The dispute between Captain Jervis and the majority of the
Directors of the Great Eastern Railway has broken out in a new place. The majority sent down a clerk named Beck to collect some facts at the Railway Hotel, Harwich, or, as Captain Jervis says, to spy upon him. Captain Jervis ordered him out, and as he did not go turned him out with more or less of violence. Mr. Beck charged him before the magistrates with assault, but the Bench held that the hotel being the property of the railway company, Captain Jervis had a right to order anybody out of it. If that decision is correct, travellers should carefully avoid railway hotels. They may tread on some director's toes without knowing it, and may be ordered out summarily, or led off to execution, or some- thing equally illegal. If Captain Jervis is legally an innkeeper, as he claims to be, he must admit travellers, and the name of Mr. Beck's employers had nothing on earth to do with the matter.
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