From the Tipperary Free Press, 29 January 1869:

“ROMANCE OF A DUBLIN POLICE COURT

Persons whose pursuits might have led them, for the past few weeks, to the neighbourhood of the North-wall have had their attention drawn to two men whose peculiar types of physiognomy and mode of attire strongly indicate a Slavonic descent. They are both men of about the age of thirty-five years, stoutly made, and each has the coarse dark hair, broad, highly developed cheek bones, deeply seated eyes and formation of the lower portion of the face, which has come, since our Crimean experience  to be recognised as belonging to the rank and file  of the Russian army.  The dress worn by each bore out the resemblance.  It was a long grey coat of coarse cloth, with capacious boots into which their trousers were bestowed, and that broad, flat, cap worn by the attacking force at Inkerman, which the painters in the Victoria Gallery, Exhibition Palace, have rendered us familiar with.

The poor fellows looked weary, worn, and despondent as they passed through the crowds of persons, where each one was absorbed in his own pursuit and giving but a momentary thought of the poor exiles, whose strange and little-known language rendered them still stranger to those in whose midst thy were. It was evident that the two passengers were poor and suffering all the evils of that state, but yet Irish charity was not appealed to in vain.  Some of the fine fellows, who work along the quays and docks, gave from day to day, to the strangers what they could spare, and thus they were furnished with a slender pittance which was received gratefully.

So things remained until Saturday, when a kind hearted person made up a subscription of ten shillings for the men, and at the same time conveyed to them that they should apply to the police magistrates, who would endeavour to ascertain their wants and direct them as to the best course they should take under the circumstances. 

Accordingly, yesterday morning both men appeared before Mr O’Donnell, chief magistrate, at the Northern Divisional Court, and presented him with some documents written in a peculiar kind of English, which did not tend to make the darkness enveloping them more visible. From these, however it could be inferred that they were natives of the Russian-Polish province of Augustova, and Christians of the Greek rite, in connection with the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

They had taken part in the last death struggle of their country against the brute force of Russia, and, of course, for some time suffered all the consequences, so far as civil life went, which its repression entailed.  These they could submit to if their sufferings had ended with civil disabilities, but when the edict went forth that the people of their province should abandon the faith of their fathers, they gathered together all their worldly wealth which was small and went forth from their oppressed native land. 

After considerable difficulty they reached Liverpool, where they purchased passenger tickets , by an emigrant vessel, to proceed to America. Unfortunately, as the men stated, the lodging house in which they were stopping was full of strangers of all nations and their room was broken into in their absence, and all their money, clothes and their passenger tickets were stolen, and they  were thus rendered completely destitute. The only articles of their property which they retained in addition to the clothes they had on, where their Slavonic prayer books, adorned with rude wood cuts, illustrative of the various portions of the ceremonial of the Mass according to the Greek rite. These they exhibited in court, where they excited a considerable degree of interest amongst the spectators.

His worship, having made such inquiries from the men as were possible, decided to send them to the Mater Misericordiae Hospital to be confronted with the Very Rev Father Petcherine who, as a countryman, would be best enabled to investigate the truth of their story.  Both men were accordingly given in charge to Police -constable 139D, who accompanied them to Father Petcherine. On their return, the constable told his worship that that gentleman would attend immediately to give such explanations as were required. When the reverend gentleman came he had an interview with the magistrate n his private room, and when his worship resumed his seat he stated that from what he had heard he would give each of the applicants 5s to enable them to return to Liverpool, where a better opportunity existed to get work or to carry out their original intention of emigration than from Dublin. 

Father Petcherine interpreted his worship’s observations to the men, who are respectively named George Saldouk and Frantz Schmidt. They were received with every demonstration of gratitude by both and when the good priest was taking his leave of them, they stooped down and kissed his hand, beseeching at the same time his blessing. This little episode in the business of the police court, where it is generally only the worst sides of human nature that are displayed, exited no small degree of emotion in the minds of all who were present.“

The Dublin Police Court was located behind the Four Courts, having just opened for business the previous year. As this account of a morning spent there around this time shows, it was Dickensian in nature from the start.

Russian exile and Cistercian (previously Redemptorist) priest Vladimir Petcherine was well known to the Irish courts; he had been tried (and acquitted) of the offence of blasphemy at Green Street Courthouse in 1855 for burning a Protestant bible while preaching at Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire). More about him here.