The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-08
LONDON POLICE COURTS.
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY AS SEEN
 BYAN OBSERVER.
An Interesting Letter by pr. Tuckiey-- Some Londoners Attend the Petty Courts for Amusemont.


 Courts for Amusement.
 London, Feb. 26. To the Editor of the Journal and Courier;
 It may be only a morbid curiosity which takes so many people to the Lon don police courts but at any rate all who go are human beings and have to be reckoned with as our fellow crea- lures in what they see and hear. magistrate recently "cleared the court, because, as he said, the spectators had evidently come there to be entertained, and were laughing as though the court room were the scene of a comic opera, But all the same, the majority of those who frequent such places as mere look CTS on are not half so much bent on sc rious reflection as on a cynical perhaps even morbid kind of pleasure, and this fact was testified to only yesterday at the North London police court by one who described himself as heavy rate
  plaining that such poor accommoda- tions were offered to the visiting public, frankly confessed to the magistrate that he liked to drop in once in while flor an hours amusement
 To consider the circumstances of this confession will throw light upon fea- ture of police court proceedings which has been specially provided for the ben eft of the working classes. At the opening and close of the regular busi- ness any one needing legal advice may take the witness stand and confer with a judge just as he would do in paid interview with an attorney. But woe betide the applicant who, upon cross examination. turns out to be a person who from mere stinginess, Is consulting this working mans lawyer with no ob- feet but to save his own pocket and beat the profession! Such as these, in- stead of getting advice, get sharp ju- dcial reprimand and are told to go to a lawyers office and pay honest money for the guidance they want.
 The time when the court hears com paints or sits as legal adviser is the free and easy time of the session, and 1t was in one of these periods that the North London ratepayer, who liked to drop in once in while for amusement, complained to the magistrate of the poor accommodation afforded him. There were no seats, he said, and the floor where he and others had to stand was concrete. If they couldn't be al lowed easy chairs, they, at least, might be given board floor to stand on This was his plea, and while it met with no encouragement from the man on the bench, it was at least useful in throw ing light upon the, deficiencies of Lon don's rnagisterial courts. With scarce ly an exception they are wretched holes as to ventilation, miserably inadequate in dimensions and in their arrange ments show about as much regard for the visiting public as though the Visl- ting public were only cattle.
 But in big hard place like London if doesn't require much of a stage for the enactment of tragedy or to show llp the heroicsof life, and the London courts furnish as much serious matter of these two kinds as the London thea ters Perhaps, too, they will at times run a close race with the theaters i'll purveying to popular amusement In the North London court a week ago girl of thirteen was charged as an m corrigible and Miss Sarah Graham, the reputed mother of the child told, with convulsive sobs, a story of t1lial deVo- ton which isn't often paralled, and, happily, doesn't often need to be. Be- cause the child, to the knowledge of the police. had proved to be beyond decent control she was bound, she said, to tell 2 secret which she had kept to her own disrepute for ten years This girl was moi her child but her fathers by an un- fortunate woman who was dead, and to save her father from trouble and dis grace. she had taken the shame of this illegitimate offspring upon herself and through all the years since had worked hard to keep the girl and make her good. Very properly the magistrate, with something of gurgle in his throat, pronounced such conduct noble, and being convinced of the truth of her story, relieved her of further responsi- biity for the 1ncOrllSlDle younSStei' But there was heart breaking scene when the woman had to let go of the girl. for, as she said, she loved her and didn't like to give her up.
 The London flower girls contradict in their appearance all our preconceptlons of what flower girls ought to be, foi generally they are coarse creatures With baggy forms, with gin reddened faces and with a tongue as foul under excite ment as that of q Billingsgate fish Wite But some of them are vertable heToines in spite of their forbidding manners and after hearing the story of one Wrc had been charged with plying her trade to the obstruction and annoyance ot pe- destrians, it will be easier for some peo- ple to look considerably upon these street -hawkers of floral beauty. She was greatly, poor thing, in need Of mon ey She had just had to borrow wha' was necessary, as she expressed it. 'tc mt one child under the clay" Another was down with the measles and hel husband was in a hospital for con