A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSE
A square room painted white and fitted with dull red benches and a
raised platform; on the platform the magistrate, a weary-looking man
with faded hair and wrinkled face, and eyes screened by gold-rimmed
spectacles. As he sits, listlessly playing with his papers, apparently
indifferent to the pleadings of the prisoners, or the garrulous
stormings of nervous witnesses, he seems to suggest a tired speculator
reading the first official details of his own bankruptcy. Occasionally
he raises his voice and a hushed court hears, “All right, get down now,”
and a witness, only just sufficiently recovered from nervousness to have
reached the period of unintelligible verbosity, gets down with a sulky
jerk and proud bearing. All Jamaican negroes speak a language officially
known as English. From the fact that it is alleged that he can
understand the unbroken flow of their fearful eloquence, the magistrate
must be counted a man of consummate linguistic ability. In front of the
platform is a huge table, at which all the whites and yellow-whites of
the district are foregathered to witness the administration of justice.
At the head of the table, and at the feet of the magistrate, is the
clerk; an ancient man with the remains of a weak voice, and a habit of
looking over his steel eye-glasses in the approved scholastic style. He
is an important, if not a picturesque personage. The decorative touch is
afforded to the court by the appearance of the inspector of police. He
sits at another corner of the large table behind a great white helmet
carefully placed on the summit of a large pile of important blue papers,
in the proper crown and cushion fashion. The helmet is the police
inspector’s shield and guard, and badge of office. It is an inflexible
example of the power and nobility of the law; it is an object on which
the prisoners may fasten their eyes, should they be unable to gaze for
ever into the inscrutable depths of the spectacles of the presiding
magistrate. Compared with the magistrate, the clerk and the inspector of
police, the other whites and yellow-whites are unimportant. Planters and
tradesmen, and commission agents, they lounge gracelessly round the
table, fingering their riding whips or pulling at the ends of their
scrubby beards. The table marks the boundary line of the charmed circle,
into which only the whites, and the not very yellow-whites, may enter
with impunity. Beyond, in the public benches, grouped carelessly in
picturesque disorder, are the natives. A sweltering crowd it is,
throbbing with silence, just as the tropical midday throbs with heat.
The prisoner at the bar, a ragged, unkempt negro, whose cleaner father
must have come from the malarial swamps behind the Gold Coast, is
answering to a charge of stealing, feloniously and with malicious
intent, one and a half pairs of meat known and described (in Jamaica and
elsewhere) as pig’s trotters. As we entered, the prisoner at the bar was
tearing at the mangy patches of his mud-coloured hair, and pleading “I
no took them master, sir, yer honor, I no took them; I ask to be set
free. I no see them, I no eat them, ’fore God in ’eaven.”
It was interesting to watch the varied emotions playing over the
expressive faces of the watching crowd of the man’s enemies and friends.
Enemies first, because the natives seemed as cruelly thoughtless, and
quite as vicious, as the ladies in any balcony at a Spanish bull-ring.
When the monotonous mumble of the magistrate has finished, only the
pleased smile of the prisoner told us the news of his acquittal. To the
unexperienced ear, the magistrate’s mumble was just as incomprehensible
as any of the jargon of the witnesses themselves.
The next two or three cases were concerned with the question of
paternity, and in each instance the plaintive lady received the
consolation of eighteen-pence a week for a period of years. Then
followed a charge of assault. One lady had beaten another with an
implement remotely resembling a carpenter’s stool. On each side there
were many witnesses and, apparently, many liars. One coquette in a West
Indian gown of yellow, green, blue, and pink, ventured to repeat to the
court some of the vulgar abuse which, in her opinion, contributed to,
and completely justified, the assault referred to. Hers was an eloquent
and ingenious pleading. First, she swore before God and Heaven that the
assault was not an assault at all, “Ester did not lay a finger on the
woman”; then she justified the assault in language which stirred even
the lethargic magistrate. “Such language will do your friend no good; it
only serves to show that you are a low abandoned woman"--he ventured to
remark in a low, even monotone.
“So’s she, she is low and abandoned too; she is ... and she said"....
The woman was on her metal, and desired above all things to incriminate
the enemy of her friend.
In the end someone was fined eight shillings and costs. Who it was I
never knew; but my impression is that it was either a witness or the
police constable.
Two young and innocent-looking boys were charged by a one-legged baker
with stealing a loaf, value one penny. The baker was evidently a man of
parts, one of which was religion. He kissed the book with a vivacious
reverence and commenced, “Your Honour and gentlemen:--Them two boys
Simon Fogarty and Thomas Smiff was in my bakery on the pretence of
executing a purchase. I ask them to lift a board in order that I may
take up bread enough to supply them. They become impertinent. I rebuke
them. They only laugh and say I too much fool. I again rebuke them, and
then I get over the counter in order to chastise them. They fly; but I
seize one, Simon
[Illustration: A NEGRO NURSE WITH CHINESE CHILDREN, JAMAICA]
Fogarty, and he struggle so hard that I oblige to call in the aid of
Constable Perkin, who shall come before your Honour and say I speak the
truth only. When I go back to my shop I find that one loaf had gone. I
run into the street and see Thomas Smiff with my loaf to his lips. I
call witness to see him also, and they tell you how the wicked boy, who
is the pest of the street, eat my loaf for which I receive no payment.”
The police constable confirmed the baker’s statement, and the magistrate
looked bored to extinction. It is just the police court in which that
ancient suburban drama “Black justice” might be performed with
propriety.
In spite of the eloquence of the baker and the accurate testimony of the
police constable, those boys might have been let off with a caution;
but, just as justice was looking its weakest, the police inspector rose,
and, placing one hand gracefully upon the summit of his helmet,
addressed the court.
“May I venture to say that those boys are the most incorrigible rascals
in the district. They do no work; they are dirty, lazy, and a terror to
the neighbourhood. They give more trouble to the police than any other
man or woman on the island.” The quality of mercy is immediately
strained, and although the pardon flows out (mainly because the baker
requests it) the dregs remain in a sentence to come up for judgment when
called upon to do so.
The boys jointly attempt to hide a wide and intelligent grin behind the
battered remains of what must once have been a felt hat.
And so the court goes on.
The merry hum of the day insects mingles with the shrill tones of
singing birds, and the chatter of anxious litigants in the yard below.
The magistrate continues his anxious calculations, and the clerk is
assiduous in his endeavours to balance a pair of rusty pince-nez on a
nose obviously too slippery with sweat. The police inspector frowns
round the room from behind the majestic screen of his helmet, and the
black usher shouts silence, or swears a witness after the usual caution
of “Take se bible in you righ’ ’and"....
[Illustration: TROPICAL RAIN]
THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE