The police reports are frequently the most amusing part of the daily
press: they let the reader into many of the secrets of low, and, now and
then, of high life; they are redolent of the phraseology of the vulgar;
they often tickle our fancies by their humour, and sometimes touch our
sympathies by their pathos. As anecdotes of real life; daily catalogues
of droll and dismal occurrences among our fellow-citizens; pictures of
what is passing in the streets while we, who are sober sort of folks,
are dreaming in our beds; sketches of manners, and records of the
habits, feelings, and minor as well as major delinquencies of those who
breathe the same air with us; they could not fail to be interesting to
us all, were we not aware that, like the novels which are said to be
"founded on fact," their most rich and racy parts are frequently
fiction.
Let not the non-gnostic portion of our readers imagine, that if they
haunt the justice-seat of Birnie and his judicial co-mates, that they
will ever witness such pleasant, sparkling, humorous examinations as
those reported in the columns of the papers which matinally grace their
breakfast-tables. The tyro upon town will stare at this. Why, will he
say, cannot I, if I frequent the same place, see and hear what those who
are employed for the press see and hear there? He can; but the fact is,
that our police reporters are by far too clever to set down the words of
other people, without throwing in something of their own. Their plan is
to drop the duller parts of a story or a speech, and to embellish its
livelier portion--to select the tit-bits, and sauce and spice them up
sufficiently high to please the palates of the news-reading public. The
offices afford them an excellent variety of characters, which, like
skilful dramatists, they work up until they become really humorous: many
of the cases afford them capital plots, into which they cleverly
dovetail pleasant little episodes, and adhere no closer to the deposed
facts than many of our by-gone playwrights have done to the sacred page
of history. We allude only to the cases of humour which occur at the
police-offices: those reports which can be interesting only in
proportion as they are correct, are, in general, accurately given; but
the matrimonial squabbles, the Irish farçettas, and the frays between
the Dogberrys of the night and late walkers--albeit they may,
peradventure, contain the leading facts disclosed--are highly wrought up
by the fanciful powers of those who cause the public and feed themselves
at a per-line-age for the daily press. Many cases which, on hearing, are
dull and oftentimes disgusting, under the magic pens of the
police-office scribes become lively and entertaining; they are furnished
with the raw material--the metal in its ore--which they purify and
polish, until it bears little or no resemblance to what it was before it
underwent the process of manufacturing for the paper-market under their
skilful hands. There are many who delight to visit the police-offices
for the sake of seeing those beings who appear there, of whom others
only read: some of our readers may, perhaps, be bitten with a similar
fancy; but, we warrant, that they will find the actual doings at
Bow-street very different to what they had imagined; as Charles Mathews'
_Sir Harry Skelton_ says, "There's nothing at all in it; people talk a
great deal about it--but there's nothing in it, after all--nothing."
It is not often that we look in at morning or evening sitting of the
magistrates; we are content to have the police reports served up to us
with our potted beef and buttered toast at breakfast; we enjoy them,
although we feel convinced that many of them bear no more resemblance to
the affairs they are founded on, than mock-turtle to calf's-head; still,
like the soup, they are by far the most pleasant and palatable of the
two.--_Every Night Book_.
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