Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts, credited to Thomas Holmes, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts by Thomas Holmes. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers. Thomas Holmes served for 20 years as a police court missionary for the London courts. Police court missionaries, often sponsored by temperance unions, were the predecessors to today’s probation officers. Their role was to get convicted criminals back on the straight and narrow, and to help them stay there. In his years in this job, Holmes got a very close look at the causes of crime, and to the difficulty people had in staying back out of the courts once in the system. Chief among the causes he observed were alcoholism (what was then called dipsomania), poverty, and domestic violence. In this book, originally published in 1900, Holmes tells real-life stories of the people he encountered in the system and the beliefs about crime he developed as a result. Well over a century later, many of the issues still sound familiar. - Summary by Verla Viera

Recording facts

• Recording title: Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts
• Author credits: Thomas Holmes
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 23
• Listed recording duration: 8:39:31

Catalogue topics

• Crime
• London
• criminals
• criminal justice
• police missionaries
• magistrate courts
• criminal courts
• probation officers

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface and Preface to the New Edition — 4:32
2. 01 - Chapter I, How I Became a Police Court Missionary — 28:36
3. 02 - Chapter II, In Lambeth Police Court — 16:57
4. 03 - Chapter III, A Change for the Better — 32:31
5. 04 - Chapter IV, Husbands and Wives, Part 1 — 20:10
6. 05 - Chapter IV, Husbands and Wives, Part 2 — 21:29
7. 06 - Chapter V, Parents and Children, Part 1 — 33:22
8. 07 - Chapter V, Parents and Children, Part 2 — 26:11
9. 08 - Chapter VI, Record Breakers: Jane Cakebread — 29:49
10. 09 - Chapter VII, Record Breakers: Kate Henessey, Part 1 — 25:02
11. 10 - Chapter VII, Record Breakers: Kate Henessey, Part 2 — 21:41
12. 11 - Chapter VIII, Among Dipsomaniacs, Part 1 — 25:27
13. 12 - Chapter VIII, Among Dipsomaniacs, Part 2 — 14:57
14. 13 - Chapter IX, Criminals, Part 1 — 25:54
15. 14 - Chapter IX, Criminals, Part 2 — 24:01
16. 15 - Chapter IX, Criminals, Part 3 — 18:37
17. 16 - Chapter X, Cranks, Part 1 — 18:42
18. 17 - Chapter X, Cranks, Part 2 — 23:57
19. 18 - Chapter XI, The Arcadians and Some Account of the ‘Gubbins’ — 16:07
20. 19 - Chapter XII, How the Poor Live – And Die, Part 1 — 24:48
21. 20 - Chapter XII, How the Poor Live – And Die, Part 2 — 22:32
22. 21 - Chapter XII, How the Poor Live – And Die, Part 3 — 15:31
23. 22 - Chapter XIII, The Problem of Home Workers — 28:38

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.