565
The Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police reiterated that what they liked best was a policeman who never arrested anyone.
In 1829, Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act passed into law with the blessing of Prime Minister Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and King George IV. Sir Richard Mayne, a barrister, drew up guidelines emphasising that the measure of success was not arrests and prosecutions, but tranquil communities, and thirty-three years later the Met saw no reason to change them.
Posted August 14 2020
566
After witnessing a bus conductor’s battle of wills with the London public, journalist Alfred Gardiner felt obliged to give him a little advice.
The conductor of an open-topped bus once told a lady carrying a little dog to take it upstairs, despite the lashing rain. The passengers backed her up, stopped the bus and summoned a constable. The conductor stuck to his position, however, and eventually got his way; but after everyone else had gone home he tried to win a little sympathy from journalist A. G. Gardiner.
Posted August 13 2020
567
Chinese merchant Lien Chi tells a colleague that English liberties have little to do with elections, taxes and regulations.
In a fictional ‘letter’, supposedly by Chinese merchant Lien Chi, Oliver Goldsmith argued that England felt more free than other countries because minor transgressions were winked at until they become too great for safety. On the Continent they maybe had simpler laws and more democracy, but they also had more meddlesome, self-righteous and prying governments.
Posted August 13 2020
568
On the day that the Unknown Warrior was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, ‘Alpha of the Plough’ wondered if the country would prove worthy of him.
Like other correspondents for London’s newspaper ‘The Star,’ Alfred Gardiner took a nom-de-plume from astronomy, choosing ‘Alpha of the Plough.’ In this extract, written on November 11th, 1920, he reflected on the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey that same day, and wondered if the people of Britain really understood what had happened.
Posted August 12 2020
569
Marguerite, Lady Blakeney, is powerless to intervene as her husband Sir Percy walks into a trap.
Marguerite St Just, now Lady Blakeney, has followed her husband Sir Percy to France after discovering that that amiable idiot is none other than the dashing Scarlet Pimpernel, responsible for saving so many from the guillotine — including, she hopes, her brother Armand. Concealed behind a curtain in a dirty Calais café, she watches in horror as Citizen Chauvelin draws his net tight around the heedless aristocrat.
Posted August 11 2020
570
The lord of Benares is so partial to venison that fields lie fallow and marketplaces stand empty while his people catch deer for him.
The following tale comes from the collection known as the Jataka, a series of fables setting out the wisdom of Siddhartha Gautama, the fifth- or fourth-century BC teacher of enlightenment. This particular story is set in the deer park near Varanasi (Benares) in Uttar Pradesh where tradition says that Gautama Buddha first taught.
Posted August 10 2020