Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts (version 2) by Thomas Holmes Part 1/2 | Audio Book

Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts (version 2) by Thomas Holmes (1846 - 1918)
Genre(s): Social Science (Culture & Anthropology), Modern (19th C)

Read by: Peter Yearsley in English

Parts:

Chapters:
00:00:00 - 01 - Chapter 1: How I became a police court missionary
00:30:44 - 02 - Chapter 2: In Lambeth police court
00:49:49 - 03 - Chapter 3: A change for the better
01:26:31 - 04 - Chapter 4: Husbands and wives
02:13:38 - 05 - Chapter 5: Parents and children
02:58:11 - 06 - Chapter 6: Record-breakers: Jane Cakebread
03:28:25 - 07 - Chapter 7: Record-breakers: Kate Henessey
04:18:42 - 08 - Chapter 8: Among dipsomaniacs
04:55:21 - 09 - Chapter 9: Criminals - part one
05:30:01 - 10 - Chapter 9: Criminals - part two
06:03:01 - 11 - Chapter 10: Cranks
06:46:07 - 12 - Chapter 11: The Arcadians and some account of the 'Gubbins'

The author spent twenty years as a 'police court missionary' (the forerunner of the modern probation officer) for the London courts. He tells us that he sat down and 'cried like a child' at the end of his first day, but eventually he came to realise that 'a field for the study of human nature is opened up, and nowhere in the wide world is there a field equal to it'. A sympathetic man with a self-deprecating sense of humour.NOTE: A 'ticket-of-leave' was a form of parole document given to a prisoner to allow him or her limited freedom outside the prison. - Summary by Peter Yearsley