It occurs to me in passing that the tradition of Consular Assistance dates from an earlier time -- like many of the more gentlemanly traditions of formal warfare -- during which only the gentry travelled for amusement... I rather doubt that e.g. an itinerant British pedlar working both sides of the Channel was ever visited by a member of the dip service when jailed in France, but some Old Etonian boy on the Grand Tour was almost certainly aided and comforted by HM's ambassador's staff if he went on a tear and was rounded up in a foreign city...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...