Not Cricket

"This is getting monotonous," said Douglas Fairbanks Jr., after being robbed by a London burglar for the third time in a row. Last week, another celebrity joined in Fairbanks' protest at the wave of burglaries sweeping Britain. Humorist Sir Alan P. Herbert, onetime M.P., whose sly gibes at British bumbling (e.g., its divorce laws) have sometimes changed the law of the land, wrote in the Sunday Times:

"There was something to be said for the 'barbarous' days of the Beggar's Opera, when a theft of just 40 shillings was a hanging offense. If you put people 'in Fear on the highway' and robbed them or burgled . . ., values were no matter, and you were hanged, even if you took a penny or saucepan only. 'Putting in fear' was the important, unforgivable thing . . ." Nowadays in Britain, continued Herbert, "there is growing up, I feel, a notion that it is not cricket to hurt a burglar, though he may do anything to us."

Two days later, as if to justify A.P. Herbert's words, a respectable meat merchant of Watford was haled into court for "the unlawful and malicious wounding" of a burglar whom he had shot as the man crept into his bedroom at 4:30 a.m. one morning in February. The Watford judge forgave the merchant the crime on the grounds that he had probably shot "in panic," and dismissed him with a $60 fine "for costs."

Herbert preferred an older precedent: that of "Mr. Purcell, a septuagenarian of County Cork, who in 1811 was knighted for killing four burglars with a carving knife. That, I feel, is the spirit . . ."

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