PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOL. 109. OCTOBER 19, 1895. [Illustration: "POOR LITTLE DICKEY BIRDS! DEAR LITTLE DICKEY BIRDS!"] * * * * * THE THIRTY-ONE-AND-SIXPENNY DREADFUL. (_By Mr. Punch's Own High-Class Police News Reporter._) At the Grosvenor Square Criminal Court the case of Lady D'EDBROKE came on for hearing at the head of the list. Interest in this alleged crime in high life drew together a vast galaxy of Society women, and His Worship was with difficulty accommodated with a seat on the bench. Opera-glasses ruled from one-and-sixpence-in-the-slot. The first charge brought against her ladyship was that of refusing alimony to her husband. A second dealt with the desertion of her children. The prosecution undertook to prove that Sir BENEDICK had been found at night on the doorstep of the d'Edbroke Mansion without a latchkey or other visible means of subsistence. Lady D'EDBROKE (_née_ SWAG) was described as the daughter of a wealthy Birmingham manufacturer of antiques. By her marriage into the ancient and honourable house of the D'EDBROKES she had relieved the fortunes of the three-and-twentieth baronet, whose assets at the moment had been _nil_. Two children had been born of the marriage, and these had recently been discovered in a state of emaciation in a Park Lane _crèche_. Counsel would call her ladyship's maid to give evidence of the kind of literature to which her mistress had been addicted. That domestic would admit that she (the domestic), being bored by the feeble and fatuous character of the Penny Dreadful as a guide to immorality, had been in the habit of utilizing her mistress's left-off thirty-one-and-sixpenny and other expensive shockers. He hoped to show that this class of work, though not above the level of the Penny Dreadful in point of literary qualities, was of a mere seductive piquancy. At the time of the prisoner's arrest her drawing-room and boudoir were littered with printed matter, from the titles of which he would select four specimens: _A Melodrama of Spasms_, _The Superfluous Male_, _A Neo-Platonic Passion_, _An Edenless Adam_. From the last of these he ventured to read an extract or two, in the selection of which he had been assisted by the pencil marks and marginal comments of the prisoner. The book, he might add, was from a lending library. "A veritable Dian, flame-red with the shame of maternity, the young mother of twins faced her cowed and miserable husband. Mentally she threw up the sponge ready for the next round, for she had still a shot in her locker with which to run a mucker." Council here explained that the writer, a simple woman, was still feeling her way in the use of sporting language.