HALF AN HOUR IN THE SYDNEY POLICE COURT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2391, 28 December 1899, Page 55

HALF AN HOUR IN THE SYDNEY POLICE COURT.

By Coxstaxce Clyde.

Numerous patient elbows of friends and sympathisers lean against the railings that partition them from the court. The sheepfold, as one might term the dock, is likewise crowded with repre=entath es of the ninety and nine that have sti'ayed. The youth who has managed to become a confirmed drunkard at 19, and the "lydy"' who threw stones at the other " lydy " to the detriment of the peice of the realm, have excited due astonishment on the part of the magistrate. He also informs the old lady with the tangled bonnet-strings and the insinuating smile, that it is very wrong of her to use improper language when she is drunk, leaving a strong impression that bad language is peimissible only when accompanied by the strictest sobriety. The first great case is that of a man who has been arrested foi s-leeping in Hyde Park. Pie is small and thin, this man, and his clothes are so loose they look as if they must wave about him when he walks. He wears a neckerchief of — well, there is a colour known as invisible green, and I fancy this must be invisible white — another shade. As he stands in the dock, furtively trying to hide himself in his clothes, the guardian of the law describes how he found this man a&leep in Hyde Park ; how, fearing he w r as drunk, he thoughtfully woke him up to find out ; how the prisoner staggered, and consequently was drunk ; and ko was marched off to the look-up, plaze your worship. Thereupon the tired-looking functionary beneath the canopy woarily remarks, " Seven days ! " Nevertheless, Ihe magistrate is not the ass on this occasion, but the law ; which is paradoxically unprogressive enough to be &till " moving on,' as in. the dajs of Jo, of " Bleak asm-" '

piece of red -flannelette which she has sewn for frilling round the neck of her unbrushed^ wrinkled brown bodice. She is likewise adorned in a winter hat blossoming in summer flowers. Her hairpins mufct be intended for ornaments — Ihey are so conspicuous. Certainly they cannot be meant for use, as most, of her hair straggles down to her neckband in stiff, spear-like shoots, the residue clinging to her head in a loose and wobbly bunch. That is Bella.

She, too, has her complaint against the guardian of the law. " Please, yer wushup, I never used no bad language, noC till 'c 'it me ; I didn't."' She gees on to tell how the policeman nearly tore the jacket off her back, and that they are all beasts that ought to be 'ung. This talk naturally disgusts the magistrate, and next moment she goes off with a " beast," to do seven days. The would-be suicide who attempted his life because he considered he was only fit to fertilise the aoil gives place to the man who fired a revolver in a place of entertainment with no particular object. He is remanded to gaol for the very good reason that this will develop his semi-lunacy into the genuine article and so fix him down to one particular class. He expresses his belief that this will soon occur, and that the magistrate knows it will occur, and disappears.

Meanwhile the door of the sheep-fold has been opening and shutting all the morning, letting out, one by one, the feheep that are to be cleansed in the great river of the law. Two lambs, however, arc handed over from Justice to Mercy, and stand waiting will? their Salvationist guardians in the hall outside. Helped by sympathising female friends .who have " been there," they discuss that new institution, the matron, who has displaced the policeman as guardian of the women's cells. I learn with surprise that their fierce, clench-fist hatred of the " bobby " is only equalled by their attachment to the matron, so that the usual idea of woman being hard on woman will have to go under in this case. Considering the scenes that were wont to occur when, women, sometimes innocent, sometimes comparatively no, were left the whole night, and, sometimes the whole da/jr foJJojFjuijgj

— In Spain the incidence of industry is the converse of our own, and while we cannot be restrained from desecrating the most beautiful creations of nature with smoke and noise and machinery, the Spaniards have been content to forget all the energy of their ancestors, or at best to leave the ruins of a mill a.3 a monument to. the futility of labour. — Saturdjj BflY'flffi