"Old Bailey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took the water and studied Character from a Penny Steamboat CHAPTER XIII. An interesting Gentleman—showing how true it is that one 111 half the World does not know how the other half lives CHAPTER XIV. The Old Bailey—Advantages of the New System illustrated 119 CHAPTER XV. Mr. Bumpkin's Experience of London Life enlarged 133 CHAPTER XVI. The coarse mode of Procedure in Ahab versus Naboth 143 ruthlessly exposed and carefully contrasted with the humane ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... The Ring and the Book, he desired to be complimentary, but was hardly more felicitous than Browning himself had sometimes been when under a like necessity: "It is a wonderful book," declared Carlyle, "one of the most wonderful poems ever written. I re-read it all through—all made out of an Old Bailey story that might have been told in ten lines, and only wants forgetting."[100] A like remark might have been made respecting the book which, in its method and its range of all English books most resembles Browning's poem, and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Peace was arrested and charged with being in possession of stolen property. She was taken to London and tried at the Old Bailey before Mr. Commissioner Kerr, but acquitted on the ground of her having acted under ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... practised for a while with considerable success, in the southern British provinces, a few years before the declaration of their independence. A female, driven for her misconduct from the service of a maid of honour of Princess Matilda, sister to George the Third, was convicted at the Old Bailey, and transported to Maryland. She effected her escape before the expiration of her time, and travelled through Virginia and both the Carolinas, personating the princess, and levying contributions on the credulity of planters and merchants; and even some of the king's officers. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... expected them to do otherwise. I do not think I ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not invent some pretext to palliate his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings, hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this requirement of the Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... it goes on. There is the immortal scene (or rather half-volume) in which, Hugo having heard or read of peine forte et dure, we find sheriffs who discharge the duty of Old Bailey judges, fragments of Law Latin (it is really a pity that he did not get hold of our inimitable Law French), and above all, and pervading all, that most fearful wildfowl the "wapentake," with his "iron ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... made to my hand. He had a high sense of romance, and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals. His travelling library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace and some sixpenny parts of the 'Old Bailey Sessions Papers' by Gurney the shorthand writer; and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a murderer, rolled ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Old Bailey, before His Honour Judge Rosher, Leon Hamar, Edward Curtis and Matthew Kelson, of the Modern Sorcery Company Ltd., were indicted under the 23rd of Henry the Fifth, C. 15, which makes it a capital offence to practise and administer spells. The case for the prosecution promises ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... to the Old Bailey to hear the trials, particularly that of the women for the murder of the apprentices; the mother was found guilty, and will be hanged to-day—has been by this time.[15] The case exhibited a shocking scene of wretchedness and poverty, such as ought not to exist in any community, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... He was secreted; and his friend then procured him a protection from a foreign minister. In a short time afterwards she ran away from him, and was tried (providentially in his opinion) for picking pockets at the Old Bailey. Her husband was with difficulty prevented from attending the Court, in the hope she would be hanged. She pleaded her own cause and was acquitted. A separation between them took place.' Gent. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Dodsley, you may believe, laughed at the lawyer; but that does not lessen the dirty knavery.... I have done with countenancing kings." After he had remained in prison more than six years, "he took the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, and went to the Old Bailey for that purpose: in order to it, the person applying gives up all his effects to his creditors: his Majesty was asked what effects he had? He replied 'Nothing but the kingdom of Corsica;' and it was actually registered ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... over the gold on the table now swept it into her pocket. It was a windfall which had come at the right moment. She was tired of Bedfordbury. She aimed at a step higher. There was a coffee house business in the Old Bailey going cheap, the twenty pounds would enable her to ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... was an Old Bailey barrister in good and rather sharp practice, so that it was clearly the son's mission to preside on this occasion. But unfortunately his hour of office was doomed to be a brief one, for Mr. Blinkhorn, becoming aware that the game was being still more scantily ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... wasn't your poor wife who suffered. Of course all the business will be in the newspapers, and your name with it. I shouldn't wonder, too, if they give your picture as they do the other folks of the Old Bailey. A pretty thing that, to go down to your children. I'm sure it will be enough to make them change their name. No, I shall not go to sleep; it's all very well for you to say, go to sleep, after such a disturbance. But I ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... completer, Being all in the genuine Thalaba metre, Loose and irregular as thy feet are;— First, into Whig Pindarics rambling, Then in low Tory doggrel scrambling; Now love his theme, now Church his glory (At once both Tory and ama-tory), Now in the Old Bailey-lay meandering, Now in soft couplet style philandering; And, lastly, in lame Alexandrine, Dragging his wounded length along, When ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gibbet was set up by noon In the Old Bailey, and I charg'd my men, If I return not, though it were by torchlight, To see ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Collector Old Bailey Practitioner, An Old Boy to the Young Ones, An Old Saws Re-set Old Iron Olive Logan Opinions of the Press Orange Peel, Etcetera Origin of the Mississippi Orpheus C. Kerr, Sketch of Organizing an Organ Origin of Punchinello ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among gentlemen and the nobility; it was an impudent breach of the peace on the part of a player. This duel is the one which Jonson described years after to Drummond, and for it Jonson was duly arraigned at Old Bailey, tried, and convicted. He was sent to prison and such goods and chattels as he had "were forfeited." It is a thought to give one pause that, but for the ancient law permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... years between 1865 and 1886 he passed sixteen years in captivity. In that year he went to England with a confederate, and a few hours later in London they snatched a parcel of money from a bank messenger in Lombard street. Both were caught in the act, and sentenced at the Old Bailey to twenty years each. To-day Stoneman is toiling under brutal task-masters, and it is all but certain he will perish at his task, friendless, alone, unpitied. Better so even, for should he ever be freed it will not be until the twentieth ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... animal. He is beginning to read the simple books you sent. We began with "Mother Goose," and I gave him first "The King of France and Forty Thousand Men." The "Oranges and Lemons" song carried on the Dick Whittington atmosphere which he had liked in my poem, with its bells of Old Bailey and Shoreditch. He'll know his London before I ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Pumblechook;" the two convicts, "Pip's convict," Magwitch, with "the great iron on his leg," and the "other convict," Compeyson, also ironed; "slouching old" Orlick; Biddy, simple-hearted and loving; "the Serjeant" and "party of soldiers"; Mr. Jaggers, "the Old Bailey lawyer"; Estella, Miss Havisham, Herbert Pocket, and Bentley Drummle at "the market town"; Joe's Forge (now converted into a dwelling-house); "The Three Jolly Bargemen" (obviously taken from "The Three Horse-shoes," the present ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... table by the appearance of an individual who came in very late, but who was evidently, by his bearing, no insignificant personage. He was a tall man, with a long hooked nose and high cheek bones, and with an eye (were you ever at the Old Bailey? there you may see its fellow); his complexion looked as if it had been accustomed to the breezes of many climes, and his hair, which had once been red, was now silvered, or rather iron-greyed, not by age. Yet there was in his whole bearing, in his slightest actions, even in the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... probably at least one brother. His memory would begin to be retentive about the time of Queen Elizabeth's accession. Of his great contemporaries, with most of whom he was to be brought eventually into contact, Raleigh was born at Hayes in Devonshire in the same year with him, Camden in Old Bailey in 1551, Hooker near Exeter in or about 1553, Sidney at Penshurst in 1554, Bacon at York House in the West Strand, 1561, Shakspere at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, Robert Devereux, afterwards second earl of Essex, in 1567. The next assured fact concerning Spenser is that he was educated at the Merchant ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... Henry Christie. Scott was mortally wounded, and died within a fortnight; the verdict of wilful murder brought against Christie and his second at the inquest resulted in their trial and acquittal at the old Bailey two months later. It would have been well for the London Magazine and for literature in general if that unfortunate duel could have been prevented or at least diverted into such a ludicrous affair as the meeting between Jeffrey and Tom ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... prisoner's thumbs were thus tied at the same place" (Old Bailey), "who then pleaded; and in January, 1720, William Spigget submitted in the same manner after the thumbs being tied as usual, and his accomplice, Phillips, was absolutely pressed for a considerable time, till he begged to stand on his trial. In April, 1720, Mary Andrews continued so obstinate, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... though one has to be glad that an honest son can think of him with pity mixed with admiration. But perhaps the oddest thing of all in connection with this story may be looked for in the shorthand reporter's notes of the Recorder's speech at the Old Bailey, when the accusation against Messrs. Barter and Steinberg came to ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... court-room small, much smaller than the average with us, badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain "whether it had been used or not"; and, as there were two sides to it, which side had become dirty from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... "It's a good dodge; but say, rather, 'by two young persons whose lives she saved when they were babies;' there's more force to it that way. And leave out 'at sea;' it gives too much to the other party. Best have 'em address 'Mr. James Wogg, Old Bailey, N. London.'" But Donald would not agree ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... rose from One, Two, and Three, in return for the little compliment which Sir Patrick had paid to them. "How about rowing and running ending in the Old Bailey and the gallows? You said that, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... especially since H. P. Blavatsky began her teaching. But not much more than a century ago they were publicly hanging, drawing, and quartering people in England; crowds were gathering at Tyburn or before the Old Bailey to enjoy an execution. We have hardly had four generations in Western Europe in which men have not been ruthless and brutal barbarians with a sprinkling of fine spirits incarnate among them; no European literature yet has had time to evolve to the point where ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... saying a good deal. A love of cruelty, too, is shown in the Persian woman; when an execution or brutal spectacle of any kind takes place, one-third at least of the spectators is sure to consist of women. But this is, perhaps, not peculiar to Persia; witness a recent criminal trial at the Old Bailey. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... and delectable journal that daily Appeasest my hungering mind With items recounted or gravely or gaily Of doings at Margate, Mayfair or Old Bailey, Or paragraphs rare and refined On "Who will the forthcoming cinema star be?" "What horse to support with your shirt for the Derby;" "How much will the next price of beer at the bar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... what I know, Andrew," he said, as he set down the empty glass. "The woman who is with him now is the woman who spoke to me outside the Old Bailey this afternoon. We went to a tea-shop together. She told me the story of his career. I have never listened to so horrible ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as evidences of his energy, and trophies of his success. His prosecution of Hastings, a bold piece of patriot honesty, rapidly fermented into a splendid blunder. The culprit, who ought to have been tried at the Old Bailey, was elevated into a national criminal; and the assembled majesty of the legislature was summoned to settle a case in the lapse of years, which would have been decided in a day by "twelve good men and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... for the festive occasion(1001) was interrupted by the death of Edmund, the king's infant son. On the 19th June the members of the various craft guilds were ordered to line the streets of Old Bailey and Fleet Street, through which the funeral procession was to pass on its way to Westminster. The mayor and aldermen were to stand, clad in their violet gowns, near Saint Dunstan's Church, and the next morning ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... a pert London joker[43] and a second-rate lawyer.[44] Of the first, no other good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of an Old Bailey barrister. If I could see good measures pursued, I care not who is in power; but I have a passionate love for common justice and for common sense, and I abhor and despise every man who builds up his political ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... progressive but steady in its development. Several of these conspicuous members of the world of fashion, rolling in their gaudy carriages and associating with men of high rank and influence, might be found on the registers of the Old Bailey, or had been formerly occupied in turning, with their own hands, E.O. tables in ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... tone, to ask whether he should suffer for the first fact; whether it would be for a horse or a mare, and of what colour, that he might know when his hour was come. The conjurer gravely answered, that he would steal a dappled gelding on a Wednesday, be cast at the Old Bailey on Thursday, and suffer on a Friday; and he strenuously recommended it to him to appear in the cart with a nosegay in one hand, and the Whole Duty of Man in the other. "But if in case it should be in the winter," said the squire, "when a nosegay can't be had?"—"Why, then," replied the conjurer, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... despised and unpopular poor man the same number of chances Pilate gave to Jesus. With Downing street eager for the conviction of a socialist agitator, and the whole of society and the mob savage against him, a man would be a fool who would not appeal from Bow street or old Bailey to so just a judge as Pilate. To the last Pilate never made himself the willing instrument of popular frenzy. He argued against it, he denounced it, he resorted to every subterfuge by which he could save the prisoner's life, and it was only when the Sanhedrin threatened to denounce him to ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... the bells of St. Clement's. "You owe me five farthings," Say the bells of St. Martin's. "When will you pay me?" Say the bells of Old Bailey. "When I grow rich," Say the bells of Shoreditch. "When will that be?" Say the bells of Stepney. "I do not know," Says the great bell of Bow. Here comes a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a chopper to chop ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... is one of the great unpaid. In the City of London is the Mansion House Justice-Room, presided over by the Lord Mayor or one of the Aldermen. The prisoner may ultimately be sent for trial to the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, or elsewhere. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... by their ostensible acquaintance. The circumstances were slight enough in themselves, but these fragile links welded together made a chain which would have been good enough evidence in a criminal court, skilfully handled by an Old Bailey lawyer. Sophia Granger racked her brain to account for this suspected intimacy. When and where had these two been friends, lovers perhaps? Mr. Austin had been away from England for many years, if his own statement were to be believed. It must ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... latter description, however, the readers would recognize many as regular frequenters of such scenes; but, probably, the booth which attracted the greatest attention, from its magnitude, was that erected by Williams, the celebrated boiled beef monger of the Old Bailey. This was pitched in the broadest part of the fair, and immediately adjoining Richardson's show; and, at the top of it was erected a gallery for the use of those who were desirous of witnessing the fireworks in the evening, and, to which, access was to be procured ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving such a show of excitement as would have convinced an Old Bailey judge or a Bow Street runner. My suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on finding Black Dog at the "Spy-glass," and I watched the cook narrowly. But he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time the two men had come back out of breath, and confessed ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson |
