Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate is by Frank Thorpe Porter, whose title page describes him as for upwards of twenty years a magistrate of the Head Office of Dublin Police. The preface says the writer is influenced by a desire to extend the appetite which is so greedy in devouring fiction to some morsels of fact. The preface says several of the narratives refer to incidents which might occasion disagreeable feelings to the parties or to their kindred, and that in such cases fictitious names will be adopted.

A speaker tells of proceeding by Wicklow and Arklow to Wexford, where he got a passage to Jersey. The speaker says that on enlisting he took the name of Vaughan, which was that of his mother's family. The text says it may appear extraordinary that Father Mahony should make such long quotations with perfect correctness, but that to those who knew him a misquotation or deficiency of recollection on his part would seem far more surprising.