1851; Or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition.Mayhew, Henry
General
1851; Or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition.
Mayhew, Henry
Great Exhibition (1851 : London, England) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
There the charge was immediately entered upon, when, the magistrate
observing that further proof was required, the Detective prayed for a
remand of the prisoner, stating he felt convinced that in a few days he
should be able to bring a large body of evidence to bear against the
individual, for he was perfectly satisfied that if the party was not the
notorious Cursty Sandboys himself, he was at least one of his gang, and
had made use of that person’s ticket whilst he was in prison.
Aggy, who, on recovering her senses, had ascertained where her lord and
master had been carried, entered the police-court at this precise
juncture, and no sooner heard the officer pronounce her husband to
belong to a well-known gang of pickpockets, than she insisted upon being
heard, and was about to enter into a long family history of her husband
and herself, when the magistrate informed her, that unless she would
keep silence he should be compelled to have her put out of the court.
Cursty, finding himself likely to be committed to prison, sought to
explain to the magistrate how he was a plain country gentleman, come up
from Cumberland to enjoy himself and see the Great Exhibition; but his
statement was received with no more belief than the excuses of
individuals when similarly circumstanced, for the felon’s dock is not
exactly the place where a gentleman is likely to obtain much credit for
his assertions.
The magistrate, looking sternly at the melancholy Christopher, shook his
head, as much as to say that, after what the Detective had stated, the
case appeared rather black against him.
Cursty, however, finding himself standing, as it were, on the threshold
of a prison, protested his innocence so loudly, and persisted with such
pertinacity in his statements, that the magistrate was induced to
inquire of the turnkey in attendance whether he knew anything of the
prisoner, whereupon the official replied that he remembered the name
perfectly well, and having retired to refresh his memory on the subject,
returned shortly and stated, that he found Cursty Sandboys had been
charged only a short time back with being drunk and disorderly, and
incapable of taking care of himself; while the wife of the same “party”
had been given into custody about the same time for assaulting the
police.
This was more than the blood of Aggy could bear; and immediately she
rushed forward and began to enter into an explanation as to how the
hussey who had been taken up had used her name at the police-office,
after stealing her marriage certificate; but the manner of Mrs. Sandboys
was so excited, while her whole story sounded so improbable, that she
appeared to the magistrate to be just the kind of woman to commit such
an act under the influence of temper.
Accordingly, all things considered, the magistrate decided upon
remanding the ill-fated Cursty Sandboys till a future day, and, amid the
shrieks of his distracted wife, he was dragged off by the turnkey to be
locked up in his cell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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