THE SEAMY SIDE.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16813, 3 June 1926, Page 12

THE SEAMY SIDE.

TALES TOLD TO MAGISTRATE. (By R. E. Corder in London Daily Mail). Four years ago a barrel-organ—-oiled, tuned, and loaded with the popular melodies of the day—left the musical garage of its Italian proprietor lin Manchester in charge of John .loseph Jones through the streets of strange cities, continued to play the old song 3, while its Italian owner waited its return and listened for the merry tinkle of the mechanical voice that was gone. And at last, with the homing instinct of its kind, the barrel-organ returned to Manchester, still in charge of John Joseph Jones, who was charged at the city police court with abducting the instrument. The Italian owner, supported by an Italian woman who wore a shawl and could speak (he Lancashire dialect, contended that according to a contract John Joseph Jones should have returned the barrel-organ to the home garage every week, but John Joseph Jones maintained that Iherc was nothing in the contract to say when the barrel-organ should be returned, and when the contract was produced he was proved to be in tho right. Then the Italian woman enforced her personality on the court. First she acted as interpreter—not, however, as the couK expected, in turning Italian into English and English into Italian for the benefit of the organ's proprietor. No, all she did was to repeat the words of the clerk to tho Italian in a shrill voice.

"Talk to him in Italian," ordered tho clerk.

"What's tho use?" replied the woman. "He understands English all right. He's only a bit deaf." As an interpreter the woman was a failure, but as an interpolator she was in the first class until the chairman requested her to mind her own business.

Triumphant over the production of the contract, John Joseph Jones insisted that when he took out the organ he could go where he liked, when he liked, and as a matter of fact he was at Blackpool all the summer. The woman persisted there was another contract, and John Joseph Jones was remanded on bail so that the business could be cleared up. Meanwhile the organ will be supplied with a new set of songs.

Carelessness with his keys led to the detection of a hand man employed at Dalton Hall, Victoria Park. He had taken £5 from a trunk in the housekeeper's bedroom, and left his keys in the lock. At first he said that someone else must have put them there, but in being confronted at; his home with a collection of crockery belonging to Dalton Hall, which is a residence for university students, he admitted the theft. He was bound over by the Bench. ■*« * * Two widows looked reproachfully at their respective boys, who, entering a store for tea, left with four mouth-organs, two pocket-books and four pen-knives—indigestible articles which they had not paid for. The boys, who had divided the spoil equally, .were lectured and bound over.

He was an elderly Irishman, and he was attempting to sell postcards of Manchester to Scotsmen who had arrived overnight for the international football match. He was not successful, and his comment on the Scottish nalion caused his arrest by an English policeman, this making his 34th appearance, which cost him 10s.