Part 4 (1/2)

”Mr. F----, if you establish the latter part of your proposition, your client will be acquitted to a certainty.”

And to the same authority we are indebted for a judge's gentle but sarcastic reproof of a prosing counsel. In an action for false imprisonment, heard before Mr. Justice Wightman, Ribton was addressing the jury at great length, repeating himself constantly, and never giving the slightest sign of winding up. When he had been pounding away for several hours, the good old judge interposed, and said: ”Mr. Ribton, you've said that before.”--”Have I, my lord?” said Ribton; ”I'm very sorry. I quite forgot it.”--”Don't apologise, Mr. Ribton,” was the answer. ”I forgive you; for it was a very long time ago.”

A very old story is told of a highwayman who sent for a solicitor and inquired what steps were necessary to be taken to have his trial deferred. The solicitor answered that he would require to get a doctor's affidavit of his illness. This was accordingly done in the following manner: ”The deponent verily believes that if the said ---- is obliged to take his trial at the ensuing sessions, he will be in imminent danger of his life.”--”I verily believe so too,” replied the judge, and the trial proceeded immediately.

Some judges profess ignorance of slang terms used in evidence, and seek explanation from counsel. Lord Coleridge in the following story had his inquiry not only answered but ill.u.s.trated. A witness was describing an animated conversation between the pursuer and defendant in a case and said: ”Then the defendant turned and said, 'If 'e didn't 'owld 'is noise 'ed knock 'im off 'is peark.'”--”Peark? Mr. Shee, what is meant by peark?” asked the Lord Chief Justice. ”Oh, peark, my lord, is any position when a man elevates himself above his fellows--for instance, a bench, my lord.”

Another story ill.u.s.trating this alleged ignorance of every-day terms used by the ma.s.ses comes from the Scottish Court of Session. In this instance the explanation was volunteered by the witness who used the term. One of the counsel in the case was Mr. (now Lord) Dewar, who was cross-examining the witness on a certain incident, and drew from him the statement that he (the witness) had just had a ”nip.” ”A nip,” said the judge; ”what is a nip?”--”Only a small Dewar, my lord,” explained the witness.

Lord Russell of Killowen, himself a Lord Chief Justice, tells some amusing stories of Lord Coleridge in his interesting reminiscences of that great judge in the _North American Review_. When at the Bar he was counsel in a remarkable case--Saurin against Starr. The pursuer, an Irish lady, sued the Superior of a religious order at Hull for expulsion without reasonable cause. Mr. Coleridge cross-examined a Mrs. Kennedy, one of the superintendents of the convent, who had mentioned in her evidence, among other peccadilloes of the pursuer, that she had been found in the pantry eating strawberries, when she should have been attending some cla.s.s duties.

Mr. Coleridge: ”Eating strawberries, really!”

Mrs. Kennedy: ”Yes, sir, she was eating strawberries.”

Mr. Coleridge: ”How shocking!”

Mrs. Kennedy: ”It was forbidden, sir.”

Mr. Coleridge: ”And did you, Mrs. Kennedy, really consider there was any great harm in that?”

Mrs. Kennedy: ”No, sir, not in itself, any more than there was harm in eating an apple; but you know, sir, the mischief that came from that.”

When as Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge visited the United States, he was continually pestered by interviewers, and one of them failing to draw him, began to disparage the old country in its physical features and its men. Lord Coleridge bore it all in good part; finally the interviewer said, ”I am told, my lord, you think a great deal of your great fire of London. Well, I guess, that the conflagration we had in the little village of Chicago made your great fire look very small.” To which his lords.h.i.+p blandly responded: ”Sir, I have every reason to believe that the great fire of London was quite as great as the people of that time desired.”

There are few of Lord Bowen's witticisms from the Bench in circulation, but his after-dinner stories are worth recording, and perhaps one of the best is that given in _Anecdotes of the Bench and Bar_, as told by himself in the following words: ”One of the ancient rabbinical writers was engaged in compiling a history of the minor prophets, and in due course it became his duty to record the history of the prophet Daniel.

In speaking of the most striking incident in the great man's career--I refer to his critical position in the den of lions--he made a remark which has always seemed to me replete with judgment and observation. He said that the prophet, notwithstanding the trying circ.u.mstances in which he was placed, had one consolation which has sometimes been forgotten.

He had the consolation of knowing that when the dreadful banquet was over, at any rate it was not he who would be called upon to return thanks.”

The following story cannot be cla.s.sed a witticism from the Bench, but the judge clearly gave the opening for the lady's smart retort.

Mrs. Weldon, a well-known lady litigant in the Courts a generation ago, was on one occasion endeavouring in the Court of Appeal to upset a judgment of Vice-Chancellor Bacon, and one ground of complaint was that the judge was too old to understand her case. Thereupon Lord Esher said: ”The last time you were here you complained that your case had been tried by my brother Bowen, and you said he was only a bit of a boy, and could not do you justice. Now you come here and say that my brother Bacon was too old. What age do you want the judge to be?”--”Your age,”

promptly replied Mrs. Weldon, fixing her bright eyes on the handsome countenance of the Master of the Rolls.

On Charles Phillips, who became a judge of the Insolvent Court, noticing a witness kiss his thumb instead of the Testament, after rebuking him said, ”You may think to _desave_ G.o.d, sir, but you won't desave me.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR HENRY HAWKINS, LORD BRAMPTON.]

That racy and turf-attending judge, Lord Brampton, better known as Sir Henry Hawkins, tells many good stories of himself in his _Reminiscences_, but it is the unconscious humorist of Marylebone Police Court who records this _bon mot_ of Sir Henry.

An old woman in the witness-box had been rattling on in the most voluble manner, until it was impossible to make head or tail of her evidence.

Mr. Justice Hawkins, thinking he would try his hand, began with a soothing question, but the old woman would not have it at any price. She replied testily, ”It's no use you bothering me. I have told you all I know.”--”That may be,” replied his lords.h.i.+p, ”but the question rather is, do you know all you have told us?”

When Sir Henry (then Mr.) Hawkins was prosecuting counsel in the Tichborne trial, over which Lord Chief Justice c.o.c.kburn presided, an amusing incident is recorded by Mr. Plowden. The antecedents of a man who had given sensational evidence for the claimant were being inquired into, and in answer to Sir Henry the witness under examination said he knew the man to be married, but his wife pa.s.sed under another name.

”What name?” asked Mr. Hawkins. ”Mrs. Hawkins,” replied the witness.