The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER X THE TRIAL On the morning that succeeded the incidents just related, the court-house of the Old Bailey was thronged to excess; for Mr. Paul Dysart was to stand his trial on the charge of feloniously killing and slaying the Honourable George Sefton. A second count in the indictment accused him of fighting a duel and thereby breaking his Majesty’s peace, — although, be it observed, his Majesty was a hopeless lunatic at the time and much more likely to break the peace himself than preserve it. Such, however, was the legal fiction and phraseology; and Mr. Dysart was arraigned accordingly. His wife, Lady Ernestina, was not in court; but she was close at hand, — indeed, warming herself comfortably by the fire in the drawing-room of the governor of Newgate. She was a lady of rank, and was therefore thus courteously treated by the governor. Had she been a poor man’s wife, she would have had to stand all day in the open street, or else — at the public-house opposite the court, unless, indeed, she had chosen to be present during the trial. But while the fiction of the so-called British Constitution declares that all persons are equal in the eye of the law, the administrators, functionaries, and officials of the law take very good care that such shall not be the case. Thus, inasmuch as several of the witnesses engaged in the present case were of aristocratic birth, they were accommodated with seats upon the bench; and Lord Herbert, the principal witness, sat next to the recorder and chatted familiarly with him while the clerk was swearing the jury. Now, had the witnesses been costermongers or tinkers, or any other indi- viduals belonging to the working class, they would not have dared approach the sacred limit of the judicial bench. 112 CONNIE OOO KS () (EO)