The Mysteries of Modern LondonSims, George R. (George Robert)
History
The Mysteries of Modern London
Sims, George R. (George Robert)
Criminals -- England -- London; London (England) -- History
As the bridal party comes out of the church there is a little accident.
A man falls in a fit in the crowd, and the policeman, turning to help
him, the people surge up, and the bridal procession is interrupted. In
the confusion some of the flowers in the bride's bouquet become detached
and fall to the ground. A workman with a sad, careworn face bends down
and picks them up. He will take them home when his work is over. The
flowers of the bride's bouquet will lie on the breast of the dead girl
who has given him a year of happy wedded life, and now lies dead in the
desolate little home.
The fair young bride of the West will know nothing of the dead wife in
the East. But the flowers that were bought for the bridal of the one
will lie in the coffin of the other.
******
Of all the dramatic contrasts of our modern London life few are so
striking as those which are conventional at a trial for murder at the
Old Bailey.
In the shadow of death on the last day of the trial sits the prisoner,
while a large portion of the spectators take the proceedings as an
interesting and sometimes thrilling form of entertainment.
There are rooms set apart in the Old Bailey for the necessary
refreshment of officials connected with the court, and in one of these,
while the jury are deliberating on their verdict, and the prisoner is
waiting in the cells below in feverish agony, lady visitors take tea and
cakes, and male visitors have coffee and cigarettes.
In the corridors of the court there are little groups chatting together,
and the talk is not always of the trial.
On the emotional man surveying the scene and listening to the light
conversation, sometimes to the jokes, this feature of a murder trial
makes a vivid impression. He looks around him at the light-hearted
groups and thinks of the dumb despair of the man or woman who waits,
white-faced and terror-stricken, in a cell below the dock.
And when with the solemn words of the death sentence ringing in his ears
he passes out of the court into the street, and the newsboys rush by him
shouting "All the winners," the contrast is complete.
* ****
One evening, in a quiet side street in the south of London, there
floated through an open window the sound of a banjo. Near the window sat
a man. He was amusing himself with the banjo, and presently he played a
cake-walk tune. The children in the street heard the music and began to
dance to it, and the man played on.
An hour or two later he gave himself up at the police-station. He had
murdered his little girl "to save her from her mother," he stated at his
trial. The child was lying dead in the room while he played the banjo
and the merry children danced the cake-walk in the roadway below.
*****
Not long ago, on a bitter winter day, I passed along the Euston Road.
Outside the soup kitchen stood a shivering crowd of penniless men and
women.
Up the street in front of me went a tall, military-looking man walking
with a beautifully dressed woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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