayor. In 1877 the magistrates of Tadcaster gave one Leatham two months' imprisonment, for audibly anathematising the Queen twice while the prayers for the Queen and the Royal family were being repeated at a school-room service, despite his plea of extenuation that he uttered the obnoxious exclamations unconsciously, having been talking about the Queen's taxes a little while before. A like sentence was passed upon a soldier for publicly consigning the Pope and Mr Gladstone to the place paved with good intentions ; but this was in Belfast, where the authorities are particularly severe upon lingual improprieties. Hearing or fancying he heard the owner of a lagging dog exclaim, " Come along, you old papist!" a zealous officer summoned him for using party expressions in the streets. The offendor averred that he said, " Come along, old Pepper " —that being the animal's name ; whereupon the magistrate kindly said he would give him the benefit of the doubt, which he did by fining him five shillings. Soon after the Germans took possession of the provinces ceded by France, they sent an Al.-Miian girl to prison for criticising the photograph of the Grand Duke of Baden in disrespectful terms ; and fined a Lorraine woman five thalers for marking her disapproval of a soldier's primitive habits with the exclamation : " What! with all our five milliards, they have not got pocket-handker-chiefs yet!" Q£ course, French journalists did not omit to enlarge upon the tyranny of the Germans; but they were discreetly silent when a I'arisinn with a grievance was punished fur telling a friend that somebody was as " cowardly as MacMahon." A few months later he might have abused tho Marshal to his heart's content with impunity. It does not do to be in advance of one's day. In 1618 a Weymouth butcher was amerced in three shillings and fourpence for killing a bull unbated. and putting the flesh thereof unto sale. About the same time, certain good citizens of Worcester presented a formal complaint against John Kempster and Thomas Byrd for not selling their ale according to the law, charging only a penny a pint for beverage of sueb extraordinary strength as to lead to assaults, affrays, bloodsheddings, and other misdemeanors j in other words, for giving their customers too good an article—an offence not by any means likely to occur iv our modern world. Brutality to women rarely entails adequate punishment, but we caunot but wonder at a cruel husband receiving a twelvemonths' imprisonment for what the reporter termed an inhuman assault upon his wife ; since, so far as appeared, his inhumanity was limited to playing the "Dead March" in " aid" over his helpmate. He had evidently some music in his soul; like the workhouse official who lost his situation for setting three blind fiddlers to play as many tunes while he sang a song having no connection with one or the other. A humorous rogue, too, was the needy tailor who sheared the tails off the coats of the playgoers waiting at the doors of the Liverpool theatre, and was captured with his spoil upon him. Another original offender solaced his disappointed love by going to witness the consummation of his triumph 5

and strewing the church floor with fulminating powder, which exploded at every movement of the bridal party. The law presumes that everybody knows what he may and may not do, and acting on that presumption unpleasantly enlightens those who are not so wise as they should be. The eldest of three men charged with stealing primroses from a wood said: "The primroses grow of themselves; who ever heard of stealing primroses ?" The prosecuting farmer owned that the primroses grew wild, but he " made property of them," and they were not. to be readied without crossing his fenced-in land. The magistrate, discharging the offenders with a warning, informed them that there was no law forbidding the gathering of wild flowers in the lanes and hedgerows, ifc was unlawful to tresspass upon private land and take anything away. An Illinois citizen brought his daughter's young man before a justice for violently ejecting him from his own parlor one Sunday evening. After hearing the other side, the justice said: "Ifc appears that this young fellow was courting the plaintiff's gal, in plaintiff's parlour; that plaintiff intruded, and was put oub by defendant. Courting is a public necessity, and must not be interrupted. Therefore the law of Illinois will hold that a parent has no legal right in a room whore courting is afoofc. Defendant is discharged, and plaintiff must pay costs. Different notions as to the necessity of courting prevail in Texas, or a susceptible individual would hardly have been fined for telling a pretty girl he should very much like to kiss ' her ; leaving him as much puzzled as to where the justice came in, as the man in Indiana, who, returning home from a journey, found the house empty, his wife having raffled all the furniture, and :ib.Oi./ndprl with the proceeds; and before he thoroughly comprehended the situation, Pound hiniself arrested by the sheriff for permitting gambling on his premises. If ifc be unwise to prophesy unless you know, it is something worse than unwise to advance accusations impossible to sustain. Yefc if newspaper reports are to believed, a bill-sticker was prosecuted for the incomprehensible offence of burning somebody's "photographin effigy ;" Elizabeth Simmons was charged with being the father of Henry Wood's child; and a drunken laundress arraigned for assaulting a policeman by " springing up and striking him in the chest; with the soles of both her feefc afc the same time, dropping on them again like an acrobat;" a feat the constable swore the prisoner performed, in spite of her pertinently demanding where her body was afc the time, " as she wasn't a spring-board." A sapient corner read a witness a severe lecture upon the enormity of being out of heel at one o'clock in the morning, refusing him his expenses by way of making his disapproval of such an impropriety. Of the same way of thinking was constable Snooks who took a man into custody for presuming to come outside his own door at that early hour, after tho zealous officer had put him inside the house. Another active and intelligent officer, catching a young man, late at night, in the heinous act of putting his latch-key into its proper keyhole,'hauled him, spite of resistance, to the stationhouse ; and next morning had the satisfaction of heaving the magistrate indorse the action, and sentence the delinquent to a spell of hard for "resisting an officer in the execution of his duty." Some magistrates seem to hold that the police are masters rather than servants of the public, and that the lattter are bound to submit quietly to any indignity at their hands. A Bermondsey shopkeeper having been hustled by a number of constables proceeding to their beat, demanded the sergeant's number, upon which he was pushed through a shop window, and promptly arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and breaking the ranks of the constabulary. The magistrate who heard the case was compelled to pronounce the charges false and frivolous, but told the accused he had only himself to blame ; taking the sergeant's number was a very foolish thing to di>, for "to take their number gave many constables great offence " Right and wrong is often a mere question of locality. Long after coffee was an established beverage in every European land, a schoolmaster of Hesse was sent to prison for drinking it in defiance of the decree of his High Mightiness the Landgrave, who, like other well-intentioned law makers, could not endure that anyone should enjoy a thing displeasing to his own palate. In 1875, three French ships in the harbour of St. Pierre, Martinique, failed to lower their yards on Oood Friday. Next day, each captain was find a hundred francs for outraging the religious sentiments of the people. But when a Paris linen draper advertised that his shop would be closed the following Sunday , for repairs, 'and the Univers denouned the notification as an outrage upon the religious sentiments of christian women, which they ought to resent by shunning tho shop for evermore, the linen draper went to law, and and obtained foitr thousand francs damages for the libel. When at Rome, do as Rome does, is easily said, but not so easily accomplished. A Western man, spending a day in Boston, bought a cigar and started for a stroll. He had not gone many yards before he was tapped on the shoulder by a police-officer, who politely informed him that he had incurred a penalty of two dollars by smoking in the street. The innocent offender handed over two dollars, and walked on. Presently he came across a hungary-looking urchin, to whom he good naturedly profferd a piece of gingerbread, and immediately apoliceman was at his elbow intimating he had thereby violated a city ordinance. Tendering his informant a thee dollar bill, with instructions to keep the change as he should want to whistle by-and-by, and might as well pay beforehand, the disgusted visitor went on his way, resolved never again to make holiday in Boston.