THE MAN UNDER THE BED ?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XXIV, 13 June 1896, Page 704

THE MAN UNDER THE BED ?

Mr Walter Besant, in the London Queen, makes what he calls a * really practical suggestion.’ It is the skeleton of a scheme or recipe to exorcise that familiar domestic spectre, the man under the bed. The author of ‘ All Sorts and Conditions of Men ’ is evidently familiar with a universal condition of all sorts of women, for he says :—‘ There are thousands of people, especially ladies, who every night lie down in fear, lie awake listening, wake up in the middle of the night trembling, in perpetual terror of the housebreaker—all the more if they live in a retired suburb or a lonely road. Il is suggestion for the relief of these sufferers is a telephonic connection of the honse with the nearest police station. It is to be regretted that Mr Besant does not elaborate his excellent idea. He merely observes that the scheme would cost something, of course, the pay of a telephone clerk kept constantly on tap at the police station, which he estimates at perhaps two guineas a year for each family. He modestly inquires, whether this is not a practicable, workable, useful idea. Beyond a doubt it is an idea worth the realising. Considerations of expense need not deter ordinary well to-do dwellers in any suburb from practising cooperation to the extent of this species of bedroom telephone service. Any hesitancy on the score of expense would be overcome by the thought that this plan would be cheaper in the end than the extra gas bills which timid visitors from the city run up against their country entertainers by burning the gas all night as a sort of sacrifice to the supposititious man under the bed. The most serious obstacle probably would be the glaring inadequacy of most suburban police service, which would make it easily possible for smart thieves working in concert, to ring the entire force, by feints on a few places in one quarter of the village, while they were getting in their real work undisturbed in another quarter. That, however, would be the fault of the police service, and not of Mr Besant’s antiburglary happy thought. In these days of crime in the open, when undetected burglaries and chokings seem on the increase, some general adoption of a device to give highwaymen pause would seem to be a thing to be desired. Very likely an electric police button in the bedstead head board is that very thing. Its utility might be increased, and enterprising burglars might be saved unnecessary pains, by having every user of this appurtenance advertise his or her possession of it, either in the local paper or by means of a neat sign on the front porch. No burglar with his wits and kit about him would essay a bouse so panoplied. He would go next door. And, best of all, the most prudent of housewives, under the aegis of the police telephone system, would be relieved from the necessity of perpetually exhausting the patience of the good man of the honse by making him double lock every door and window blind, while the maiden, whether old or young, would receive a dispensation from the eternal search under the bed for the man who is never there.