“Billy he don’t want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an’ Billy have t’ hit ’im.  Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done?  He go have Billy ‘rested. Yes, suh!  But you can’t tell Judge Crutchfield nothin’.  Next mo’nin’ in p’leece co’t he say to Billy:  ’I fine you twenty-five dollahs, fo’ hittin’ this old gray-haihed man.’  Yes, suh! ’at ’s a way Judge Crutchfield is.  Can’t tell him nothin’.  He jes’ set up theh on de bench, an’ he chaw tobacco, an’ he heah de cases, an’ he spit, an’ evvy time he spit he spit a fine.  Yes, suh!  He spit like dis:  ’Pfst!  Five dollahs!’—­’Pfst!  Ten dollahs!’—­’Pfst!  Fifteen dollahs!’—­just how he feel.  He suttinly is some judge, ’at man.”

Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield’s court.

The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded.  All the benches were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up.  Among the members of the audience—­for the performance is more like a vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious tribunal—­I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which was playing in Richmond at the time—­these doubtless drawn to the place by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as “The Virginia Judge,” is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing monologue.  Mr. Kelly himself has, however, told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G.  Brown, of Newport News, hold court.

At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge—­a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination.

“William Taylor!” calls a court officer.

A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice.  He is a sad spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon’s plaster.  The judge looks at him over his glasses.  The hearing proceeds as follows: 

COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)—­Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.)

JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD—­Sunday drunk—­Five dollars.

It is over.

The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar.  He is a short, wide negro, very black and tattered.  A large black negress, evidently his consort, arises as witness against him.  The case goes as follows: 

JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD—­Drunk?

THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)—­Drunk?  Yass, Jedge, drunk. Always drunk.

THE PRISONER (meekly)—­I ain’t been drunk, Jedge.

THE JUDGE—­Yes, you have.  I can see you’ve got your sign up this morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room):  Make them niggers stop talkin’ back there! (To the wife):  What did he do, Mandy?