PUTTING A PASSENGER IN IRONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 547, 19 February 1870, Page 3

PUTTING A PASSENGER IN IRONS.

The Bombay papers contain reports of a remarkable case, heard before tbe magistrates there on the 14th ult., in which a cornet in the 20th Hussars, named Francis John Graves, made a charge of assault and false imprisonment against Thomas Wylie, tbe commander of the British ship Thomas Bell, recently arrived at Bombay from Gravesend. It appears that on the 31st of May the prosecutor and a number of other ofiicers of Her Majesty's Army embarked on board the ship Thomas Bell, for Bombay, to join their regiments in India. From the commencement of the voyage the captain did not seem to have treated his passengers with the consideration which English officers expect, and the prosecutor was addressed in an abusive and threatening manner. On the 29th of June, while lying half asleep ona i couch in the saloon, he heard the captain make some observation about putting stick-ing-plaster on a certain part of his person, and after that the steward went out and brought in a roll of it, which was put on him as the captain indicated. He immediately rose and expressed himself in the strongest terms of his insolent conduct. . The next day the captain ordered him to be put in irons and confined in the hold for twenty hours, with only bread ahd water to subsist on. On the remonstrances of the other passengers ha was released. On his arrival in Bombay he made the Brigadier-General of the regiment acquainted with the facts, and 7he ordered proceedings to be taken against the master of the ship. At the close of the evidence the chairman, gave the following decision : — I think that the charge of an assault, accompanied with force, made by the complainant in this case against the defendant has been well and folly proved by the evidence laid before me. The law vests great power in a shipmaster at sea. It has been found necesary to do so in the interests bf society, for the preservation of life and property ,and for the maintenance of law and order. But great power involves great responsibility, and the exercise of it is required to be accompanied . with judgment and discretion. - Where the safety or safe working of a ship is concerned, I do not know what a shipmaster might not lawfully do. Certainly, putting any one, whether a gentleman passenger or any one else, in irons for twenty hours,: in the face of . such circumstances, wQuld.be a very small matter indeed; .but there is no pretence of such a situation hero. The captain and his passengers do not, in* deed, seem to have been thehappy family that so many of us have had the pleasure of being members of during a sea voyage of more or less duration, and I do not say that Mr Graves, and. perhaps other passengers, may not have given some provocation to the captain. But unless under the provocation of a coarse, vulgar, insolent, and unwarrantable practical joke played off on Mr Graves, to which the captain himself was a party— if he ought not to be put down as in fact the author— when Mr Greaves addressed the captain in a way that it is certainly not desirable for passengers to address ship cap* tains, though, under the circumstances, Ido not say that he either said or did more than any man of the least spirit could have been expected to say or do— with that exception, I find that Mr Graves did literally nothing to provoke any hostile action on the part of the captain against him. On the contrary, the offence was all the other way from firat to last; and I say, putting Mr Graves in irons under the circumstances detailed in the evidence before me, and the placing him where he was so placed in irons, amid dirt and filth, in the way he was placed, to say nothing of the wanton indecency which was made an incident of the occasion— l say that that altogether was an offence for which any fine that I have power to ioflict^ would be no adequate punishment. Mr Graves has his civil remedy for what I have no hesitation in saying I consider was his false imprisonment. But I think he has been well advised in the public interest to come here and prosecute as he has done, fie has not by anything that ha» been brought but in evidence forfeited hia position as an officer and a gentleman, and Undoubtedly it was beßt for him to submit fat the moment to the indignity. But the indignity -put .upon him was a.' grave pnblic offence* and it is only with reference to euch public offeqee that I act. lam not ignorant of the possible serious consequences to the top tain pf the sentence -which I am about now to. pronounce, bat, whatever they maybe, he must know that he has by bis own misconduct brought them all upon himself. For my part, I know I -take adispassionate, and for the captain 1 think I take a considerate, view of his 1 casie, when I sentence him only to fourteen days' imprisonment in the Houw of Correction, with ha?d labour."

When Charles K. Sharpe was young* and residing at Hoddaro, he strolled out one day among the cottagers who lived hard by. He spied an old woman sunning herself at her cottage door; and knowing her to be a special gossip, went up to her, and commenced talking about what waß going on among the neighbours. Ihe never-failing topic of a marriage waa soon brought up; but in this case the bride was said to be well advanced in years. " Bless me, Jenny ! " exclaims , Master Sharpe, •"' that beats a'; she might be my grandmother. When do the women, , Jenny, gie ower thinking about the men ?" "Aa 1 'deed, Mr Charles," repned the toothless crone, seeing the drift of the young wag; " deed, Mr Charles, you maun c'en gang and ask some ane mair knicket i' the horn than me." A ridiculous story comes across the Atlantic concerning Mr Charles Reade's dramatisation of Tennyson's poem, " Dora." At the performance of " Dora" the other night in a , western city, when Mary Morrison made her exit to bring on her little Willie of four years, she was shocked to find a lubberly boy of at least 14, and ag he was the only Willie at hand on he must go, though he was wellnigh as big as hip mother. The Farmer Allen of tbe play, being equal to the emergency, instead of inquiring, " How old are you, roy little man ?" endeavoured to remedy the matter by saying, " How old are you, my strapping boy ?" But he failed, for the boy, who was instructed to say, from "four to fire," said it in Buch a sepulchral tone as to drive the good-natured grandfather to exclaim, " Forty-five ! You look it my boy, you look it." 111 IIWIIW I— OPf ■!■■ lIMWMM