Chapter 15

In the following month Cashel Byron, William Paradise, and Robert
Mellish appeared in the dock together, the first two for having been
principals in a prize-fight, and Mellish for having acted as bottle-
holder to Paradise. These offences were verbosely described in a
long indictment which had originally included the fourth man who had
been captured, but against whom the grand jury had refused to find a
true bill. The prisoners pleaded not guilty.

The defence was that the fight, the occurrence of which was
admitted, was not a prize-fight, but the outcome of an enmity which
had subsisted between the two men since one of them, at a public
exhibition at Islington, had attacked and bitten the other. In
support of this, it was shown that Byron had occupied a house at
Wiltstoken, and had lived there with Mellish, who had invited
Paradise to spend a holiday with him in the country. This accounted
for the presence of the three men at Wiltstoken on the day in
question. Words had arisen between Byron and Paradise on the subject
of the Islington affair; and they had at last agreed to settle the
dispute in the old English fashion. They had adjourned to a field,
and fought fairly and determinedly until interrupted by the police,
who were misled by appearances into the belief that the affair was a
prize-fight.

Prize-fighting was a brutal pastime, Cashel Byron's counsel said;
but a fair, stand-up fight between two unarmed men, though doubtless
technically a breach of the peace, had never been severely dealt
with by a British jury or a British judge; and the case would be
amply met by binding over the prisoners, who were now on the best of
terms with one another, to keep the peace for a reasonable period.
The sole evidence against this view of the case, he argued, was
police evidence; and the police were naturally reluctant to admit
that they had found a mare's nest. In proof that the fight had been
premeditated, and was a prize-fight, they alleged that it had taken
place within an enclosure formed with ropes and stakes. But where
were those ropes and stakes? They were not forthcoming; and he
(counsel) submitted that the reason was not, as had been suggested,
because they had been spirited away, for that was plainly
impossible; but because they had existed only in the excited
imagination of the posse of constables who had arrested the
prisoners.

Again, it had been urged that the prisoners were in fighting
costume. But cross-examination had elicited that fighting costume
meant practically no costume at all: the men had simply stripped in
order that their movements might be unembarrassed. It had been
proved that Paradise had been--well, in the traditional costume of
Paradise (roars of laughter)