I was still giddy with last night's blow: my hair was stiff with blood: my head ached, but I was able to walk out with the others. The constables arranged us in a kind of procession, and put the handcuffs on every one. Then we were marched through the streets two by two, guarded by constables, to Bow Street Office, the Magistrate of which was then Sir John Fielding. There was some slight comfort in the thought that he was blind: he could not be prejudiced against me by my appearance, for my face was smeared with blood: my hair was stiff with blood. There was blood on my coat, and where there was not blood there was the mud of the street in which I had lain senseless. The business of the Court was proceeding. The Magistrate sat at a table: his eyes were bandaged. The eyes of Justice should be always bandaged. Over his head on the wall hung the Lion and the Unicorn: the prisoners were placed in a railed space: the witnesses in another, those in my case, I observed, were in readiness and waiting: three or four Bow Street runners were standing in the Court: there was a dock for the prisoner facing the magistrate. The cases took little time. There is a dreadful sameness about the charges. The women were despatched summarily and sent off to Bridewell: they received their sentences with cries and lamentations, which stopped quickly enough when they found that they could not move the magistrate: the pickpockets were ordered to be whipped: the other rogues were committed to prison. They were destined, for the most part, to transportation beyond the seas. It is useful for the country to get rid of its rogues: it seems also humane to send them to a country where they may lead an honest life. Alas! the humanity of the law is marred by the execution of the sentence, for though the voyage does not last more than six or eight weeks, the gaol fever taken on board the ship; the sea sickness; the stench; the dirt; the foul air of the ship, commonly kill at least a third of the poor creatures thus sent out. As for those who are left, many of them run away from their masters: make their way to a port, get on board a ship, and are carried back to London, where they are fain to go back to their old companions and resume their old habits, and get known to Mr. Merridew and his friends, and so at last find themselves in the condemned cells. My case came on, at last. I was placed in the dock facing the magistrate. The clerk read to him the notes of the case provided by the chief constable. 'Your name, prisoner?' he asked. 'I am William Halliday,' I said, 'only son of the late Sir Peter Halliday, formerly Lord Mayor of London. I am a musician now in the employment of Madam Vallance, Proprietor of the Assembly Rooms in Soho Square.' The Magistrate whispered to his clerk.