there was a list of some thirty cases, all
created by the same offence, the uttering of
counterfeit coin. The performances in the Old
Court were of a more miscellaneous character.
The witnesses in waiting formed a more
decided miscellany. For their use there
were some benches provided, and several
apple, ginger-beer, and cake stalls; very old
establishments no doubt, for some of them
I could almost identify, to a nut, as having
formed a part of the Old Bailey twenty years
ago. There were old women gathered in
knots, young women in pairs, men single
and in sets. There was a representative, I
think, of every grade of London life between
decent poverty and destitution; and there
were many there assembled who were eye-
witnesses of crime because they were its
house companions, and who could when they
liked be something more than only witnesses
of evil deeds. Three bully men and a rough
woman (witnesses there waiting to prove an
alibi) were threatening with foul words and
shaken fists a boy of thirteen who had
evidence to give, against which their alibi would
prove a weak defence. There were witnesses
of all kinds. There was the surgeon who had
stitched a wound got in a fray, and who had
come too late, or was too modest, to obtain
from the courtesy of the solicitor a seat
within the court. He was well dressed, and
lurked about the corners of the outside yard,
paring the flags until his name was called.
There was the stout man who keeps a meat-
shop, and had given nineteen and eightpence
with a plate of alamode beef for a bad
sovereign; he was offering a glass, at the Bull
over the way, to the nurse who had seen an
infant die, murdered with oil of vitriol poured
into its mouth. There was a pale man, who
carried his hand tied up in a white bandage,
and looked as though he had exchanged
heads with a corpse, getting the grave-clothes
thrown into his bargain. He was of course
come to give account of the mishaps that had
befallen him. There were the clerk who had
a forgery to swear to; and the countryman
who had paid Swindle and Co. for a passage
to Australia; the wife, who was no wife, but
the victim of a bigamy; the Sandwich Islander
who saw his countryman and brother seaman
mortally ill-used on board a merchant vessel;
the locksmith's daughter who saw her father
half killed by her brother, and the
locksmith's maid who picked up daintily the
bloodstained knife and carried it in-doors in
her apron. These, or such as these, with
dozens of men and women, victims or
witnesses of petty thefts and frauds, the whole
crowd leavened with a due admixture of
policemen—many of whom were also there as
witnesses—kept up a comfortless excitement,
and ate cakes and drank gingerbeer, and
talked through their adventures to each
other in the entrance hall of the Old Bailey.
The crowd had, as it has always, a distinctive
character; it is made up of people little
accustomed to control their emotions, all labouring
under various kinds and stages of excitement,
and brought together by just so much of a
common purpose as induced them here and
there to accost each other and to form quaint
groups. Were I a painter and a humourist,
I don't think I would miss (no, not even for
fancy dresses, and models that go the round
of all the painters) such excellent material
as is provided by the vestibule of the Old
Bailey.

I glanced at a large board, on which is
printed a command that nobody there waiting
should fee persons connected with the
place—a kind of no-fee-to-the-box keeper
announcement. Then I observed by two other
writings on the wall, that, by the stairs to the
left, I should reach the gallery of the Old
Court, and that the stairs to the right would
conduct me to the gallery of the New Court;
those galleries being the spaces set apart for
the public, according to the principle of
English law, which provides for every accused
person an open trial in the presence of his
countrymen. I turned to the left and went
up many stairs, passing policemen who were
posted, very much like check-takers, at certain
points. They offered no obstruction to my
progress. I was glad of that, because the
principle of open trials cannot be too emphatically
acted upon. Having reached the gallery
door, I put my hand upon the lock, when
promptly there came forward an official of
three words: "One shilling, sir!" I felt the
insult to the dignity of the whole nation
offended in my person. Moreover, though I
should gladly have passed through that door
as one of the public, I had some personal
distaste for the idea of sitting in the shilling
gallery of the Old Bailey theatre. I turned
my back on the official, and resolved to try
whether the public had a right to pass into
the New Court. So I went down again into
the vestibule and up the right hand stairs.
There was the very Pollux to the Castor on
the other side—another dingy man with the
same exclamation of "One shilling, sir!"

I turned again and went downstairs to
the vestibule, from which I passed on to the
Third Court, which is a smaller hall of justice
on the same floor. It was crowded with
policemen, as a hive with bees. Policemen
clustered thickly upon all the benches in the
gallery and in the jury box; policemen thickly
covered the whole floor, and passed each other
in and out of the hive door, with now and
then a few exchanges of intelligence. Those
who went out flew abroad; those who came
in were lost in the general swarm. The
attention of this little community seemed to
be directed mainly to a table in the centre,
upon which there was laid up a store, not of
honey indeed, but of money; that is, the
yellow store, sought busily by men who go
out every morning, and making here a little,
there a little, bring it back at evening in little
bags attached to their thighs, or, to speak