MORNINGS AT BOW STREET.
| "Sweet Birds that love the noise of Folly, Most musical, most melancholy" |
MORNINGS AT BOW STREET:
A Selection
OF THE MOST HUMOROUS AND ENTERTAINING REPORTS WHICH
HAVE APPEARED IN THE "MORNING HERALD."
BY J. WIGHT,
BOW-STREET REPORTER TO THE "MORNING HERALD."
WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
"They did gather humours of men dayly wherever they came."
Aubrey MS.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET.
1875.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
This volume consists of certain of those Bow Street Reports which haveappeared from time to time, during the last three years, in the columns ofthe Morning Herald. The very favourable notice which they then met withfrom the public, has induced the author to select some of the mostdescriptive and amusing of them, and to present them here again, with somenecessary enlargements and corrections, and in a somewhat more finishedstate than the rapid demands of a daily paper allowed.
In their present form, therefore, they assume the more permanent characterwhich they have been thought to deserve; the convenience of the reader isconsulted, and his imagination very effectively aided, by the Designs ofMr. George Cruikshank, whose rare comic pencil has been most successfullyemployed in illustrating them.
[Pg vi]The chief quality of these little narratives is certainly "pour fairerire" in common with all other books of facetiæ; but in some importantrespects they differ from books of that class, which for the most partconsist of fancied and fictitious scenes and characters; and of humourconcocted in the brain of the writer: for in the work now presented, thedramatis personæ are actual existences, and the scenes real occurrences;affording specimens of our national humour which is perhaps to be foundgenuine only among the uncultivated classes of society. In copying these,the author's chief aim has been to preserve the character and spirit ofhis originals.
The reader is placed, without personal sacrifice, amidst the various andsomewhat repulsive groups of a police office, and made acquainted with thestates and conditions of human nature, with which, from the sympathy dueto the more unfortunate part of the species, he should not be entirelyignorant; it is by such means alone that the prosperous and orderlyportion of society can know what passes among the destitute and disorderlyportion of it;[Pg vii] that they can rightly appreciate the advantages theyenjoy, and the value and importance of these particular institutions oftheir country.
It has been objected to this publication, that it perpetuates the ridiculeand disgrace