THE SEAMY SIDE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3380, 27 June 1927, Page 2

THE SEAMY SIDE.

(By Mr R. E. Corder in “London Daily Mail.”) Little Frankie got lost, and his agitated mother thought she saw him from the top of an omnibus being spanked by his father, from whom she has been separated for six years. Down the steps of the omnibus clattered Frankie’s mother and, missing Frankie, she sprinted for the home of Frankie’s father, only to discover that the boy who had been spanked was not Frankie, but a boy three years older. “Well, what is the trouble?” asked Mr Scanlan, the Magistrate at Lambeth Police Court, yesterday. “Trouble enough,” said Frankie’s mother. “Immediately my husband saw me he set the dog on me, and the faster I ran, the dog ran faster.” “It was the wrong boy,” murmured the I fagistrate thoughtfully. “Yes, sir; but it was the same dog,” insisted Frankie’s mother, making a premature departure from the Court and thereby beginning an amusing game of crosspurposes. “How old is your boy?” inquired the Magistrate interrogating the next woman in his queue of applicants. “Mine isn’t a boy; it’s a husband desertion,” exclaimed No. 2.

“You are the mother' of the other boy, the one who was spanked?” suggested Mr Scanlan. “Mine’s desertion,” stolidly repeated applicant No. 2. “Bring the other woman back,” whispered the usher imperatively; and Frankie’s mother was brought back by the janitor. “How old is your boy?” demanded Mr Scanlan, addressing applicant No. 2. “Ten years, sir,”* declared Frankie’s mother tearfully. “No, not you; the other one,” requested Mr Scanlan. “Mine’s desertion,” coldly reiterated applicant No. 2. “This woman has nothing to do with the first one,” explained the warrant officer.

“This woman hasn’t got a boy,” added the usher, ■ looking reproachfully at applicant No. 2, who snapped indignantly, “Yes, I have, and girls.” “But you haven’t got Frankie,” murmured the- warrant officer.

“How old was the boy who was spanked ?” demanded Mr Scanlan. “About thirteen, and Frankie is ten, as I keep on telling you,” said Frankie’s mother.

“Then obviously it was the wrong boy,” decided the Magistrate. “But what about my husband’s dog?” insisted Frankie’s mother. “I will send an officer to warn him,” promised Mr Scanlan, who seemed to retain a suspicion that applicant No. 2 was implicated in the spanking and biting affair.

Applicant No. 2 had no such illusion. “He left me four years ago,” she said, resentfully, “and I saw him for the first time on Saturday night, when I took him to Battersea Road police.” “Why did he leave you ?” asked the Magistrate mildly. “Why ?” echoed applicant No. 2 scornfully. “Because he is like other men lie does not want his wife, his children, or his home; he wants his freedom and he finds it in a Rowton House.” “Take a summons,” ' said Mr Scanlan hastily.

Mauve is the popular colour for spring suits among fashionable youth in Old Kent Road circles mauve suits and bis-cuit-coloured caps. So arrayed a youth complained that he was “stopped by three chaps, and one of them asked me to write my name down. I asked him if he had a pencil, and went under a lamppost to write my name when he smacked me in the eve.

“Did ho not like your name ?” inquired the astonished Magistrate. “I don’t know, sir,” replied the man in mauve. “They were all strangers to me.”

“Strange,” commented the Magistrate, granting a summons for assault. ‘ * * * *

Evan David LloyU George, a motor driver by trade and a politician by instinct, sat on the pavement after closing time ‘ and delivered a speech on the League of Nations, and so disturbed a protesting crowd that a constable removed the orator and thereby secured the peace of Camberwell Road.

William the tall cheerfully laid down his liberty for the sake of ’his friend John, whom he had not met since they shared each other’s rations in the late unlamented war.

“They had been ejected from a public-house and they were fighting,” said a young constable, who surveyed both friends with equal disfavour. “Me fight him? No, sir,” exclaimed William the tall, looking affectionately at John, who tenderly caressed a bruise over his right eye. “When we were refused a drink at the King’s Arms, we went across to the Bricklayers’ Arms, with the same luck, and then somebody set about my old friend, and I was shielding him. Hit him! No, not if he trod on my face.” The reunited friends paid 7/6 each and departed with William the tall giving John brotherly pats on the head.