Down amid what remains of the old town is a street oddly named "Pump Pail." Its strange name causes many a visit of curiosity, but it is a common-place street, and contains neither pail nor pump, and nothing more romantic than a tin tabernacle. But this, it appears, is not an instance of things not being what they seem, for in the good old days before the modern water-supply, one of the parish pumps stood here, and from it a woman supplied a house-to-house delivery of water in pails. The explanation seems too obvious to be true, and sure enough, a variant kicks the "pail" over, and tells us that it is properly Pump Pale, the Place of the Pump, "pale" being an ancient word, much used in old law-books to indicate a district, limit of jurisdiction, and so forth. [Sidenote: JABEZ BALFOUR] The modern side of all these things is best exemplified by the beautiful Town Hall which Croydon has provided for itself, in place of the ugly old building, demolished in 1893. It is a noble building, and stands on a site worthy of it, with broad approaches that permit good views, without which the best of buildings is designed in vain. It marks the starting point of the history of modern Croydon, and is a far cry from the old building of the bygone Local Board days, when the traffic of the High Street was regulated--or supposed to be regulated--by the Beadle, and the rates were low, and Croydon was a country town, and everything was dull and humdrum. It was a little unfortunate that the first Mayor of Croydon and Liberal Member of Parliament for Tamworth, that highly imaginative financier Jabez Spencer Balfour, should have been wanted by the police, a fugitive from justice brought back from the Argentine, and a criminal convicted of fraud as a company promoter; but accidents will happen, and the Town Council did its best, by turning his portrait face to the wall, and by subsequently (as it is reported) losing it. He was sent in 1895, a little belatedly, to fourteen years' penal servitude, and the victims of his "Liberator" frauds went into the workhouse for the most part, or died. He ceased to be V 460 on release on licence, and became again Jabez Spencer Balfour, and so died, obscurely. The Liberal Party in the Government had, over Jabez Balfour, one of its several narrow escapes from complete moral ruin; for Balfour was on extremely friendly terms with the members of Gladstone's ministry, 1892-94, and was within an ace of being given a Cabinet post. Let us pause to consider the odd affinity between Jabez Balfour and Trebitsch Lincoln and Liberal politics.