"The Three Infernal Jokes" by Lord Dunsany

The West End of London during this time period would have been very fashionable and posh.

tout: in this context: one who solicits patronage. This word has two pronunciations, so if you'd use a different one, know mine is still an accepted one. (I didn't look it up before hand and upon initial recording tried it several ways, including both of the accepted ways, so I had my choice of which way to go with it, but didn't really know if one was more accepted than the other, as this is not an American English word, it appears to be entirely a British English word, so I really had no guess either way.)

baize: a coarse, typically green woolen material resembling felt, used especially for covering pool, snooker, and billiard tables.

£10,000 in 1916, depending on how you do your inflation adjustment, would be anywhere from £721,000 to £6.7 million. Let's just call it £1 million. A tidy sum to be sure. £50,000 obviously is 5x or at least £3.6 million. And that's PER YEAR for a lawyer of the day! *boggle*

High Court of Bow: It appears Bow is a parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, county of Middlesex? There appears to have been some form of court there, a debt-court at least, and seemingly a county court, if that's different, but the idea of a "High Court of Bow" is likely a fiction from our author. Unless it is normal in England to refer to a county court as a high court? When it comes to the legal system, while the US system may derive from the English system, it is not identical to it. Indeed, the two systems have drifted noticeably apart over the past 250 years...

Arrah and begorrah: 'Arrah' is an expression of disbelief or wonder, while 'begorrah' means 'by God'. Urban Dictionary gives an entry for "arah begorrah!" as "a majorly boggerish Irish term used as a reaction to surprising or dreadful news." Although I'm not sure what a proper Irish pronunciation would be.

The picture used is "Der Tod des Dichters Pietro Aretino" (The Death of the Poet Pietro Aretino) (1854) by Anselm Feuerbach. In 1556, Pietro Aretino is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13821/13821-h/13821-h.htm#jokes