THE SEAMY SIDE.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16711, 29 January 1926, Page 8

THE SEAMY SIDE.

TALES TOLD TO MAGiSTRATE.

AN IRISHWOMAN'S GRIEVANCE

(By R. E. Corder in Daily Mail.)

Personality and an Irish accent enabled Mrs Julia Barnett, a war widow, to dominate Cierkenwell Police Court yesterday. She was large and she was voluble, and she had the Irish gift of turning a charge into a grievance. Her offence was deserting her child, and the St. Paneras Guardians, in their innocence, summoned Julia with the object of making her repay the money expended. The case originally came on a fortnight ago and it was adjourned to enable her to meet the guardians. But not only did she refuse to meet the guardians, but she declined to appear a t court until she was brought in yesterday by a constable who'seemed dissatisfied with life. Julia walked into the dock with the air of Cleopatra ascending her throne. Leaning over the rails she surveyed the. court with placid dignity and listened with vnieenly tolerance to the opening sentences of the solicitor to the guardians, who announced that she was a war widow with a pension of 26s 8d a week and that she also dealt in flowers.

At this point Julia took charge of the proceedings, and for .15 minutes she ruled the court like a despotic queen ordering her slaves. "It's a war widow? I am," she thundered, her arms akimbo, and all the grievances of Ireland welling to'her lips. "I shall take the child out after Christmas, and not a day before. And a word or two I want to say against the guardians, with their cold tea, and dheir cold hearts, and me a war widow."

"You are so Irish and you talk so fast, I can't understand a word you say," petulantly observed Mr Bingley, the magistrate. ."You had better come round to the witness-box." "Sure and I will do that," said Julia, stalking majestically from the dock. "And is it Irish you call me? Can I help being Irish? Did I have the choice of my birthplace?"

"My good woman, I am trying to help you; don't get angry," pleaded the magistrate.

"Angry is it?" stormed Julia, shaking a quivering forefinger at the Bench. "And why should I not be angry? I have no home, because the landlord wants more money than there is in the world for his rent. And its me who has lived with the guardians, and them giving watches and chains to people from Newcastle and Southampton, and to their own folk in the parish they give cold tea. Irish ye call me? Let me tell you "

"My good woman, I only want to understand you," urged Mr Bingley. "I'll make you understand me," declared Julia, settling herself- in the witness-box. "Here I am, a war widow, at the mercy of the guardians. May the Lord forgive them!" "She seems to have a grievance against the guardians," observed' the magistrate to the solicitor. "Just so," said the solicitor, rising with reluctance. "Now tell me, Mrs Barnett, is it not a fact you have been prosecuted before?" "Don't be afraid to tell me," encouraged Mr Bingley. "Afraid, is it?" roared Julia. "Av course I was prosecuted for neglecting my, children, and me a war widow, and did I not' pay the guardians 5s a week? And not another penny will they get out of me till after Christmas."

"I think we had belter adjourn the case until after Christmas. That is the season that settles most difficulties," suggested Mr Bingley. "I agree," said the solicitor, sitting down thankfully. And Julia, carrying off the honours of war, walked proudly out of court, and later I saw her in the hall declaiming to a Poor Law officer, whom she had reduced to a stale of palpitating impotence. . From a safe corner near, the door the janitor surveyed the scene, and fervently he remarked: "She shouldn't be allowed, she shouldn't."

"I can't keep my wife in order," wailed a middle-aged mechanic whose landlady objected to the wife's language.

"No man can control his wife in these enlightened days," agreed Mr Bingley. > , "He certainly does .his best," remarked the landlady generously. "But he can't stop her. Nobody can stoic her. Bad language is a gift with her.' "Well, I can't turn them out at Christmas-time," said the magistrate. "Perhaps her better nature will respond to the solace of the season." The records at Cierkenwell Police Court shuw that thefts from toy stores are very numerous during the Christmas season, and private detectives are employed to keep watch on the augmented staff. The first Christmas offender was a youth who had unhooked a bicycle from the roof and fitted it with an electric lamp taken from slock.

His defence was that he had taken the bicycle to ride home to lunch, but when he entered the witness-box Mr Bingley tore his story to tatters. Not only did he possess a bicycle of his own but he could not explain away the electric lamp, especially as there was no fog. His father, who had held an unsmirched character for 45 years, felt his position much more keenly than the hoy in the dock, who was remanded for a week in custody. When he comes out he wyl be taken in hand by Mr Watts, the court missionary, who comforted the stricken father' at the request of the magistrate.

Straight from the United States comes a plump-, round-faced man, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and chewing gum. A constable said of him: "I found him very drunk, leaning over some railings, saying he had drunk all the beer there was." "I'm very sorry," said the man from the United States. "I had only just arrived in this country, and I just let myself loose among the beer. 1 cain't just remember what happened, judge, but, believe me, it was some jag." "Five shillings," said Mr Bingley. "That will be a dollar," said the American.

A pretty girl, wearing, among other things, a fleecy shawl held up the traffic in Euston road, N.W., while she tried to perform an operation on her wrist with a penknife. It was not, however, a case of attempted suicide. Having- drunk more port, than was good for her, she sought to arouse a constable's sympathy by cutting her wrist. She paid the doctor's fee and left all smiles and blushes.

"Four times I warned him not to sing, and four times he sang," said a young policeman, alluding to a melan-choly-looking labourer.- "He stood in the middle of the tramway lines singing at the top of his voice, and what

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with his singing and the drivers ringing their bells the noise was terrible." "Must have been," agreed Mr Bingley, fixing the price of the concert at 7s Gd.