Mornings at Bow Street: A Selection of the Most Humorous and Entertaining Reports which Have Appeared in the 'Morning Herald'Wight, J. (John)
General
Mornings at Bow Street: A Selection of the Most Humorous and Entertaining Reports which Have Appeared in the 'Morning Herald'
Wight, J. (John)
Crime -- England -- London
"Is it what I would have done with it, your honour asks?" exclaimed Mr.
Sullivan, almost choked with rage--"Is it what I would have done with
it!--ounly that I'd have _dagged_ it into the heart of 'em at that same
time!" As he said this, he threw himself into an attitude of wild
desperation, and made a tremendous lunge, as if in the very act of
slaughter.
To make short of a long story, he did not find the knife, Mr. Burke
barricadoed himself in his room, and Mr. Sullivan turned his wife out of
doors.
The magistrate ordered him to find bail to keep the peace towards his wife
and all the king's subjects, and told him if his wife was indeed what he
had represented her to be, he must seek some less violent mode of
separation than the _knife_.
"WHERE SHALL I SLEEP?"
Henry Walters, a tailor, was brought up from St. Martin's watch-house, to
answer the complaint of Mr. Thomas Thompson, who is a tailor too--that is
to say, they are two tailors; Mr. Thompson, the master, and Mr. Walters,
the man--or, to speak more proverbially, the _servant_.
Mr. Walters lodges on Mr. Thomas Thompson's premises, near
Leicester-square, and at two o'clock in the morning, Mr. Thomas Thompson,
being then fast asleep in bed with his wife, was awoke by some person on
his side of the bed, leaning over him, and saying--"Be quiet;--can't you?"
At the same moment Mrs. Thompson screamed, and said, "Tom Thompson,
there's a strange man in the room!"--"What the devil do you want here?"
exclaimed Mr. Tom Thompson--valorously jumping out of bed, and seizing the
strange man by the collar. To which the strange man replied, by giving Mr.
Tom Thompson a thump on the eye, and unseaming his shirt from top to
bottom! This was strange treatment in one's own bed-room! But Mr. Tom
Thompson kept his hold, Mrs. Thompson alarmed the lodgers, the lodgers
called the watch, the watch came (with as much speed as they could,) and
when they held their lanterns to the strange man's face--who should it be
but this identical Mr. Walters! He had not "a word to throw at a dog," as
one of the witnesses shrewdly remarked; and therefore he was at once
consigned to the care of the watchman, who _bundled_ him away to the
watch-house. Mr. Tom Thompson added, that his wife was so much alarmed at
the circumstance, she was quite unable to attend this examination; but
that she had told him she was awoke by some one squeezing her hand
tenderly, and saying, as aforesaid, "Be quiet--can't you?"
Mr. Walters was now called upon for his defence. But first it may be as
well to say something of his person. He was young--say five-and-twenty;
short in stature; by no means _fat_; parenthesis-legged; brush-cropped;
nutmeg complexion; unvaccinated; scarlet-trimmed eyes; an Ashantee nose;
and a mouth capacious enough to admit the biggest Battersea cabbage that
ever was boiled--
"A combination and a form indeed,
Where _everything_ did seem to set its seal,
To give the world _assurance_ of a tailor!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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