softened into
more civilised pronunciation to make them intelligible:--

"She asked I for money, she did, and what was I to gi'e her? I hadn't a
got a shilling nor a sixpence, and she knew it, and knowed that I
couldn't get one either till Saturday night. I gets thirteen shillings a
week from Master H., and a shilling on Sundays, and I hev got five
children and a wife to keep out of that--that's two shillings a week for
each on us, that's just threepence halfpenny a day, look 'ee, sir. And
what victuals be I to buy wi' that, let alone beer? and a man can't do
no work wi'out a quart a day, and that's fourpence, and there's my
share, look 'ee, gone at onst. Wur be I to get any victuals, and wur be
I to get any clothes an' boots, I should like for to know? And Jack he
gets big and wants a main lot, and so did Polly, but her's gone to the
work'us', wuss luck. And parson wants I to send the young 'uns to
school, and pay a penny a week for 'em, and missis she wants a bit o'
bacon in the house and a loaf, and what good is that of, among all we?
I gets a slice of bacon twice a week, and sometimes narn. And beer--I
knows I drinks beer, and more as I ought, but what's a chap to do when
he's a'most shrammed wi' cold, and nar a bit o' nothin' in the pot but
an old yeller swede as hard as wood? And my teeth bean't as good as 'em
used to be. I knows I drinks beer, and so would anybody in my place--it
makes me kinder stupid, as I don't feel nothing then. Wot's the
good--I've worked this thirty year or more, since I wur big enough to go
with the plough, and I've a knowed they as have worked for nigh handy
sixty, and wot do 'em get for it? All he'd a got wur the rheumatiz. Yer
med as well drink while 'ee can. I never meaned to hurt her, and her
knows it; and if it wurn't for a parcel of women a-shoving on her on,
her would never a come here agen me. I knows I drinks, and what else be
I to do? I can't work allus."

"But what are you going to say in your defence--do you say she provoked
you or anything?" asked the Clerk.

"No, I don't know as she provoked I. I wur provoked, though, I wur. I
don't bear no malice agen she. I ain't a got nothin' more for to say."

The magistrates retired, and the Chairman, on returning, said that this
was a most brutal and unprovoked assault, made all the worse by the
previous drinking habits of the defendant. If it had not been for the
good character he bore generally speaking (here he looked towards the