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
The head-quarters of the society were in an obscure country town in an
inland county of Ireland, and there the _materiel_ of the association
was seized, according to my recollection, in April, 1844. There was
found at the source of their system, a chest of very elegant
manufacture, and containing, in compartments, admirably executed
counterfeits of the public seals of Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Sligo,
Drogheda, Dublin, Liverpool, Bristol, Hamburg, Havre, and New York.
These were used to seal forged certificates and attestations, which were
transmitted for use to more populous places; but the seals were
cunningly kept in a remote, and for a long time, an unsuspected
locality.
CHAPTER XI.
CARRIAGE COURT CASES--DUBLIN CARMEN.
When I assumed, by an arrangement with my colleagues, the regulation of
the public vehicles, and the disposal of complaints in the Carriage
Court at the Head office, announced my inflexible determination to
cancel the license of any driver who was proved to have been drunk while
in charge of his vehicle on the public thoroughfare required the fullest
proof of the offence, to whom I awarded the highest punishment. I am
happy to say that such cases were by no means frequent, but there were
some, and they generally occurred at funerals. A Rathfarnham carman was
summoned before me and was convicted, not only on the clearest evidence,
but by his own admission. He was about my own age, and I remembered that
when I was about eighteen years old, I was one day swimming in a
quarry-hole at Kimmage, where the water was at least twenty feet deep,
and was suddenly seized with very severe cramps in my left leg. I kept
myself afloat and shouted for help, but I was unable to make for the
bank, when a young fellow who had been swimming, and was dressing
himself, hastily threw off his clothes, plunged into the water, and
pushed me before him to the side of the quarry. He saved my life, and I
now beheld him in the person of the convicted carman. I related the
circumstance from the magisterial bench, and then cancelled his licence,
and remarked to those who were assembled, that when I treated the
preserver of my life so strictly, others could not expect the slightest
lenity at my hands if they transgressed in the same way. The poor fellow
left the court in great dejection, and when my duties for the day were
over, I dropped in to my friend Colonel Browne, the Commissioner of
Police, and mentioned the circumstance to him. He said, "You cancelled
his licence, but I can give him a new one, and he shall get it
to-morrow." The licence was accordingly renewed, without causing me the
slightest dissatisfaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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