Was own up to their actual crime
And more or less prove it too.
Thus, a crowd of little infants
Was called and took the oath,
Swore Jack and Belle had skinned ’em
And recognized them both.
The nursemaid gave her evidence,
And the sledge – Exhibit A –
Was held aloft in the courtroom
For the jury to survey
The royal Prince did not appear.
He had been sent to bed
For applying his father’s walking-stick
To a elderly footman’s head.
‘But you also claim it was a joke,’
Said the judge to the accused.
‘Well, I’ll tell you this for nothing.
The Queen was not amused.’
Then he sentenced them to go to jail
For a couple of years apiece,
And hoped that when they was let out
Their criminal ways would cease.
And cease they did, it can be said,
For now the Harrises keep
A pet shop in the Brompton Road:
BEST DOGS AND BUDGIES – CHEEP!
Postscript
Unfortunately, I have just heard,
While the above was being wrote,
Jack was seen leaving London Zoo
With a parrot up his coat.
Belle Harris had distracted
The keeper and his men.
I fear the pair of ’em has gone back
To sinning once again
HISTORICAL NOTE
Child Stripping – This is generally done by females, old debauched drunken hags who watch their opportunity to accost children passing in the streets, tidily dressed with good boots and clothes. They entice them away to a low or quiet neighbourhood for the purpose, as they say, of buying them sweets, or with some other pretext. When they get into a convenient place, they give them a halfpenny or some sweets, and take off the articles of dress, and tell them to remain till they return, when they go away with the booty.
This is done most frequently in mews in the West-end, and at Clerkenwell, Westminster, the Borough, and other similar localities. These heartless debased women sometimes commit these felonies in the disreputable neighbourhoods where they live, but more frequently in distant places, where they are not known and cannot be easily traced. This mode of felony is not so prevalent in the metropolis as formerly. In most cases, it is done at dusk in the winter evenings, from 7 to 10 o’clock.
From Henry Mayhew’s
London Labour and the London Poor,
Vol. IV (published 1862)
Captain Jim
You’ve heard the tales of Tarzan,
Chinese Charlie Chan,
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street
And ‘cow pie’ Desperate Dan;
Well, now I’m going to tell you
Of another kind of man.
Yes, now I’m going to tell you,
As the light grows dim,
And we sit here in the jungle
At the wide world’s rim,
Of the man who matched them all:
And his name was Captain Jim.
Where he came from is a mystery,
Where he went to no one knows,
But his talents were amazing
(From his eyebrows to his toes!),
And his brain was full of brainwaves,
And his reputation grows.
It all began one summer
Near this very spot,
When the river-boats were steaming
And the river banks were hot,
And the crocodiles were teeming,
Which sometimes a child forgot.
I was playing with my brothers,
Bertie, Joe and little Frank,
In the mangrove trees that twisted
From that mossed and muddy bank;
When young Frank climbed out too far,
Slipped and fell, and straightways – sank.
Hardly had he hit the water,
Barely had the ripples spread,
When the river started foaming
And we saw with awful dread
Half a dozen snapping snouts
In a hurry to be fed.
Well, we shouted and we threw things,
Lumps of rock and bits of wood,
And young Frank, he cried for help
And tried to swim as best he could,
But the crocs were closing in
And it wasn’t any good
Then at last when all seemed lost,
And it was looking grim,
There was a blur beside us,
And a man leapt in to swim
Like an arrow from a bow:
And his name was Captain Jim.
He was dressed, we later noticed,
In a suit of gleaming white,
And he even had his hat on;
Oh, it was a stirring sight,
As he surged into the fray
Like a charge of dynamite.
With his bare hands and a cricket bat
He gave the crocs what for;
Hit the six of them for six,
Though I doubt they kept the score.
Then he gave a tow to little Frank
And calmly swam to shore.
And that was the beginning,
The first time he was seen,
In the heat and haze of summer
When the air itself was green
And the river banks were steaming…
And he chose to intervene.
Where he came from is a mystery,
Why he stayed we never knew,
But he took a room at Macey’s
And he moored his own canoe
At the wharf beside the warehouse.
And he bought a cockatoo.
Now this, I should remind you,
Was twenty years ago,
In nineteen thirty-one,
When the pace of life was slow,
And Grandpa ran the Copper Mine
And built this bungalow
And the town was smaller then,
Just some houses and a pier,
And the Steamship Company Office
With a barber’s at the rear,
And a visiting policeman
Who came by four times a year.
So it took no time at all
For the tale to get about;
How the stranger with a cricket bat
Had fished young Frankie out,
And hammered fourteen crocodiles
With one enormous clout.
And as the weeks went by,
There were other tales to tell:
How he saved the Baxters’ baby
(With the speed of a gazelle!)
And the Baxters’ baby’s teddy –
It was needing help as well.
How he stopped a charging warthog
As it rampaged through the town
(Knocking bikes and fences flying,
Pulling wires and washing down),
With a matadorial flourish
And a matadorial frown.
Well, we followed him about, of course,
Or watched him where he sat
On Macey’s back verandah
In his dazzling suit and hat,
With a glass of tea beside him,
And – sometimes – Macey’s cat.
We listened to the gossip
Inside the barber’s shop.
Some said he was a gambler,
Some said he was a cop,
And oaths were sworn and bets were laid
On just how long he’d stop.
We eavesdropped on the talk
Outside the General Store.
They marvelled at his manicure
And at the clothes he wore.
Whoever did his laundry?
What was that cricket bat for?
In time the summer ended;
Moss clung to the houses
And creepers covered all.
The river was a torrent
And the grass grew eight feet tall
And still he lived among us
And continued to amaze,
With his quick, explosive actions,
And his steady brainy gaze;
Though he gave no thought to wages,
And he never looked for praise.
And he showed us how to wrestle,
And he taught us how to dive,
And he saved us from the wild bees –
We had blundered on a hive –
When he walloped it to safety
With a perfect cover drive.
He delivered Mrs Foster’s fourth,
When Doc Gains fell down drunk.
(The doctor diagnosed himself:
‘I’m drunker than a skunk!’)
Then Captain Jim took care of him,
And tucked him in his bunk.
At Christmas, when a touring troupe
Arrived to do a show,
And the tenor caught a fever
And it was touch-and-go,
Who was it calmly took his place?
Well, I expect you know
And so the seasons passed,
And the months became a year,
And he saved us from a cheetah,
And he bought us ginger beer,
And he taught us how to make our own…
And when to interfere.
He said: the world’s a puzzle,
A game of keys and locks;
A mirror in a mirror,
A box within a box;
And we must do the best we can
And stand up to the shocks.
He told us: that’s the moral,
In a world without a plan,
In a world without a meaning,
Designed to puzzle man;
You must do your intervening
In the best way that you can.
Some said he was a writer,
And some, a diplomat;
A traveller, spy, geologist,
And various things like that.
We said he was a cricketer;
How else explain the bat?
‘You’d been on tour,’ said little Frank.
‘And scored a ton,’ said Joe.
‘And when the boat returned to home,’
Said I, ‘you didn’t go.’
But when we asked him was it true,
He said, ‘Well… yes and no.’
And he built a bridge that summer,
And he made a mighty kite,
And he saved us from the axeman,
Who was ‘axing’ for a fight,
And he beat the Mayor at poker,
And he caught quail in the night.
He read the weeks-old papers,
And played the gramophone,
And climbed the hills above the town,
And watched the sky alone,
And taught the barber’s daughter chess
(who’s now your Auntie Joan).
Then, one evening in September,
As we sat up on the pier,
With our mango-chutney sandwiches
And home-made ginger beer,
And our Steamboat Billy comics…
We saw him disappear.
In his suit of gleaming white
And his loaded-up canoe,
He passed quickly out of sight,
There was nothing we could do,
He had paid his bill at Macey’s;
And he took the cockatoo.
Well, we shouted from the quayside
And we ran along the bank,
And scrambled in the mangroves,
Delayed by little Frank;
But he was gone for evermore,
And left behind… a blank
Yet not quite a blank, perhaps,
For he did leave us a note
And some marbles (c/o Macey’s),
And this is what he wrote:
‘Watch out for life’s crocodiles,
And try to stay afloat.’
Why he came remained a mystery,
Why he left us, no one knows,
But his talents were amazing
(From his eyebrows to his toes!),
And though it’s now all history,
Still his reputation grows:
The voice of Nelson Eddy,
The dash of Errol Flynn,
The brains of Albert Einstein,
The speed of Rin Tin Tin,
The cover drive of Bradman,
The pluck of Gunga Din
That’s how we have remembered,
As the years grow dim
And life slips slowly by
On the wide world’s rim,
The man who matched them all:
And his name was Captain Jim.
Now little Frank is bigger,
And Bertie’s married Joan,
And Joe’s become an engineer
With ‘Wireless-Telephone’,
And I tell bedtime stories
To children of my own.
One final thing, before I go
(I heard your mother call);
A few years back, it must have been,
When you were both quite small,
I bought some cigarette cards
At the Monday Market Stall.
Woodbine’s Famous Cricketers,
Fifty in the set;
They were faded, creased and dog-eared,
Badly stained with dust and sweat;
Yet there was a face among them
That I never could forget
It was him all right, I’d swear it;
It was him without a doubt,
With his bat raised in a flourish
Letting go a mighty clout.
‘Captain James Fitz… (blur),’ it stated:
‘Four-forty-nine not out.’
The Goals of Bingo Boot
The fans in the stands are silent
You could hear the fall of a pin
For the fabulous flame just ended
And the tale that’s about to begin.
In nineteen hundred and twenty-two
A little boy was born
His baby cot was second-hand
His baby shawl was torn.
He had no teeth or teddy bear
His hair was incomplete
But he was the possessor of
The most amazing feet.
When Bingo Boot was two years old
He chewed his little crust
His poor old dad was on the dole
His poor old pram was bust.
Yet Bingo wasn’t worried
Though his baby feet would itch
And he could hardly wait till
He could stroll – out on the pitch
In school young Bingo languished
At the bottom of the class
His ball control was good
It was exams he couldn’t pass.
His little pals all shouted, ‘Foul!’
And tended to agree
if only teachers tested feet
He’d get a Ph.D.
And all the while in streets and parks
On pitches large or small
Without a proper pair of boots
Sometimes without a ball!
With tin cans in the clattering yard
In weather cold or hot
Young Bingo shimmied left and right
And scored with every shot.
His poor old mum scrubbed office floors
His poor old gran did too
The pantry was an empty place
The rent was overdue.
Then Bingo had a brainwave
Shall I tell you what he did?
He sold himself to the Arsenal
For thirteen thousand quid
The first game that he ever played
At the t
ender age of ten
Young Bingo just ran rings round
Eleven baffled men.
The fans of course went crazy
The fans went, ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Ah!’
While Bingo took the match ball home
And bought his dad a car.
And so the years went flying by
In liniment and sweat
Life was a great high-scoring game
An ever-bulging net
And Arsenal won the cup and league
Six seasons on the trot
All on account of Bingo Boot
And his most amazing shot
But now the storm clouds gathered
And at last the whistle blew
For the start of a really crucial game
The battle of World War Two.
It was England versus Germany
And Bingo heard the call
He marched away in his shooting boots
To assist in Adolf’s fall.
Then when the war was finished
And he’d left the fusiliers
Brave Bingo served the Gunners
For another fifteen years.
No net was ever empty
No sheet was ever clean
He scored more goals a season
Than even Dixie Dean.
His goals in life were modest though
He had no wish to be
Sir Bingo Boot of Camden Town
Or Bingo O.B.E.
He loved his wife and family
His kiddies, Joyce and Jim,
He never went to see the King
The King came to see him.
COLLECTED POEMS Page 3