Tag: gentleman

An uppity ticket inspector at Cannon Street

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As I was sitting on a Great Northern train at Finsbury Park four excited GN employees got off and went in separate directions. They looked pumped up for a day at work, which seemed a little odd given the flak that the railways has received in the past 12 months.  GN has frequently cancelled trains usually citing either a signaling problem (beyond their control) or a lack of drivers (which certainly isn’t). Here though were four happy employees about to start their daily shifts. As my wife pointed out though, they weren’t drivers, or even guards; they were the ticket inspectors about to embark on a day of flushing out fare dodgers.

I appreciate that the GN have to protect themselves against individuals that try to ride their network without paying but I think I’d prefer it if they actually ran all the trains they advertise on their timetable and trained up some of these eager inspectors for that purpose.

Nevertheless, the inspectors on Great Northern trains (and others no doubt) are always polite and friendly, unlike William Hill, who worked for the South Eastern Railway in 1876.

Hill was a ticket collector at Cannon Street in the City of London and on 13 April he was checking tickets at the station when a gentleman named James Herbert Smith approached him.  Mr Smith was a regular traveller and held a first class season ticket from Blackheath to central London. As he passed through the barrier Hill demanded to see his ticket. Smith fumbled in his pockets but couldn’t find it. He explained he must have misplaced and handed the man his calling card, so that he could be contacted. That, he felt, should be sufficient.

It wasn’t. Within moments Hill ‘seized him by the collar, and turned him around and stopped him’, again demanding to see his season ticket. Mr Smith tried a different pocket and this time found his ticket. This should have satisfied the collector but it didn’t. Instead of letting the passenger continue on to work Hill insisted that he accompany him to the ticket office. Smith obliged but told the man he felt it was entirely unnecessary (which it was of course) and when they got there the clerk immediately recognized him and he was allowed to carry on with his day.

Later Mr Smith asked for an apology from the ticket collector or his employer but since none was forthcoming he acquired a summons to bring him before a magistrate. On the 20 April Hill was set in the dock at Mansion House Police court to be questioned by the Lord Mayor about his actions. The railway denied any wrongdoing by their employee and provided him with a solicitor, Mr Mortimer. The defense was simply that Hill had a right to see the season ticket and was ‘merely doing his duty’.

The Lord Mayor evidently thought that the collector had overstepped the mark and acted unreasonably. An assault had clearly occurred and had the man apologized as Mr Smith requested, he would have let it go without further comment. Since the railway and the collector had been so determined to maintain their position on this he found Hill guilty of assault and fined him 20s.

One imagines that the relationship between the collector and this particular passenger in future will have been at best frosty, since they would have seen each other most mornings of the week. The case reminded Hill that he was merely a lowly employee of a service industry and, more importantly, several steps below the gentleman whose honesty he had the audacity to question. In future he would have to restrain himself  because a subsequent complaint might cause his employers to replace him.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, April 21, 1876]

Drew Gray is the joint author of Jack and the Thames Torso Murders, published by Amberley Books in June 2019. Details available here

Hardly the perfect ‘gentleman’: a waiter is ‘coshed’ by an impatient toff.

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The Café Royal, by William Orpen, 1912)

It was not the sort of behaviour one expected to see at the Café Royal on Regent’s Street, so other diners must have been shocked when Henry Fitzgerald rose from his seat and smashed a glass bottle over the head of a waiter.

As another waiter ran to intervene the assailant warned him to back off:

‘If you come near me I will smash one on your head as well’, he threatened.

The police were called and Fitzgerald was led away, admitting his crime but muttering darkly that the fellow had deserved it for his insolence.

At Marlborough Street Police court Henry Fitzgerald gave his address as 75 Chester Square in Begravia, his victim was Otto Kettler, a German national living in London and working at the café. The case reveals the cosmopolitan nature of late Victorian London: Kettler was supported in court by a fellow waiter (Fritz Temme – also most probably German or Austrian) and his manager M. Eugene Lacoste who was certainly French.

According to Fitzgerald’s defense counsel Mr Abrahams his client had been provoked. The waiter had not served him quickly enough, telling him instead that he was busy at another table. The policeman (PC Walters 187C) deposed that the man wasn’t drunk, just ‘excited’; perhaps he objected to being made to wait for his drinks by a foreigner, perhaps (more likely even) he was a just a very rude and self-entitled oaf.

The lawyer knew his client was in the wrong and offered (on his behalf)  a half-hearted apology and compensation for any harm done. Mr Newton, the magistrate, was in no mood for financial settlements however; a man had been assaulted violently with a glass bottle and Mr Fitzgerald – regardless of his fashionable address and clothes – would face trial at the Old Bailey.

However, I’m not sure it came to that. No Henry Fitzgerald appears in the printed records of the Bailey. Perhaps it was not published in the Proceedings or perhaps he was acquitted, but I rather suspect he came to an agreement outside of court – a hefty financial one at that – to keep his ‘good name’ out of the criminal courts.

The press did enjoy this fall from grace. The Hampshire Telegraph reported the incident as an amusing anecdote commenting that ‘after this we shall not be particularly anxious to be called “a gentleman” – it will sound roughish’.

Quite.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, October 26, 1880; Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc , Saturday, November 6, 1880]

A ‘trumpery’ case of dogs and a broken umbrella

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Most of those occupying the dock at the London Police courts were, broadly defined, members of the city’s working classes. When persons of a ‘higher station’ did appear it was usually (but not always) as complainants or witnesses (sometimes to the defendants’ character). However, in May 1869 two gentlemen were involved in an action against each other.

Mr Ripley, of Jermyn Street, charged Sir Frederick Johnson with ‘unlawfully allowing a ferocious dog to go at large unmuzzled’. It was a specific offence and the sitting justice, Mr Tyrwhitt, had to decide on the balance of the evidence presented whether their was case to answer.

Ripley presented his own side of things in court while Sir Frederick was represented by his counsel, Mr Edward Lewis. Mr Ripely told the court that he was walking his dog in Piccadilly when an unaccompanied dog attacked his own animal ‘in a violent manner’. The attack was unprovoked and he was obliged to beat the other dog off with the only thing he had to hand, which was his umbrella. In the process the ‘brolly was damaged.

He walked on and asked if anyone owned the stray animal, no one did but one person informed him that the dog belonged to Sir Frederick Johnson, who lived at Arlington Street. a smart address just off Piccadilly. Ripley called at the Sir Frederick’s home but was not received. Frustrated he returned hime and , like all good Englishmen, penned an angry letter of complaint.

He soon received a reply, which said that Sir Frederick was sorry that Ripley’s dog had ‘been maltreated by his dog, who, being a very quiet animal, must have been first attacked, and therefore…had got what it deserved’.

This presumably infuriated Ripley further who wrote an immediate response, telling the knight that while his dog ‘was not wanting in pluck, it had never attacked another dog except in self-defence’.

The affair was embarrassing to both parties and showed the ‘better sort’ in a bad light. Mr Lewis said his client was disappointed that Ripley had not accepted his apology but had preceded to law by way of a summons. It was unnecessary and unproven on the evidence presented. He brought several witnesses who testified that Sir Frederick’s dog was not ‘ferocious’ and not uncontrolled. The dog itself was exhibited and seems, to the court reporter at least, to be ‘a good-tempered and docile animal’.

The magistrate was equally cross that this trivial affair had reached his courtroom. He concluded that it was ‘too much to say that because Sir F. Johnson’s dog came into collision with another dog, that it was a ferocious dog within the meaning of the act’. The case was ‘a trumpery one’ he finished, Sir Frederick had apologised and that was all a gentleman could be expected to do. The ‘dog had received a good character’ and so he dismissed the case.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, May 12, 1869]

The ‘stupid, obstinate, and unreasonable’ man on the Notting Hill omnibus.

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William Rogers was a gentleman who lived in Shepherd’s Bush in the London suburbs and as such, he was as far from being the usual sort of occupant of a police court dock as one could get. Yet in April 1899 he found himself before the magistrate at the West London Police court charged with fare dodging.

The General Omnibus Company had applied for (and obtained) a summons and in court were able to prove that Rogers had been traveling on a ‘bus from Notting Hill Gate to Uxbridge Road Station, and had paid the penny fare.

However, ‘because the omnibus stopped  a yard or so from the bridge that crosses the railway he refused to get out, and travelled on to Shepherd’s-bush’. At this point the conductor asked him to pay the balance of the fare owing, another penny, which he refused.

Mr Rogers cut a frustrated figure in court. He thought it ‘contemptible’ that the Company had brought the matter to court for such a trifling amount and said the vehicle had not ‘pulled up at the ordinary stooping point’. He had waited inside for the driver to move it to the station only for it to continue to Shepherd’s Bush. Since he had not had the opportunity to alight, he wasn’t prepared to pay the excess fare.

The GEO had employed a solicitor to contest the case, presumably on the grounds that establishing precedent was as important as recovering a penny fare. Their solicitor pointed out that ‘there was no obligation on the part of the Company to stop their omnibus at any particular place’. If Mr Rogers had made a request the driver would have complied with it, but he hadn’t.

Mr Lane, the sitting justice at West London agreed.

He told Rogers that there ‘was nothing in law or reason, saying that the Company need not do more than carry a passenger to the station. It did not matter a button where the omnibus was stopped. He ordered the Defendant to pay the penny fare, with two guineas costs, and described his conduct as stupid, obstinate, and unreasonable’.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, April 26, 1899]