Tag: default

Lessons from history : we don’t want your Chlorinated chicken America

Cock fighting

The crowd that had gathered around Thomas Masters on Houndsditch one early evening in August 1867 looked angry. Angry enough at least to worry one passerby who took it upon himself to find out what was going on.

As he pushed his way through he saw an old man holding a cockerel. The bird was dripping blood and had lost a lot of its feathers along with its claws and spurs, but was alive. The man seemed drunk and the crowd was berating him.

The ‘good Samaritan’ (a Mr Moore) decided to act quickly lest the crowd used violence against their quarry. He called a policeman over and had the elderly man arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty.

The next day the man was brought before the Lord Mayor at Mansion House police court. He gave his name and admitted being a little drunk that day. He said he had clipped the bird’s spurs and claws, and removed some feathers ‘to improve his appearance and make him look younger’. One wonders why he would go to such drastic lengths, was trying to use the bird for cock fighting (illegal by the 1860s having been banned in 1835) or was he hoping to sell him?

The Lord Mayor fined him 5s for the cruelty but Masters had no money so was sent to prison for three days in default.

I think this story tells us that the British have a low tolerance for animal cruelty, at least when it is flaunted in front of us. The RSPCA was founded quite early in the nineteenth century, in 1824, and long before a charity to protect children from cruelty. We have been a nation of animal lovers for a very long time and pets are much more closely integrated into out way of life than they are in many other countries.

I think that the Americans might do well to remember this as they make sweeping statements about post-Brexit trade deals. When it comes to animal welfare the States do not have standards that are anything like as rigorous as ours or the European Union’s. Chlorinated chicken may be safe but that is to miss the point. British consumers want to know that their food is both safe and – to a large degree at least – ethically sourced. We may not ask too many questions about where our meat comes from at first, especially if it cheaper. But campaigners will soon let the public know if animals were being abused to put cheap food on our tables and then, I believe, a very British sense of fair play will demand that our supermarkets source produce elsewhere.

So the Americans can demand whatever they like in terms of access to UK markets for their agriculture, it doesn’t mean we are going to buy it. We’ve had consumer boycotts before (in the Apartheid years for example) and the US might soon learn that we are capable of saying ‘no thank you’ to a vast range of American goods.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, August 22, 1867]

An excess of zeal as a man tries to avoid the shame of a court appearance.

qv alic 4

This is one of those unremarkable cases, which, at the same time, serves to illustrate how the police courts of Victorian London actually operated. Most of the time the press does not discuss the various functions of the court. Partly this was because it is unlikely that the reading public were interested but also presumably because most people knew anyway. After all these were popular arenas for negotiating social issues and held few secrets for most of the people of Victoria’s capital.

On Thursday 24 June 1880 a number of people were brought to the Worship Street Police court charged with keeping dogs without paying for license to do so. We might have forgotten but until 1987 anyone owning a dog had to buy an annual license.  In 1880 this cost 7s 6d (equivalent to about £25 today) so while not a huge sum it was still a cost on the stretched income of the workingman. So it is not surprising that large numbers of people tried to avoid it.

This meant that periodically the capital’s police courts were filled with defaulters, most of whom were expected to pay up on the spot or face a possible fine and/or imprisonment if they couldn’t pay. Being sent to gaol for not having a dog license was not impossible but it was extremely unlikely.

On this occasion one man seemed keen to pay what he owed but then get out of court quickly and without drawing attention to the fact that he’d been there. This was understandable; no one wants his neighbours to know that he has been in court or in trouble with the law, it was potentially embarrassing. So he popped his 5s fine on the ledge of the dock and tried to leave by the main entrance. A warrant officer stopped him and told him he had to go out by the door marked ‘prisoners’, which he was reluctant to do.

When the fellow refused point blank the officer picked up his coins and shoved the man towards the exit door. However, the poor man clung to the dock and continued to refuse to be expelled via the prisoners’ exit. Two more officers arrived, and a police sergeant, and a struggle ensured which ended in an unseemly wrestling match on the court floor.

Finally the man was dragged out of court by his collar and thrown into the street. If he wanted to avoid attention he’d failed quite spectacularly but it was the behaviour of the police and court officers that upset Mr Bushby, the presiding magistrate.

In the afternoon he called the sergeant and officers before him and upbraided them. He told them that they had exceeded their authority and had shown too much ‘zeal’. Given the minor nature of the man’s offence there was no need for rough stuff. He was not supposed to leave his money on the ledge nor was the warrant officers supposed to pick it up from there. They should have told him to pay it to the ‘proper officer’ and, had he refused, they were required to let him leave. There was no requirement that he be imprisoned in default of payment and the proper procedure was for a distress warrant to have been issued if he continued to default on payment.

The man had been injured in the kerfuffle and Mr Bushby wanted it made clear to the officers that he didn’t want to see that sort of incident in his courtroom ever again, and he wrote a letter to the police inspector for K Division to place that on record.

So this uninteresting case becomes interesting (to me at least) because it shows how the courts operated when a fine was due to be paid. It also reveals that there was an exit designated for prisoners (or anyone presumably who had been charged, regardless of whether they came in from the street or from the cells). These were multi-purpose courts; they didn’t simply deal with ‘crime’ and we can all appreciate that some of those that found themselves there were hardly ‘criminals’ by any measure of that term. So making them walk out of a door marked ‘prisoners’ was probably likely to upset those that felt they had done little to deserve the blemish on their character.

[from The Standard, Friday, June 25, 1880]

A Scots Grey is charged…

ScotsGreys

Lady Elizabeth Butler, Scotland Forever, (1881)

A porter at Shoreditch station was walking along the platform when he saw a man on the tracks. It was about 10.30 at night and the passenger was running down the slope at the end of the platform on to the rails. The porter called out a warning and when this was ignored he quickly ran to alert the signalman so he could stop the incoming train.

The man on the tracks was behaving reactively, jumping and running between the lines and he only stopped when he saw the train approaching. Fortunately for him the driver was able to halt the locomotive just in time just as the young man threw himself of it.

The porter helped the man up from the track and it soon became obvious that the man was drunk. He was arrested by a policeman and held overnight in the cells before being taken before Mr Hannay at Marlborough Street Police court the next day.

The man gave his name as John McIntyre and appeared dressed in his army uniform as a private in the Scots Grey, he was charged with being drunk and disorderly and with attempting to take his own life. McIntyre was too old to have been involved in the famous charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo (so famously rendered in oils by Lady Elizabeth Butler just a few years after this incident) but many would associate him with the heroism of his regiment. He denied trying to kill himself but admitted being drunk and out of control, so much so that he couldn’t remember anything.

The magistrate  (perhaps mindful of McIntyre’s military background) was sympathetic and accepted that his actions had been merely stupid not suicidal. As a result he fined him 10s. The soldier didn’t have the money to pay his fine however, and so the gaoler led him away to start a default sentence of seven days in prison. Hopefully that was the end of his troubles and he could return to the Greys.

Two years after the private’s personal disgrace the Greys were renamed  as the 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys), making the nickname they had enjoyed for so long official. McIntyre may never have seen battle since the battalion enjoyed 50 years of peace between the Crimean War and the second Anglo-Boer War in 1899. If he had gone to the Cape then John may have seen service in the relief of Kimberly and the battle of Diamond Hill. By then he would have been an old trooper, and perhaps – in 1875 – he was simply sick and tired of the tales of heroism told by veterans of Waterloo and the Crimea, and bored at having nothing much to do. If you signed up for glory and all you got was barrack room banter, endless parades and drilling, and mucking out the horses perhaps we can understand  his drunken brush with death.

[from The Morning Post, Friday 22 October, 1875]