B
SILENCE IN COURT
The Story of London's Magistrates
by Tom Pocock|
Paul Bennett, V.C. — his
best work
nas
been in
helping the young_break away from crime
667THIS can's be much fun for you?" Such sym- pathetic questions are quite often heard in Marlborough Street Magistrate's Court and the answer is invariably: “No, sir.”
What adds particular weight to the question is that it is asked by Mr Paul Bennett, VC, MC. It is not so much that Mr Bennett has been a Metropolitan Magistrate for 26 years and so knows more about the sins of London' than most. It is perhaps that Mr Bennett is well able to do without pomp and props.
"This F, of course, due partly in order to impress him-
to the London Gazette of 30th self upon
the inhabit-December. 1918, which announc
ed the award of the Victoria ants of the dock.
Cross to a Lieutenant Bennett.
THE CHINA MAIL THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1981,
London's sins and sinners-Bart's boys hunt
this man knows more about them than most
Going over the top ahead of the second wave and finding the first destroyed he reached the German trenches with anly 60
behind
him. And that was when Bennett began to win hla VC,
men
Distinction
In the British scale of values the Victoria Cruns bestuws a Ptabus
The somewhere above peerugę. Add to this Bennett's air of distinction. He is a full mat, now 08, with a head of thick white hair and scornful
He dresses immineatagely; usually in bluck rout and waist-coat and spongehog troi- Bers. He would have looked well in a ga and there is something Roman not only about his bror-
ing but about the shape of the chair and the alcove where sits in the courtroman
It
This is not irrelevant because upon impressions of power and discipline the British legal sys-
tm has big relied.
Now a young schoolmaster is
standing in the dock. Be hum pled guilty to passing a fran- dulent cheque, his first offence, and has been remanded in e- toy for a week. Bennett is told but had spent
that he had earned £ 12 a week, too much of
living in Kensington while working in the outer the magistrate, you can sense, suburbs, dues not want to send him to prison and knows that he is in such deep me trouble that
he carmot afford is fine.
The schoolmaster grips the raits of the dock, drained of hope, as he awaits his sentence. Bennett is silent for perhaps half a minute. Then he says: "One Wex is custody and
standing in the dock has been sufficient punishment."
But the magistrale's work st Marlborough Street, far from being a series of such kindly, remedial Judgments much concerned with the raw ends of human instinct.
The district under Jurisdiction includes
Bennett's
Now, observers at Maribor- ough Street say, this no longer seems u social offence in the pubile mind.
Puzzling
must of Shop-lifting too, is on the Sulu, oll Mayfair, Oxford increase, and Oxford Street Street. Hyde Park, Belgravia is the great attraction.
and Chelsea.
Here probably every known urban crime has mitted:
been com-
Significant
1
WHY did this boy, since he left Borstal a year ago, lose in quick succession jobs in a hotel, Battersea Fun Fair, a transport company and a cafe before being caught stealing car radios?
Was
WHY did the 35-year-old tramp with the Intelligent face and filthy clothea, who caught trying the door handles of parked cara, ose a kitchen job in a Regent Street restaur- ant su soon after leaving prison?
Fantasies
Nasser killers
IRAC
PERSIA
MUSCAT
TRUCIAL "OMAN'
OMAN
TO SAUDI ARABIA
AND
-DESERT WAR AGAINST REBELS-
Dubai.
BRITISH troops are boarding and searching
The mutive is often puzzling. Why are more male shoplifters now being caught? Why should
ships along this coast in a determined bid to three well-to-do Peralan women -one with an allowance of £600
defeat a large Nasser-run terrorist organisation.
■ month from her husband-be
Those who want help get it.
For these anti-British ter-- caught in one month stealing Others, led up in a web of their shoes and undercialhes worth own fantails, need, Bennett de-
rorists have chimed 143 | British nuthorities have, kept few pounds.
cides a shock.
lives in the Porsian Gulf quiet about the terror campaign The tromp who had been Nowadays There arc lower trying car door handles was one during the past year.
for security reasons. But ships and more beggars
violence. such. Why had he lost his job?
have been set on fire, and one While There is little gang warfare but His answera were evasive, sly
the Trucial Oman mk. à plane blows up in mild- the overall pattern of Bennell's moru trouble with clubs. But and nimost curtainly untrue.
scouts, led by Colonel Hugh air, and t pipeline destroyed. "This can be much of a life "Bart" Bartholomew nntrol Bombs have been found in mail- quarter of London remains as it for you, sald Bennett, "You the sees and deserts of the bags, money-bags, and parcels. was, bawdy and turbulent-but need a bit of a jolt and some Trucini Summe
"Cochrane's Nasser, furious at the way well under control. clubs.
In several ways the pattern of London low lite has changed significantly since Bennett ennie to Marlborough
Street. Since the Street Offences Act there is
eldens more than one prostitute before the magistrate each murn- ing, stead of, perhaps, 30. Where
Are they now? work through drinking Others try to advertise and work as call girls, but most of these fail, like the former street girl who reappeared in court charg- ed with drunkenness.
s
She bad drunk so much, the explained, because she became so bared walling for customers to telephone.
Vanished, too, London's particular brond
white slavery: the teenage girls who came to seek their fortunes in London and were on the streets within a week.
of
Another change has been in the public attitude towards homosexuals. Once Importuners were often imprisoned for six months and the stigma of the conviction ruined many careers. Often men broke down and subbed in the dock.
D
Const.
Security forces In Bahrain
aro
money
time to think shout your future." Army." the 1,500-man, British- the Oman “people's rebellion" Bennett himself has a great
The young tramp goes to offerred security force of oll- was fusing the attention of the feeling for the tradiilens of the prison for a month with orders rich Qutur, commanded by Arab world, demanded "loss courts-there ix a portrait of to report at the end of it to the Sents-born Ronald Cochrane, talk and more action" for his Fielding. the 10th
century probation officer.
is on duty day and night. magistrate, in his room and This curiosity is perhaps the he RCCNIS to enjoy presiding key to Bennett's Success as
guarding pipelines, checking over the centre of London. magistrate, After 20 years of mallbogs and sitnall parcels, watching the endless procession
combined
operation nguinst through the dock he is not bored, inspecting planes and ships in n Perhaps, too, he can in some killer gangs who are trying to
himself with the drive the British out. way identify human being at his mercy, and that is the basis of Justice.
Those who have watched him over the years say that his best work has been in helping young people to break away from crime and that he is particularly ready to help ex-Servicemen.
On occasion he has the severity of a headmaster-a very distinguished and strict head- master--but will then suddenly appeal to the man or woman in the dock with the simple and sincere question: ""This can't be much fun for you?"
London Express Service).
TOMORROW
FRANK POWELL
BOMB KITS
DARA
was
The rebely, caner to keep the cash Blowing in, have spread their bombs indiscriminately in anything Briish or pro-British.
Their greatest success the sinking of the British India liner Dare in the Gulf on April The bombings are the work 7 with the loss of 127 Ilves. of Omuni rebels fium. the IN BAGDAD Premier Kaster. Green Mountains or Muscat and has said that iruq would extend Oman, trained in Egypt and the Bagdad-Basta 1allway Dow Saudi Arabia, poid by Nasser under construction to "our port
This is added a genuine AT CLERKENWELL and supplled with bamb kits in Kuwait.".
curiosity.
Irow, Cairo.
--(London Express Service).
of course, everyone knows that African elephants
have LABGER одго
SHOES
"Are those too amati snough, Nadam?"
"Aren') you supposed to laava
the trailer on ino bagSKT "
"What shall I write undur. *Õécupation Brainwashing?"
HEAD OFFICE
Thomas Wiseman's
L
M
G
T
+
Adam Faith looks
into a future full
of... what?
worst comes to the worst, I'd go back to being an assistant fin cutter. That pays £11 95. Úd. plus twelvo bob allowance for fares.
"It don't do to worry about nothinI had a suspected ulcer but 1 went to this specialist' bloke and he found out what it was was just nerves, that's what it was.”
А
To watch a juvenile idol pre- curiously balanced un his plastic pedestal is always slightly disturbing experience: like watching a child gorging himself on sweets that may at any moment be taken RWBY from him.
Some stock-pile their candy,
MR ADAM FAITH others devours
will be 21 this month, fraught mo- ment in the career of a pop singer, for to cross
but all of them are aware that the supply may not lost. The situation is sufficiently tragic to inspire a pop hit,
Mr Falth has already taken
friendelike my manager znd my arranger and my songwriter and some that I have known from school. But you don't
make friends in show business. Why? I can't sort of put my finger on it, but you don't.
#i don't call girl friends friends. I mean
they're like girls and you don't want to got involved, do you? I don't want to get married till I'm about 30. You got to get to terms with life first, haven't you? Sort of mature."
It is a vicious clrele for the teenage idol; fur to mature is the beginning of the end, it is the process that destroys what he la selling; his immaturity, his inexperience, his doubts ret to fast music.
Miss Lane
the border-line into the first step towards protecting looks back
His future by accepting a star-
official adulthood can be ring role in a new film entitled
interpreted as an act of What A Whopper, in which he TT isn't only pop-singers
plays an unsuccessful Ruthor
to
"What I really want is achieve something, career-wise. And what I'd like is for some man to love me whom I could love. That doesn't happen very often. Men are always saying they love you, but you never know when they're pretending.
"Pignator? He's a nice man -no in the 'nlee boy' sense, but nice. He gives a lot. don't mean money. I mean of his personality.
IN DEMAND
"I won't impressed by him being a millionaire, that sort of thing doesn't impress me any more. I bought my own mink coat. I prefer it that way. I wasn't upset him getting - married."
Miss Lane, after, languishing for many years as an iclplent sex-symbol, has found herself more in demand on the Con- tinent than she was in England.
treason by the teenage and sings only two songs, I who change, who grow she has a small but nonade.
record buyers.
I met him the other night tə discuss this criats in his career and to find out what rejuvenat- ing steps he proposed to take.
Mr Faith, a tiny figure Aun- pended rather Halicasly beneath a parachute of blond hair, woo vlowing his future philosophi- early.
,4%.
What's got to be, has got to bo," he conded, facing up to the probleme of ageing like a man ur, at any rate, like A lyric-writer.
INVENTORY
"Me and my managor," he
up and find they cannot in Hollywood production, Aimez dofinitely prolong their Vous Draluna, and she has adolescence. The same thing made hims in Germany happens to starlets. Miss Italy where her kind of pouting
sexiscss In more readily Jackie Lane can now look preciated."
sald, "have got have a meeting back on her youth with the noon to discuss my film career. new found wisdom of being You can certainly say that I 20.
am considering this business of being a flm star.
what?
at used to like beautiful
"Definitely. I'd like to be a men," she said. "Now the men Alm star. I'd got a satisfaction that I go for are what I'd call It's a shallow out of that, you might say. Like ugly-attractive.
to like pretly men, Well, like you get a
What counts is character. I used to satisfaction out of it..."
got a big klek from going out, What kind of satisfaction has but you learn, don't you? It's Mr Falth dorived so far out of all anther trivial. It doesn't do being a big success? Mila face in anything for you.
"I got my money Invested," blank and usjoyful as he takes lie wald. "Stucks and shares. an inventory of the loot of Made a fow quld out of it. My Atockioker úvrata it for mil
i don't spend too much,
fame
JACKIE
PISTURE DY MICHAEL WAND
LANE
What I'd like is for some man to love me whom t could love, That doesn't happen very often. Man
are always saying they love you, but you' never know when they're pretending.
and
Just Fancy That
ap-
She has, a she, puls 14, #THERE was a murmur of exotlement when the court naher at learned to appreciate the diner Harrow called "George Alfred Hinds," But instead of the things of life. Such as intellec-jailbreaker-extraordinary & Mr Hines was fined 40% for gaming tual men, for instance.
oufalde Wembley Stadium.
"I met this group of Intellec tuals in Rome,” she saļd, "and I go for that. I just ilke to laten to them talk. They're a great improvement on the other sort of men I used to know. They don't try to reduce you the moment they 500 you. They're subile about it."
"I mean, you come home atid you think, well, did I really WATCHING PLAIS from have much • good time!
2
"I've got a car,” há xaid. “An wouldn't any the thriit has gone private box in a dyktig praelion. American car. Yellow. And I exactly, buí It's diminished.
ig make a thousand quld not film production company
and a promotion company and a music publishing company,
"What I always wanted was Hoyal Family nowadays in
week round about, but how Jong's going to It? You
for somebody to my 1 wit a don't know, do you? I bought
good aclasse. And that happen. my old lady a house, and I got Wilhem kpainoja le a lonely-ach Borne critic said it in Ger-
beaullful home nów und, huminen fr et maybe five many.
A 23-YEAR-OLD Pentonville prisoner, Brendan Shaw, was on A the rùn - after excoping from a WOMEN'S Joll. Me sbsconded from a working party at H Hall prison-without-bars, Theydon Mount, Forex,
YNN BIERMAN-shơn three-and brother David, wetsb·fa kupu, 15 were back home after a night là Laton hospital. The children told their mother at bedtime: “We've had some levels. sweets." Near them wi an emply aspirin botile. They feeling fine again now.
The reason for thin, £ xen told. bedsuse members of the
set up at busy pedasielon DUMMY polleemon should un
erosings to improve motorista manners, anys Councillor varjably sit in the sialte. 894) Fred Matthews, rond safety chief at Stapleford, Nottinghamabiru. having a private bax si the 112 added: "The dummies would act as a defnife delerrent to theatre je sta longer a statue-1| "drivers approaching at speed.” symbol.
mangkenden häperio Keratonje!
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