226 QUARTER SESSIONS. 



He was also a regular visiter at the public houses during those hours 

 when, according to law, they should be closed, and an assiduous looker- 

 out after young unmarried women, who bid fair to become mothers. 

 Short weights and bad meat were an abomination in his e}'es, and 

 woe to the wight that he chanced to meet drunk. Constable Jerroms 

 was also tax-gatherer and over-looker of the market j would allow 

 nothing to be sold on the Sabbath but milk and mackerel, and fined 

 all he could who did not wash their pavements at least once a week. 

 He was a Whig, and how he managed to keep in office, so often as he 

 had crossed the Tory justice, was a matter of wonder ; for it was no- 

 thing uncommon for the magistrate to vent his ill-will upon the con- 

 stable, instead of the culprit he had summoned. He however contrived 

 to furnish himself with plenty of work, although he had not a few in 

 his jurisdiction who set his power at defiance. 



Amongst those who were seldom free from warrant or summons, 

 stood foremost old Joe Straton, a man that contrived to pick up his 

 living by selling a lotion, which he manufactured, and alike prescribed 

 to man and horse. " No cure no pay," was Joe's motto; but as he 

 seldom worked a cure, he contrived to get the pay as he could. He 

 was always on the look-out for accidents, mounted on his donkey, and 

 smoking his pipe ; with a large bottle of the infallible in each pocket, 

 he would wander round the country in quest of misfortunes. Did he 

 meet a man grinning with the tooth-ache, out came his bottle, and 

 he persuaded him to take a mouthful, and hold it in until the pain was 

 gone away. And if he passed a horseman, whose hack was broken- 

 kneed or had the spasms, the same medicine was recommended. In- 

 deed, he used to assert, "that it was the finest thing under the sun, 

 and would cure any thing, if they would but take plenty of it." 

 " Broken legs, club feet, blindness, dumb, deaf, mad, man, horse, or 

 dog," he would undertake to cure with his royal lotion. 



The resident Esculapius was another conspicuous character, who 

 killed more than he cured, and had studied until he was nearly mad. 

 His principal hobby was in following a theory, which he swore was 

 practicable, and by which he could bring the dead to life. This oc- 

 cupied his thoughts day and night, and was always his topic, when 

 he chose the subject of conversation. " Let me but have a man/' 

 said he, " not quite dead, but past all recovery, and have another 

 strong person to assist me, just before he expires, I could then, by 

 bending him double, force the real elixir of life from his back. One 

 drop one small drop of the matter thus extracted, would restore a 

 dead body to life." Where he picked up this wild idea, no one could 

 ever learn ; but so completely did he believe in it, that he had vainly 

 offered twenty pounds to any one who would submit to the trial ; 

 but, as he could never be persuaded to pay the money first, his plan 

 could not be executed. He had, also, a particular antipathy against 

 his creditors, and seldom paid a bill without being summoned, and 

 was, of course, well known in the justice-room. 



Jackey Rattles was another character familiar to Sir Charles ; but 

 his crime was nearly always the same, that being, getting drunk, and 

 calling the constable " bumble-foot," on account of the dimensions of 

 his understanding. Seldom a justice day arrived that Jackey had not 



