Known to the Police

During the summer of 1904 there were in London few men more unsettled in mind and miserable than myself. I had severed my connection with London police-courts—and well I knew it. I was not sure that I had done wisely or well, and was troubled accordingly. I missed more than words can express the miseries that had hitherto been inseparable from the routine of my life. For twenty-one years, day after day at a regular hour, I had turned my steps in one direction, and had gone from home morning by morning with my mind attuned to a certain note. It was not, then, a strange thing to find that mechanical habits had been formed, and that sometimes I found myself on the way to the police-court before I discovered my mistake. Still less was it a marvel to find that my mind refused to accept all at once the fact that I was no longer a Police-Court Missionary. I must in truth confess I felt a bit ashamed that I had given up the work. I felt that I was something of a traitor, who had deserted the poor and the outcast, many of whom had learned to love and trust me. I am not ashamed to say that I had been somewhat proud of my name and title, for the words "Police-Court Missionary" meant much to me, and I had loved my work and had suffered for it. It was doubtless in accordance with the fitness of things that I should retire from the work when I did, for I am getting old, and dead officialism might have crept upon me, and whatever power for good I may have might have been atrophied. Of such a fate I always felt afraid; mercifully from such a fate I was prevented or delivered. Still, I sorrowed till time lightened the sense of loss. By-and-by new interests arose, new duties claimed me, and other phases of life interested me. Four years have now lapsed, a length of time that allows sufficient perspective, and enables me to calmly take stock of the twenty-one years I spent in London police-courts. I do not in this chapter, or in this book, intend to review the whole of those years, but I do hope to make some comparisons of the things of to-day with those of twenty-one years ago. The comparisons will, I trust, be encouraging, and show that we have progressed in a right direction, and that we are all still progressing. Two days of those years will remain ever with me—the day I entered on my work and the day I gave it up. Of the latter I will not speak; but as the former opened my eyes to wonders of humanity, and humanity being of all wonders the greatest, I have something to say. The conditions at London police-courts in those days were bad, past conception. No words of mine can adequately describe them, and only for the sake of comparison and encouragement do I attempt briefly to portray some of the most striking features of those days. Even now I feel faint when I recall the "prisoners' waiting-room," with its dirty floor, its greasy walls, and its vile atmosphere.