Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
DATE: 31 August 1844
LOCAL INTELLIGENCE.
POLICE.
WEDNESDAY.
THE LOADSTONE OF BEAUTY.—Two young damsels who delighted in the cognomina of SHEEHAN and DONAHUE were, this morning, charged with anything but decent conduct in the public streets. INSPECTOR FOX, who is a stern woman hater, was going his rounds about midnight smoking his pipe, and humming to himself the tune of “PADDY RAFFERTY” when his harmony was broken in upon by a burst of laughter. This made the worthy man look about him; so knocking the ashes out of his pipe, he went to the spot, and there—dreadful sight—he saw the two prisoners, standing “in all their native beauty unadorned,” with a whole troop of juvenile Australians, upon whose susceptible hearts the charms of these damsels had worked like a magnet, drawing them from their homes and their snug nightcaps and warm beds. The Inspector showed himself in the midst of them, and the mob dispersed. FOX for a time thought himself happy, and smiled benignly at his “shadow as his passed,” but scarcely had ten minutes elapsed, when, lo! the same “shout, he could have almost sworn that it was the same shout he had heard before. FOX was indignant, and hurrying up to spot, again dispersed the tender hearted youths who had got within the sphere of the two damsels’ attraction. The Inspector now thought he had done it, and was buttoning up his coat with an air of something like satisfaction, when, that very same shout rent the air. This was more than FOX could bear, so performing the staff exercise in the air, as if engaged with an imaginary prisoner, he rushed up to the spot, and as he couldn’t take all the boys, he resolved to try the attractive powers of the young ladies; so seizing them, one in each hand, he bore them off; but strange to say, whether from the damsels having lost their attractive power, or whether from its being counteracted by the repulsive power of a Policeman, we can’t say, but certes, the young boys were not to be found, and the damsels were “left alone in their glory.” The Bench sent DONOHUE to the third class of the Factory for three months, and SHEEHAN to the Gaol for six weeks.
CITATION
Female Factory Online (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of ______ DONAHUE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18440831/, accessed [insert current date].
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