PRACTICAL JOKES.
AT Southwark, last Saturday, three apprentices in the Globe Boiler Works were brought before Mr. Slade, charged with assaulting and injuring a fellow-apprentice, so that he had been rendered unable to work by the injuries they had inflicted. The man assaulted was a newly-made apprentice, who had been seized in the smiths' shop, bound with ropes, and in that condition hauled up to the ceiling, till he should pay his "footing," which he refused to do. But the process hurt him so much, especially in the right hand, that he was for the time strictly incapacitated. Mr. Slade remarked that the affair appeared to have been "only a practical joke carried too
far," and inflicted no penalty, only ordering the accused to come up for judgment, if required, within six weeks' time. Mr. Slade, we suppose, only echoed a very general English feeling in passing this tolerant judgment on what he quite rightly regarded as " only a practical joke." But we should like to ask in what the force of the " only " con- sists. It consists, we believe, in two implied suggestions,— the first, that according to a long and very general English tradition, it is considered allowable to inflict on a comrade any amount of pain, so long as it does not seem likely to amount to permanent injury, which his companions in work or play con- sider likely to promote their own amusement ; and the other, that this infliction of pain and annoyance is not " carried too far," if it does not leave behind it any physical mischief to the victim which survives the amusement given to the tormentors. We do not for a moment deny that such has been the accepted rule of almost all societies of the young in which physical prowess counts for a distinction, from the boys' school up to a regiment of the Guards or a ship-of- war. Initiation is always supposed to involve risk and annoy- ance, if not injury, to the new-corner, and great enjoyment, arising out of that risk and annoyance, to all the old members. Multiplied opportunities were and are eagerly sought in most of these societies for enforcing these tolls on the fresh-comer. In the Navy, for instance, besides the barbarous modes of making the new seaman pay his "footing," similar barbarities were, and we are ashamed to see still are, permitted by some commanders on the occasion of the first crossing of the Equator,—or even in some cases, of the tropics. The idea seems to be that there is something, if not discreditable, at least provocative of just persecution, in the position of a novice; and something entitling him to persecute novices in the position of one who has passed through his novitiate ; and this notion is so deep-rooted, that even English Magistrates regard unquestionable personal injuries of a not very serious kind, if inflicted on the authority of such customs, as pardon- able, though not, perhaps, entirely legal and justifiable per- formances. Surely it is high time that these barbarous pre- cedents were ignored by men in authority, whether in command of ships or regiments, or on the English Bench. What is there to be said for them ? Nothing, so far as we know, except that they have a tendency to make all the pursuits in which such barbarous tolls are exacted, unpopular with those who are not themselves very thick-skinned, and that in this manner they partially promote the enlisting of thick-skinned persons for services in which anything like sensitiveness of organisation may sometimes be inconvenient. But in the first place, it is by no means desirable to exclude persons of sensitive organisa- tion from any of these pursuits. They are often the very per- sons who would bring most distinction to the calling, though they may be too easily deterred from it. And in the next place, these barbarous tolls are much too capriciously exacted to exert any steady influence, one way or the other; they are quite cer- tain to cause a good deal of suffering to the novices, but they are not at all certain to prevent those from becoming novices who are likely to suffer most keenly from such tormentings.
Indeed, we do not believe that any plea of this kind would be seriously put forward, by any one who thinks of the public advantage, and of the public advantage alone. The real defence that would be made for these cruel and barbarous initiations is that they are nothing but "practical jokes," and that you must not deny the young and vigorous their natural enjoyments. To that, we should reply that the worst aspect of practical jokes, is the fact that those who inflict them take so much pleasure in seeing the sur- prise and dismay of a comrade in the sufferings thus inflicted. These pleasures are all of much the same kind as those which cruel boys take in seeing a cat drown, or driven wild by the rattle of a tin-kettle attached to its tail. There is something very funny, to cruel boys, in observing the violent struggles and horror of dumb creatures in circumstances for which their instincts do not fit them. And just so there is something very funny to young apprentices in watching the dismay and annoy- ance of a comrade who is swung up to the ceiling by a sprained wrist. What is there to be said for either feeling, except that it is the sign not of healthy life, but of pure bluntness and dullness of nature ? A man with the least sympathy will feel nothing but pain in the sudden discomfiture of a poor dumb animal which finds itself in a situation for which its nature is totally unsuited. And so a man with the least sympathy will feel nothing but pain at the sudden discomfiture of a comrade unable to protect himself,—for this is of the very essence of the situation, since if he could effectually protect himself, there would be- no fun in baiting him. We maintain that the plea of a practical joke is the worst plea in the world. If men take pleasure in these torments, it is because they are cruel; and, in that case, it is they who deserve the suffering, and not their victim. We cannot understand in the least the state of a Magistrate's mind who declines to punish for an un- provoked assault on a comrade those whom he would certainly punish for the same assault on any stranger, and declines on the ground of its being a "practical joke carried too far." That is only saying that the persons who inflicted it, did it for their own amusement. Well, a lout who places a bit of timber across the line when a train is just coming up, no doubt does it for his own amusement; and no Magistrate would think this an ex- tenuation, but rather an aggravation of his offence, whether it were carried so far as to cause a catastrophe or not. It will, of -course, be said that this is dangerous to life, while stringing- up an apprentice to the roof is not dangerous to life. Well, we never suggested that the penalty should be the same in both cases. Of course, the apprentices at the Globe Boiler Works ought not to have been sentenced to such a punish- ment as a ruffian who lays obstructions across a line of railway should be sentenced to. Of course, the sentence ought to have been comparatively light, and might well have been made lighter than it otherwise need have been, in con- sequence of the atrocious English tradition which is regarded as the excuse for this sort of brutality. But our point is that its being a " practical joke " is not an extenuation, but an aggra- vation of injuries of this kind. It is to the intolerable disgrace, not to the credit, of the ruffian who tries to wreck a railway train, that the sight of the suffering, the corpses, and the dismay affords him amusement. And so it was to the serious discredit of the apprentices that the sight of their comrade's suffering and humiliation afforded them amusement. We do not for a moment deny that if accidental injury were inflicted in a game -of romps, at which all parties were playing by mutual consent, and on equal terms, the plea of a joke would be -apposite, and probably sufficient. But that is not in the least the case in point. The victim was not joining in a game, and suffering accidentally disagreeable consequences from the amusement in which he was taking part ; he was made the unwilling sport of the others,—made to amuse, by what was pure pain and shame to himself. The plea of a prac- tical joke in such a case is an aggravation of the injary. It was bad enough to hurt him and injure his wrist, and make him unfit for work, if it had been done out of revenge, or to gain an advantage over him in business ; but it was much worse when the very object of the tormentors was to take pleasure in the sight uf his sufferings and his humiliation. And as regards the humiliation, the memory of it often long survives the pain, and may alter the whole character of the victim for the worse, so that the physical injury may be the very least part of the mischief which such cruelty inflicts. We say that the legal toleration of these barbarities, under the plea of practical jokes, is a disgrace to English justice; and that if the plea means any- thing at all, it ought to be admitted for as much as it is worth even in extenuation of much graver injuries. If we only feel the more indignant when we hear a brute of a fellow say that he set a haystack on fire just to enjoy the fright it would cause to the farmer and all his family, why do we think it an extenuation of the apprentices' violence, that they only strung the novice up to the ceiling to enjoy his pain and fright in that unpleasant situation P We quite admit the force of the bad tradition to which Mr. Slade paid his tribute, when he let those appren- tices off with what was practically only a rebuke for carrying their joke " too far." But we maintain that it is a very bad -tradition, one entirely without either moral or legal justification, one which is not only one of those much " better honoured in the breach than in the observance," but which ought to be gradually -superseded by a tradition of the diametrically opposite kind. Let all deliberate injury inflicted because those who inflict it enjoy the spectacle of suffering, be regarded as the worse, not the better, the more culpable, not the less culpable, on that account. It is bad enough to be carried away into the infliction of suffering for gain, but it is even worse to inflict it for pure enjoyment. We have already recognised this in relation to the .sufferings of creatures which cannot complain of our cruelty. No man of any worth would now torture a cat or dog for the pleasure
of seeing its sufferings. Why not apply the same rule to the laws of companionship ? Why in the world should the law tolerate those initiatory barbarities by which old hands cele- brate the accession of inexperienced comrades ? It is a disgrace to our Services that such rites should be encouraged; and a double disgrace to the Bench which allows such pleas to inter- fere with the strict administration of justice.
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