Law and Laughter Part 6

A witness under severe cross-examination by Serjeant Dunning was repeatedly asked if he did not live close to the Court. On admitting that he did, the further question was put, "And pray, sir, for what reason did you take up your residence in that place?"--"To avoid the rascally impertinence of dunning," came the ready answer.

A barrister's name once gave a witness the opportunity to score in the course of a severe cross-examination. Missing was the leader of his Circuit and was defending his client charged with stealing a donkey. The prosecutor had left the donkey tied up to a gate, and when he returned it was gone. "Do you mean to say," said counsel, "the donkey was stolen from the gate?"--"I mean to say, sir," said the witness, giving the judge and then the jury a sly look, at the same time pointing to the counsel, "the a.s.s was missing."

Mr. Clarke, a leader of the Midland Circuit, was a very worthy lawyer of the old school. A client long refusing to agree to refer to arbitration a cause which judge, jury, and counsel wished to get rid of, he at last said to him, "You d--d infernal fool, if you do not immediately follow his lordship's recommendation, I shall be obliged to use strong language to you." Once, in a council of the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, the same gentleman very conscientiously opposed their calling a Jew to the Bar.

Some tried to point out the hardship to be imposed upon the young gentleman, who had been allowed to keep his terms, and whose prospects in life would thus be suddenly blasted. "Hardship!" said the zealous churchman, "no hardship at all! Let him become a Christian, and be d--d to him!"

It is sometimes imagined by laymen that verdicts may be obtained by the trickery of counsel. Doubtless counsel may try to throw dust in the eyes of jurors, but they are not very successful. Lord Campbell tells a story of Clarke, who by such tactics brought a case to a satisfactory compromise. The attorney, coming to him privately, said, "Sir, don't you think we have got very good terms? But you rather went beyond my instructions."--"You fool!" retorted Clarke; "how do you suppose you could have got such terms if I had stuck to your instructions."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN ADOLPHUS, BARRISTER.]

In the biography of John Adolphus, a famous criminal lawyer, we are told that the judges of his time were much impressed with the following table of degrees. "The three degrees of comparison in a lawyer's progress are: getting on; getting on-er (honour); getting on-est (honest)." He declared the judges acknowledged much truth in the degrees. The third degree in Mr. Adolphus' table reminds us of the story of the farmer who was met by the head of a firm of solicitors, who inquired the name of a plant the farmer was carrying. "It's a plant," replied the latter, "that will not grow in a lawyer's garden; it is called honesty."

One night, walking through St. Giles's by way of a short cut towards home, an Irish woman came up to Mr. Adolphus. "Why, Misther Adolphus!

and who'd a' thought of seeing you in the Holy Ground?"--"And how came you to know who I am?" said Adolphus. "Lord bless and save ye, sir!

not know ye? Why, I'd know ye if ye was boiled up in a soup!"

Mr. Montagu Chambers was counsel for a widow who had been put in a lunatic asylum, and sued the two medical men who signed the certificate of her insanity. The plaintiff's case was to prove that she was not addicted to drinking, and that there was no pretence for treating hers as a case of _delirium tremens_. Dr. Tunstal, the last of plaintiff's witnesses, described one case in which he had cured a patient of _delirium tremens_ in a _single night_, and he added, "It was a case of gradual drinking, _sipping all day_ from morning till night." These words were scarcely uttered when Mr. Chambers rose in triumph, and said, "My lord, that is _my case_."

On the Northern Circuit a century ago, there was a famous barrister who was familiarly known among his brother advocates as Jack Lee. He was engaged in examining one Mary Pritchard, of Barnsley, and began his examination with, "Well, Mary, if I may credit what I hear, I may venture to address you by the name of Black Moll."--"Faith you may, mister lawyer, for I am always called so by the blackguards." On another occasion he was retained for the plaintiff in an action for breach of promise of marriage. When the consultation took place, he inquired whether the lady for whose injury he was to seek redress was good-looking. "Very handsome indeed, sir," was the a.s.surance of her attorney. "Then, sir," replied Lee, "I beg you will request her to be in Court, and in a place where she can be seen." The attorney promised compliance, and the lady, in accordance with Lee's wishes, took her seat in a conspicuous place, where the jury could see her. Lee, in addressing the jury, did not fail to insist with great warmth on the "abominable cruelty" which had been exercised towards "the highly attractive and modest girl who trusted her cause to their discernment"; and did not sit down until he had succeeded in working upon their feelings with great and, as he thought, successful effect. The counsel on the other side, however, speedily broke the spell with which Lee had enchanted the jury, by observing that "his learned friend, in describing the graces and beauty of the plaintiff, ought in common fairness not to have concealed from the jury the fact that the lady had a _wooden leg_!" The Court was convulsed with laughter at this discovery, while Lee, who was ignorant of this circ.u.mstance, looked aghast; and the jury, ashamed of the influence that mere eloquence had had upon them, returned a verdict for the defendant.

Justice Willes, the son of Chief Justice Willes, had an offensive habit of interrupting counsel. On one occasion an old pract.i.tioner was so irritated by this practice that he retorted sharply by saying, "Your lordship doubtless shows greater acuteness even than your father, the Chief Justice, for he used to understand me _after I had done_, but your lordship understands me even _before I have begun_."

Of Whigham, a later leader on the Northern Circuit, an amusing story used to be told. He was defending a prisoner, and opened an alibi in his address to the jury, undertaking to prove it by calling the person who had been in bed with his client at the time in question, and deprecating their evil opinion of a woman whose moral character was clearly open to grave reproach, but who was still ent.i.tled to be believed upon her oath.

Then he called "Jessie Crabtree." The name was, as usual, repeated by the crier, and there came pushing his way st.u.r.dily through the crowd a big Lancashire lad in his rough dress, who had been the prisoner's veritable bedfellow--Whigham's brief not having explained to him that the Christian name of his witness was, in this case, a male one.

Colman, in his _Random Records_, tells the following anecdote of the witty barrister, Mr. Jekyll. One day observing a squirrel in Colman's chambers, in the usual round cage, performing the same operation as a man in a tread-mill, and looking at it for a minute, exclaimed, "Oh!

poor devil, he's going the Home Circuit."

Jekyll was asked why he no longer spoke to a lawyer named Peat; to which he replied, "I choose to give up his acquaintance--I have common of turbary, and have a right to cut _peat_!" An impromptu of his on a learned serjeant who was holding the Court of Common Pleas with his glittering eye, is well known:

"Behold the serjeant full of fire, Long shall his hearers rue it, His purple garments _came_ from Tyre, His arguments _go to it_."

Mr. H. L. Adam, in his volume _The Story of Crime_, tells an amusing story of a prisoner whose counsel had successfully obtained his acquittal on a charge of brutal a.s.sault. A policeman came across a man one night lying unconscious on the pavement, and near by him was an ordinary "bowler" hat. That was the only clue to the perpetrator of the deed. The police had their suspicions of a certain individual, whom they proceeded to interrogate. In addition to being unable to give a satisfactory account of his movements on the night of the a.s.sault, it was found that the "bowler" hat in question fitted him like a glove. He was accordingly arrested and charged with the crime, the hat being the chief evidence against him. Counsel for the defence, however, dwelt so impressively on the risk of accepting such evidence that the jury brought in a verdict of "not proven," and the prisoner was discharged.

Before leaving the dock he turned to the judge, and pointing to the hat in Court, said, "My lord, may I 'ave my 'at."

Some amusing scenes have occurred in suits brought by tailors and dressmakers to recover the price of garments for which their customers have declined to pay on the ground of misfit. Serjeant Ballantine, in his _Experiences of a Barrister_, relates the case of a tailor in which the defendant was the famous Sir Edwin Landseer. It was tried in the Exchequer Court, before Baron Martin. "The coat was produced," says the serjeant, "and the judge suggested that Sir Edwin should try it on; he made a wry face, but consented, and took off his own upper garment. He then put an arm into one of the sleeves of that in dispute, and made an apparently ineffectual endeavour to reach the other, following it round amidst roars of laughter from all parts of the Court. It was a common jury, and I was told that there was a tailor upon it, upon which I suggested that there was a gentleman of the same profession as the plaintiff in Court who might a.s.sist Sir Edwin. This was acceded to, and out hopped a little Hebrew slop-seller from the Minories, to whom the defendant submitted his body. With difficulty he got into the coat, and then stood as if spitted, his back one ma.s.s of wrinkles. The tableau was truly amusing; the indignant plaintiff looking at the performance with mingled horror and disgust; Sir Edwin, as if he were choking; whilst the juryman, with the air of a connoisseur, was examining him and the coat with profound gravity. At last the judge, when able to stifle his laughter, addressing the little Hebrew, said, 'Well, Mr. Moses, what do you say?'--'Oh,' cried he, holding up a pair of hands not over clean, and very different from those encased in lavender gloves which graced the plaintiff, 'it ish pos.h.i.tively shocking, my lord; I should have been ashamed to turn out such a thing from my establishment.' The rest of the jury accepted his view, and Sir Edwin, apparently relieved from suffocation, entered his own coat with a look of relief, which again convulsed the Court, bowed, and departed."

Financial prosecutions are as a rule very dreary, and any little joke perpetrated by counsel during the course of them is a relief. One was being heard, in which Mr. Muir was counsel, and to many of his statements the junior counsel for the prosecution shook his head vehemently, although he said nothing. This continual dumb contradiction at length got on the customary patience of Mr. Muir, who blurted out: "I do not know why my friend keeps shaking his head, whether it is that he has palsy, or that there's nothing in it!"

Mr. Baldwin was the counsel employed to oppose a person justifying bail in the Court of King's Bench. After some common questions, a waggish counsel sitting near suggested that the witness should be asked as to his having been a prisoner in Gloucester gaol. Mr. Baldwin thereon boldly asked: "When, sir, were you last in Gloucester gaol?" The witness, a respectable tradesman, with astonishment declared that he never was in a gaol in his life. Mr. Baldwin being foiled after putting the question in various ways, turned round to his friendly prompter, and asked for what the man had been imprisoned. He was told that it was for suicide. Thereupon Mr. Baldwin, with great gravity and solemnity addressed the witness: "Now, sir, I ask you upon your oath, and remember that I shall have your words taken down, were you not imprisoned in Gloucester gaol for suicide?"

A young lawyer who had just "taken the coif," once said to Samuel Warren, the author of _Ten Thousand a Year_: "Hah! Warren, I never could manage to get quite through that novel of yours. What did you do with Oily Gammon?"--"Oh," replied Warren, "I made a serjeant of him, and of course he never was heard of afterwards."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL WARREN, Q.C., MASTER IN LUNACY.]

Warner Sleigh, a great thieves' counsel, was not debarred by etiquette from taking instructions direct from his clients. One day, following a rap on the door of his chambers in Middle Temple Lane, a thick-set man, with cropped poll of unmistakably Newgate cut, slunk into the room, when the following colloquy took place.

"Mornin', sir," said the man, touching his forelock. "Morning," replied counsel. "What do you want?"--"Well, sir, I'm sorry to say, sir, our little Ben, sir, has 'ad a misfortin'; fust offence, sir, only a 'wipe'--"--"Well, well!" interrupted counsel. "Get on."--"So, sir, we thought as you've 'ad all the family business we'd like you to defend 'im, sir."--"All right," said counsel; "see my clerk--."--"Yessir,"

continued the thief; "but I thought I'd like to make sure you'd attend yourself, sir; we're anxious, 'cos it's little Ben, our youngest kid."--"Oh! that will be all right. Give Simmons the fee."--"Well, sir,"

continued the man, shifting about uneasily, "I was going to arst you, sir, to take a little less. You see, sir (wheedlingly), it's little Ben--his first misfortin'."--"No, no," said the counsel impatiently.

"Clear out!"--"But, sir, you've 'ad all our business. Well, sir, if you won't, you won't, so I'll pay you now, sir." And as he doled out the guineas: "I may as well tell you, sir, you wouldn't 'a' got the 'couties' if I 'adn't 'ad a little bit o' luck on the way."

The gravity of the Court of Appeal was once seriously disturbed by Edward Bullen reading to them the following paragraph from a pleading in an action for seduction: "The defendant denies that he is the father of the said twins, _or of either of them_." This he apologetically explained was due to an accident in his pupil-room, but everyone recognised the style of the master-hand.

Serjeant Adams, who acted as a.s.sistant judge at the sessions, had a very pleasant wit, and knew how to deal with any counsel who took to "high-falutin." On one occasion, after an altercation with the judge, the counsel for the prisoner in his address to the jury reminded them that "they were the great palladium of British Liberty--that it was _their_ province to deal with the facts, the _judge_ with the law--that they formed one of the great inst.i.tutions of their country, and that they came in with William the Conqueror." Adams at the end of his summing up said: "Gentlemen, you will want to retire to consider your verdict, and as it seems you came in with the Conqueror you can now go out with the beadle."

There was always a mystery how Edwin James, who at the Bar was earning an income of at least 10,000 a year, was continually in monetary difficulties. Like Sir Thomas Lawrence, he must have had some private drain on his resources which was never disclosed. Among others who suffered was the landlord of his chambers, whose rent was very much in arrear. In the end the landlord hit upon a plan to discover which would be the best method of recovering his rent, and one day asked James to advise him on a legal matter in which he was interested, and thereupon drew up a statement of his grievance against his own tenant. The paper was duly returned to the landlord next day with the following sentence subjoined: "In my opinion this is a case which admits of only one remedy--patience. Edwin James."

In a case before Lord Campbell, James took a line with a witness which his lordship considered quite inadmissible, and stopped him. When summing up to the jury Lord Campbell thought to soften his interruption by saying: "You will have observed, gentlemen, that I felt it my duty to stop Mr. Edwin James in a certain line which he sought to adopt in the cross-examination of one of the witnesses; but at the same time I had no intention to cast any reflection on the learned counsel who I am sure is known to you all as a most able--" but before his lordship could proceed any further James interposed, and in a contemptuous voice exclaimed: "My lord, I have borne your lordship's censure, spare me your lordship's praise."

Mr. W. G. Thorpe, F.S.A., in his entertaining volume of _Middle Temple Table Talk_, relates a curious story of a judge taking an extremely personal interest in a case which was brought before him. A milk company had sold off a lot of old stock to a cake-maker, and the cake-maker had declined to pay because the milk had turned out to be poisonous. As the case went on the judge became more and more exercised. "What do they do with this stuff?" he asked, pointing to a ma.s.s of horrible mixture. "Oh, my lord, they make cakes of it; it doesn't taste in the cakes."--"Where do they sell these cakes?" was the judge's next question, and the reply was, "They are used for certain railway stations, school-treats, and excursions." Then the defendant specified one of the places. "Bless me!"

said the judge, turning an olive-green, "I had some there myself," and with a shudder he retired to his private room, returning in a few minutes wiping his mouth.

There is another story of a counsel defending a woman on a charge of causing the death of her husband by administering a poisoned cake to him. "I'll eat some of the cake myself," he said in Court, and took a bite. Just at this moment a telegram was brought to him to say that his wife was seriously ill, and he obtained permission to leave in order to answer the message. He returned, finished his speech, and obtained the acquittal of his client. It transpired afterwards that the telegram business was arranged in order that counsel could obtain an emetic after swallowing the cake.

Mr. Montagu Williams tells a story, in his interesting _Leaves of a Life_, of two members of the Bar, one of whom had made a large fortune by his practice, but worked too hard to enjoy his gains, while the other, who only made a decent living, liked to enjoy life. They met on one occasion at the end of a long vacation, and the rich man asked his less fortunate brother what he had been doing. "I have been on the Continent," the other replied, "and I enjoyed my holiday very much. What have you been doing?"--"I have been working," said the rich Q.C., "and have not been out of town; I had lots of work to do."--"What is the use of it?" queried the other; "you can't carry the money with you when you die; and if you could, _it would soon melt_."

From the same work we take the following story of Serjeant Ballantine.

On one occasion he was acting in a case with a Jewish solicitor, and it happened that one of the hostile witnesses also belonged to the same race. Just as the serjeant was about to examine him, the solicitor whispered in Ballantine's ear: "Ask him as your first question, if he isn't a Jew."--"Why, but you're a Jew yourself," said the serjeant in some surprise. "Never mind, never mind," replied the little solicitor eagerly. "Please do--just to prejudice the jury."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN ROMILLY, BARON ROMILLY, MASTER OF THE ROLLS.]

No collection of the wit and humour of the Bar would be complete without some specimens of Sir Frank Lockwood's racy sayings. From Mr. Augustine Birrell's _Life of Lockwood_ we quote the following:

"A tale is attached to Lockwood's first brief. It was on a pet.i.tion to the Master of the Rolls for payment out of Court of a sum of money; and Lockwood appeared for an official liquidator of a company whose consent had to be obtained before the Court would part with the fund. Lockwood was instructed to consent, and his reward was to be three guineas on the brief and one guinea for consultation. The pet.i.tion came on in due course before Lord Romilly, and was made plain to him by counsel for the pet.i.tioner, and still a little plainer by counsel for the princ.i.p.al respondent.

"Then up rose Lockwood, an imposing figure, and indicated his appearance in the case.

"'What brings _you_ here?' said Lord Romilly, meaning, I presume, 'Why need I listen to you?'

"Lockwood looking puzzled, Lord Romilly added a little testily, 'What do you come here for?'