Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police MagistratePorter, Frank Thorpe
History
Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate
Porter, Frank Thorpe
Crime -- Ireland; Criminals -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs; Porter, Frank Thorpe, 1801-1882
Wishing to take a short interval for considering whether I should
adjudicate summarily, or send the case for trial at the Quarter
Sessions, I postponed it for a week, urging the police to detect, if
possible, the girl who had caused the tumult and assault, and I allowed
the prisoners to be discharged from custody on giving ample bail for
their re-appearance, and proceeded to take the evidence adduced on the
summons against the priest. When the business of the day was nearly
concluded, two women were brought in, having been taken in the act of
assaulting a young woman at the market, which, at the time, was rather
crowded. The violence inflicted was very severe, and it appeared that
as the injured party was approaching the place where the others were
standing, a girl, described as being about twenty years of age,
explained, "Here she comes, the ---- ---- that has been swearing Father
Pecherine's life away." Immediately a scene similar to the one in the
morning was acted by female performers, the foremost being a large
powerful woman, the wife of a publican in a neighbouring village. The
supposed witness had been struck, kicked, and scratched; her hair
pulled, and her clothes torn, and the similarity of the two zealous
manifestations was fully evinced by the publican's wife, declaring that
"she thought" the suffering party had been swearing against the priest,
and she bitterly deplored the loss of three pounds of which her pocket
had been picked in the "scrimmage." Two other women were subsequently
arrested who _thought_ too hastily and acted too violently, but the
inciter had managed to elude detection, and it was believed that
immediately after her second exploit, she had hurried off to the railway
and gone up to Dublin with her booty. I dealt summarily with the female
prisoners, as the young woman whom they attacked was obliged to leave
immediately for Manchester, where she had procured some engagement as a
domestic. I indicted the very trifling penalty of sixpence on each
delinquent for the assault, but supplemented each conviction with two
pounds costs to the party assailed. This decision, in reference to the
costs, was extremely repugnant to the feelings of those against whom it
was awarded. It was at once pronounced to be hard, and they declared
their total inability to pay so much for a "little mistake," and their
disapproval of my judgment was greatly augmented by the alternative
which was left to their option of two months' imprisonment with hard
labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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