It should be explained that no person is detained at the police station, except on a serious charge, who can prove his identity. Often no further inquiry is necessary than reference to a directory. The detention-room, too, which is attached to every police station is intended to spare a respectable person the ignominy of the cells. It is a comfortably furnished room, with tables and chairs, and sometimes with a few papers and magazines. The charges begin to multiply towards midnight. There are several beggars, one of whom is a dirty, round-shouldered old ragamuffin with a long, matted beard. He cringes in front of the inspector's desk, and suddenly his hand flickers upwards with a deft movement. The next instant he is looking as innocent as though butter would not melt in his mouth. There is a sharp "Put that down" from the reserve man, and it is discovered that a cigarette end taken from the boy has found its way to his pocket. He curses the keen-eyed officer as he is led away to the cells. Then there are the "drunks," some quiet, some riotous, some still in a torpor, others defiantly asserting that they are perfectly sober. Some of these latter are seen by the police-divisional-surgeon, who by now is in the station. The Inspector sifts each case thoroughly, making sure that there is a _prima facie_ case before allowing the charge to proceed. It is at his discretion to grant or refuse bail. It is after one o'clock. A girl is brought in by a constable, pale and sullen, and with dark eyes a little apprehensive, a little triumphant. The officer handles a man's jacket carefully. The whole of one sleeve and one side of the coat is wringing wet--but it is with blood, not with water. It is a more serious case this--one of attempted murder, which later developed into one of murder. There was an altercation with a man, a lover who had abandoned her, and she stabbed him with a pocket knife, and waited without attempting to escape. An unsavoury, sordid drama, but it is treated in the same cool, business-like way as the other trivial charges. "I only meant to hurt him," says the girl, and she is led away by the matron. I may as well finish the story here. The man she had stabbed died in hospital, and she was charged with murder. Eventually she was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment. In the intervals of taking charges, there are other things to be done. There is a woman half hysterical because her daughter is missing. A couple of people walk in to hand over a gold match box and a purse found in the streets. These things have to be entered in official documents for prompt communication to headquarters. The tape machine rattles out a report of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey, and fresh orders relative to the passage of cattle through London. This will have to be made known to the reliefs when they go out.