FAWOUS LONDON MAGISTRATE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 2 October 1914, Page 2

FAWOUS LONDON MAGISTRATE.

HUMOR AND PATHOS OF A POLICE COURT.

Mr A. C. Plowden, the Marylebone (London) Police Magistrate, tendered Jiis resignation on July 22, having suffered for some time from acute neuralgia. The Times says that ever since leaving Oxford, he has been a persistent sufferer from headache in one form or another, varied at intervals by sharp and agonising attacks' of facial neuralgia. Last year, owin<>to severe illness, he had to relinquish his duties, and when he resumed them in March, after an absence of seven and a half months, he confessed that during that period "he had suffered enough to make him crave for as much sympathy as he could get!" Mr Plowden is probably best known to the general public as the "judicial humorist," but his autobiography, published under' the title of "Grain or Chaff,"throws a different light on that repu-1 tation, and in that work he wrote: LAUGHTER IN COURT.

I think for two years after leaving Jamaica, I had. headache every day< and for years and years my first wak- | mg thought ha-s been whether my head I has bee^n free from oppression or pain and .lust m proportion as it was free or I £°t .so would I prepare myself for a bright and active day or one that was dull and depressing. As to neuralgia j only those who have suffered know what torture it can be. Not infre- , i^^v I have sat through cases in the loliee Court quite wild with pain and been astonished on taking up the •paper the _ next day to see myself credited -with vivacious remarks* which have even been received with laughter !• Keports of this kind always surprise me ani temnt me-to say in passing that the Jnlarity which is constantly referred to as • "laughter," "much.i laughter," "roars of laughter" is almost entirely mythical, and has little or no existence outside the lively imagination of the reporter The dominant note of a police court is its seriousness. . . At the same time, tears and .laughter are not very far apart, and it is but- natural in an atmosphere so charged with, feeling that any little incident that breaks the monotony and makes for . mirth should nroduce a ripple that travels to every corner of the court. . I "DOTHEBOYS HALL." ! "Dotheboys Hall," according to Mr I'lowden, was no mere fancy of Dickens brain, for he himself received education at a- Yorkshire vicarage where "the cane was the vicar's most trusted ally m the sacred cause .of education," and- where it was thought wise "at regular intervals'to dose the whole school with horrid cups of senna tea, something hot, something cold ibut always nasty." At Westminster' & •£'• he was a colleague of. Mr Justice Philhmore, and the fact that the boys had access to the House of Commons and to the Law Courts in Westminster Hair doubtless gave him his first desire to embark on the legal profession. • ? nc?i. fe recalls< "having struggled into the Divorce Court to hear some cause I found myself beinoseverely frowned upon by the Judge, bir Creswell Creswell, and was very quickly ordered out of the place " It was originally intended that young 1 lowden should go in for the Indian Civil Service, but the idea was abanGoned. and he- took un the law, joining the Oxford Circuit. As" the law reporter of The Times he had to attend every town of the circuit, and lie found that assiduous attendance in the courts had. its uses from a professional pointy of view as well as< that, of mere reporting. ' J , Mr Plbwden was first, appointed a Ixniaon police magistrate in 1888 and atter sitting for a few years at Wandsworth and Hammersmith he was transferred, at his own request, to Marylebone 111 1893, and has remained there ever since. He has always been impressed with the need of some external badge to sienifv the office of a mao-iq-trate. but his hope that, before he left iheJiench he would be ordered to resume his wig has not been fulfilled. In Mr Plowden's opinion there is no rohce court in London which offers a greater variety of cases or of humancharacter than Marylebone. for all classes are to be found in the district, riom the highest to the lowest, the' richest to the poorest. An average clay at the murt will show, something r.ke 70 or 80 cases * d*v, b"t t^ev are mostly trifling. Mr Plowderi has never shared the belief that a police court is an nnwholesorsie place to SDend much time in. On the contrary, -Mr Plo.wden.lm confessed tbat he can but feel grateful for the • fate that made him a ■ magistrate, !'grateful for duties which, -far from bein<* mean and depressing.. as some people think, 1 hnd to be fulj of human interest, and yet happily, not so exacting that they leave ijo leisure for other oursuits and for healthful recreatoin." On another occasion he wrote: Happy the magistrate who, when the day comes to take off his armor, when the night cometh when no man can work, can rely on posterity to inscribe on his tombstone: ■ ■ ' | For what doth the Lord require of # thee ? To do justice and to love mercy. Therein lies all my ambition.