London Police Courts. feature would scarcely distinguish him from many of his successors on the bench, but he is remembered as the editor of Hawkins' "Pleas of the Crown," and of numerous Reports. It was while the court was in Hatton Garden that the father of the present Sir George Lewis, whose offices are still in Ely Place, laid the foundation of the business which Sergeant Ballantine describes with loving care, and to which he, Sergeant Parry, Mr. Montague Williams, and other mem bers of the race of Chaffanbrass, owe their rather doubtful fame. A singular thing about the Old Bailey, the final cause of the police courts, and which once shared with them the favors of a certain class of counsel more largely than now, is the blight which seems to fall upon its practi tioners. Whether a legacy of death hangs round those grey walls, or that the shadows of a hundred years fall like a pall upon the living, the fact is unquestionable. Except parts of Erskine's closely reasoned, but rather turgid speech for Hardy, and Sergeant Shee's de fence of Palmer — an admirable piece of rea soning and eloquence (the peroration is one of the most beautiful and pathetic passages in the language) — and neither Erskine nor Shee was an Old Bailey man, none of the speeches delivered there survive — can be quoted as literature. Omnes illacrimabiles Urgentur ignitique longa Nocte. They are buried in "A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk .... A universe of death which Cod by curse Created, evil for evil only good. Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things." Although the new police courts did much to relieve the mischief which led to their creation, grave evils remained. This was partly the fault of the criminal law — even
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now, as Sir Edward Pry called it, a thing of "threads and patches," but then still more defective. For instance, it was not an of fense to receive cash, or bank-notes, or bills, knowing them to be stolen, as for that pur pose they were not regarded as chattels. According to Colquhoun, there, were up wards of three thousand receivers in the metropolis alone. The thefts, in small sums, from houses, shops, warehouses, etc., were something like seven hundred thousand pounds a year. An immense trade was done in counterfeit coin, two persons to gether being able to produce from two hun dred to three hundred pounds of base silver coin in six days. As usual, the unfortunate attorney was the scapegoat. " No sooner," says Colquhoun, " does a magistrate commit a hackneyed thief, or receiver of stolen goods, a coiner or dealer in base money, or a criminal charged with any other fraud or offense punishable by law, than recourse is immediately had to some disreputable at torney, whose mind is made up and prepared to practice every trick and device which can defeat the mode of substantial justice." Tindal might well speak of " Christ, our attorney, suffering for us." The plunder from ships in the Thames alone was so enormous — nearly half a million a year — that in 1798 a marine office, with two magistrates, was established at Wapping New Stairs. At first it confined itself al most wholly to offenses committed on the river or connected with the stores in arse nals, but gradually its jurisdiction extended until it became the present Thames Police Court. The glories of Ratcliff Highway have faded, but readers of De Quincey's immortal history of the murders of Mar and William son, can form an idea of what it was eighty years ago, when the largest ships discharged up stream, and the purlieus of the docks were " full of strange oaths," and the haunt of sailors of every race. Then, and until the advent of the large cargo steamers and short
