THE SEAMY SIDE.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17218, 29 September 1927, Page 5

THE SEAMY SIDE.

TALES TO MAGISTRATE. METHYLATED SPIRIT DRUNKARDS. (By R. E. Corder in London Daily Mail). "Look at my prisoner," whispered a constable at Thames Police Court yesterday. I looked and marvelled, as Vincent Porter, wearing a blanket and a smile, shuffled into the dock. "He tore his clothing to pieces," said the officer, displaying the remnants of a blue serge suit. Looking like an Indian chief who had met with an accident, Vincent, a fairhaired youth, drew his blanket around him and modestly sought to hide his unprotected ankles. "I have just had an operation at the hospital," he explained, "and the drink I took when I came out made me forget my own personality." "You go straight back to the infirmary," ordered Mr Cairns, the magistrate, to the shivering youth, who, wrapping his blanket around him, was taken away in a taxicab.

Another shivering prisoner was Thomas Baron, a middle-aged labourer, who has drunk so much methylated spirit that he has become a doddering old man. "Back again," said Mr Cairns sadly. "Yes, sir," replied Thomas, shaking in every limb. "I am suffering from D.T.s." "He is in a terrible state, saturated with methylated spirit," remarked the goaler. "So I perceive," observed the magistrate, "and the kindest thing I can do to him is to send him to prison for two months. He is suffering from a dreadful plague, and he may find relief in the prison infircwrry." * * * » What cocaine is in the West End, methylated spirit is in the East End. The stuff is deadly, and, although recent legislation has made it unpalatable, it is consumed in huge quantities, not so much in London as in Glasgow, where I have seen scores of men and women lying helpless under its influence. Behind a wire cage in the Tombs Prison in New York I have seen a score of men behaving like angry animals in the Zoo. They had been made drunk by Prohibition whisky, which was really methylated spirit. But the halfcrazed animals in New York got off scot free, because the officers who arrested them in the "speak easies" could not prove that they were a nuisance to their neighbours. * «■ * * The American drunkard drinks wood alcohol and is set at liberty to die. The English drunkard drinks methylated spirit and is sent to hospital to live.' » * • •* Women have such a monopoly of misery in Thames Police Court that every wife who had a grievance against her husband and every woman who sought a summons against her nextdoor neighbour looked resentfully at a husband who had the temerity to complain about his seven-months bride. "She was a friend of my first wife," he said, "and ever since I married her she has gone about savins: '.You,.

killed your first wife, but you won't kill me."' *

"I know this man," said the warrant officer. "He is hard working, well living,'and a good husband. A fort* night ago his wife threw a vase at him, and this morning he came to court with a bleeding nose."

The wife, shrill and shrewish, stormed and raved until Mr Cairns remarked, "You are an impossible person." .

"I want a separation," demanded the wife.

"I will see that you get It," retorted Mr Cairns.

All the women in the long queue looked at one another in consternation. It was the first time in their experience that a husband had welcomed a separation from his wife. The airy fabric of their standardised complaint fell down like the wreck of a family tea party.

"Old women don't like babies," declared a young mother, proudly dangling a slecping"infant.

"Why not?" challenged Mr Cairns. "Well, there is an old woman of 65," said the proud mother, "who goes off at the deep end every time the baby cries, which (hastily) is not often."

"Down in East London," said the magistrate, "if you touch a woman's pride, she goes off like fireworks." "That, may be," remarked an elderly man, "but my daughter-in-law kicked me on the shin because I objected to her perambulator blocking the stairs, and my son hit me on the head, and then climbed upstairs so that he could hit. me harder."

"You wait until the next baby comes," advised Mr Cairns, "and they will be too busy to annoy you. •

"Never quarrel in the street," advised Mr Cairns to a man and his wife who had fought a family battle in Whitechapel. "Always enjoy your family jars at home and keep the row in the family."

A sailor who had been ashore for a month made his regular appearance in the dock.

"Has he any money?" inquired the magistrate. He is on the dole," observed the gaoler. "Ah, yes, unlimited supplies," remarked Mr Cairns, who knows how the dole makes criminals in the East Ead of London.