Character

With British statesmen on holiday, dispatches from London last week were nonetheless rich in British character:

P: Before a judge in Bromley County Court, well-to-do Pie Manufacturer Arthur Kempton explained a device he had secretly installed under the drivers' seats of his pie trucks to record how often the drivers jumped up and down to sell pies. A pie salesman who objected to sitting over this device while on his rounds had removed it, suffered discharge by Mr. Kempton, and was suing for wages thus lost.

Handing down a decision in favor of the pie-selling driver, His Honor Judge Edwin Max Konstam vigorously cried: "I know of nothing more shameful or un-English than to conceal such a device as this so-called 'testing clock' secretly in a van with a view to catching the driver loafing! It is perfectly legitimate to have an unconcealed clock device so installed as to record what the men are doing on the road but for Kempton--who confessed quite unashamedly to playing these tricks on his employes--to lie in ambush for the drivers in this sort of way is absolutely repellent to any person who has any feeling for the principles that should prevail between master and servant."

P: The London Bank Officers Guild and the Scottish Bankers Association jointly mobilized to get Justice for one W. E.Notman, a clerk dismissed by the Glasgow office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. This bank, as many English banks used to do, operates on the theory that if a low-paid employe marries, the needs of his wife & children may sooner or later tempt him to pilfer money from the bank. Eleven years ago, when Clerk Notman was first employed, he was told that he could not marry until his salary had reached -L-200 per year ($1,000). Two years ago it had reached -L-160, and both Mr. Notman and his longtime fiancee were getting desperate. He demanded a raise and got -L-180, but that was still not -L-200. The Commercial Bank of Scotland refused to take into consideration an offer by Mr. Notman's father to screw Son Notman's income up to -L-200 by giving him an extra -L-20 per year.

In a letter to Clerk Notman which was widely published in England and Scotland last week as a horrible example, the Head Office of the Commercial Bank advised him: 1) to wait six months, then apply for another raise; and 2) to start looking for a house "as the Bank could not approve of your settling in furnished rooms." Two months later manly Mr. Notman announced his intention to marry, was instantly fired, and last week seemed well on his way to become an heroic Captain Dreyfus of British banking as the Notman affair grew in notoriety and British bank guilds strove to get him back his job with right to wed.

P: Official resolve not to let "Jew-baiting" get a hold in Britain last week brought into London's Old Street Police Court doughty John Penfold, an auctioneer charged with warming up a London slum gathering with the words: "I'd turn all the Jews out of Britain! And I'd start with Hore-Belisha [Transport Minister], Sassoon [Undersecretary for Air] and Epstein [sculptor] !"

Jew-baiter Penfold obliquely accused the judge of being a persecutor of Jew-baiters, cried: "I am totally opposed to your trying this case!"

"You may be, but I am going to try it!" snapped Magistrate F. O. Langly. who imposed a fine of 40 shillings and ordered Auctioneer Penfold to post -L-50 ($250) surety that he will not bait Jews for twelve months.

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