THE PRISONER IN THE DOCK.
The Prisoner in the Dock. By James Greenwood. (Chatto and Windus. 3s. 6d.)—The "amateur casual " has here produced an entertaining book, the result of four years' work as roving com- missioner for the Daily Telegraph "in connection with the police- courts of London." The book certainly justifies Mr. Greenwood's belief that "no one can do better than apply at the police-courts if he is desirous of making close inquiry into the ways and means, the temptations and inducements, the seemingly irresistible im- pulses of the many whose persistence in crime would make it appear that there are not a few who are born to the bad,' and can no more `change their spots' than the leopard tribe can change theirs." In ten chapters dealing with such subjects as The Police-Constable," " Advice Gratis," " Crime in the Cradle," "Able-bodied Paupers," "The Burglary Business," and "The Drink Disease " he marshals all his facts and good stories. There is, it must be allowed, even after reading Mr. Greenwood's pleasant pages, little romance in police-court scoundreldom, but there is undoubtedly some good comedy. Take the case of Peter Leary, "an elderly man, white-haired, and of mildly benevolent aspect," who was charged (and quite justly too) with attempting to pass a counterfeit florin at the bar of a public-house, and who, con- fronted with overwhelming testimony, raised his eyes piously to the ceiling and said : " Your' worship, I have an old wife at home, who I love better than my own life. May she be dead and ready for her coffin when next I set eyes on her if I have uttered to you a word of falsehood." An even better story—at least as a mixture of sordid tragedy and comedy—is that of John Phelan, a City merchant, reduced at the age of sixty-six, through inebriety, to the workhouse, who by selling his artificial teeth secures a final debauch. Certain of Mr. Greenwood's chapters, such as " The Beggar Brotherhood" and "Crime in the Cradle," contain much information of a kind that ought to be really valuable to the sociologist.
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