Drunkness (often combined with disorderly conduct or incapability) was the most common things for anyone to be prosecuted for at a Metropolitan Police court in the late 1800s. In the mornings (particularly Monday morning) the cells were full of recovering drunks, nursing sore heads and bumps and bruises from falling down in the street. The vast majority of these were fined and released with a flea in their ears from the magistrate, some (those who resisted arrest or had no money to pay a fine) were sent to prison for a few days or weeks. Overwhelmingly they were poor working class men and women.

Henry Hurgill was different.

Hurgil had been found drunk and incapable, lying on the pavement outside the Dog and Partridge pub in Bow Road. PC Robert Clarke (529K) had dragged him to his feet, ascertained that he was hardly able to stand and so had escorted him back to the station to sober up.

When he was presented at Thames Police court the magistrate asked him his profession.

‘I am a clergyman’, Hurgil told him.

‘In holy orders?

‘Yes sir’.

‘And found in this beastly condition, dead drunk?’ Mr Paget demanded.

‘It don’t often happen’, apologized the clergyman, but this only brought more opprobrium down on his shoulders.

‘Often happen, sir?’, the justice thundered. ‘It ought never to happen at all. Can anything be more disgraceful than a drunken clergyman?’

Hurgil tried to say that he only drank occasionally but clearly he was in denial; he was a regular drunk and Mr Paget was disgusted by him. ‘Nothing could be more disgraceful than for a man of the prisoner’s profession to be intoxicated’, he said, and he only wished he had the power to punish him more severely than the law allowed. But his hands were tied and he could only hand down the maximum fine of 5s.

Henry couldn’t pay this however, as he was a clergyman without a ‘duty’ at present. ‘Duty!’ spluttered the justice, ‘I should hope not’. The gaoler led his prisoner back to the cells to hope that his friends had a whip round to keep him out of prison where he was bound to go if the money could not be found.

[from The Illustrated Police News etc, Saturday, October 17, 1868]