ARGUS 327 



the office ; hence the insertion of the calumny, which we 

 are sure has caused more pain and annoyance to us than 

 it can have done to the object of its attack/ In a subse- 

 quent issue of the ' Sporting Times ' Dr. Shorthouse stated 

 that ' as soon as we recovered sufficiently to know what 

 we were doing, we wrote off to Sir Joseph Hawley to dis- 

 claim all knowledge of so scandalous an attack, but not to 

 repudiate our legal responsibility for its appearance in these 

 columns.' In the article in which the statement occurs, 

 he says : ' The letter we sent to Sir Joseph Hawley, which 

 had a printed heading with the motto of this paper, its 

 title, &c. Mr. Straight called for the letter to read it to 

 the magistrate, and, instead of beginning at the commence- 

 ment of the written portion, read the heading, and, as 

 he did so, prefaced the reading of it by saying, " This is 

 the apology," and went on with " High Toryism, High 

 Churchism, High Farming, and Old Port for Ever." 

 General Peel burst out laughing and nearly fell off his 

 chair, muttering something to his companions. We thought 

 he said, " A rum way that of beginning an apology." ' 

 There was a committal, and the trial of Joseph Henry 

 Shorthouse took place at the Central Criminal Court on 

 Wednesday, December 15, 1869. Mr. Serjeant Ballantine, 

 specially retained, and Mr. F. H. Lewis, instructed by 

 Messrs. Lewis & Lewis, appeared as counsel for the prose- 

 cution. Dr. Shorthouse defended himself — and fulfilled 

 the proverb. The Duke of Beaufort and General Peel 

 were subpoenaed as witnesses and gave evidence. The 

 sentence was a fine of 50/. and imprisonment for three 

 months. At that time the gentlemen of the sporting 

 Press were apparently a somewhat divided community. 

 In ' John Corlett, calling himself a journalist,' a derisive 

 line in the report of the trial in ' Bell's Life,' it is easy to 

 perceive how the cat jumped. At first, under the elastic 

 conditions of his imprisonment as a first-class misde- 

 meanant, Dr. Shorthouse was enabled to realise the mean- 

 ing of a stay in what a later inmate has described as ' happy 

 Holloway.' On visitors' days his friends rallied round him, 

 and, according to the accounts of those meetings which 

 regularly appeared in the ' Sporting Times/ there was on 

 those festive occasions no lack of 'light refreshments/ 

 The late Mr. Willes (< Argus' of the 'Morning Post'), 

 who had more than once writhed under the pen of Dr. 



