JUDGES OF YESTERDAY
“You did, sir,” replied the judge with a severe frown. “How
could I have got Daniel on my notes unless you told me so,
sir?”
DICKENS: “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.”
Peter considered those bad bold ones who spoke evil of dignities were
merely “presumptuous,” but I am on the side of Jude, who roundly
assessed them to be “filthy dreamers.” Happily, to an Englishman, evil
speaking of judges is impossible. Indeed, the English attitude of mind
towards the Bench, if one can conceive the English mind capable of
finding itself in an incorrect attitude, has a tendency towards
idolatry. The infallibility of the Pope we smile at as a superstition,
but the infallibility of the Court of Appeal is an article of faith
upon which we issue execution, unless, of course, it is surpassed and
overruled by the more infallible infallibility of the House of Lords.
Only the will of the people and the great inquest of the nation can
alter a decision of the House of Lords, unless there happens to be a
Government in office with a will of its own and the capacity to act
upon it――and you never know what may occur some day. And really we so
love and worship our judges that when we tell stories of their quaint
humours we do so much as a good Italian Catholic will scold his patron
saint or tell some anecdote of the holy ones more lively than
respectful. For we know that judges are only human, and we have seen
many grow froward from age, their faculties become dim, their
qualities rust, until at length they lose the one essential attribute
of judicality, they are no longer able to suffer fools gladly, and the
public and the Bar become uneasy of their continuance. And, on the
other hand, what patience and loving-kindness are shown by the
advocate towards the judge. No hours are too long, no time is misspent
in preventing him from error, or leading him thereto, as the case may
be. I love to hear that phrase trundled out with unblushing
sycophancy, “Your lordship will remember the case of Crocks and the
Wapping Corporation, in fourteen ‘Meeson and Welsby.’” Every one in
court――except perhaps some loafer in the gallery――knows that his
lordship never heard of the case before, and if he had would have
forgotten it. Indeed, the learned Counsel himself only had it shoved
into his hand an hour ago by little Smithson, who devils for him, and
it was I who met the disconsolate little man in the Middle Temple
Library and told him――but that is outside the frame of the picture.
You have the whole subject-matter set out in one phrase “Contempt of
Court.” This is a feeling that must be closeted strictly within the
heart――otherwise seven days.
I remember an irate Scotch draper saying quite seriously to me at the
end of a case, “I have an utter contempt for this court.”
“My good man,” I said thankfully, “you have saved me from a most
painful duty. Had you expressed a mere contempt of court I must have
sent you to Knutsford Gaol, but an utter contempt seems to me to save
you. But do not say it again, I may be wrong. Go outside as quickly as
you can.”
He disappeared. Had I been a Plowden I should have added “and utter
contempt there.” But I only thought of that going home in the tram.
And when I think of the judges of yesterday I think first of all of
the great and honest services they rendered to the State, and then I
recall them through some quaint story, or maybe some trick of speech
or manner, just as you may remember a great cathedral both as a mighty
and noble building and as the edifice from which sprang some grotesque
gargoyle whose humours have always haunted you when the name of the
building was sounded.
Of the many judges that came the Northern Circuit during my short
career at the Bar some few are still, I am glad to say, judges of
to-day, and several have but recently passed away. And the figure that
is perhaps in the foreground of my memory is that of Mr. Justice
Grantham, who, less than a year ago, vigorous and popular as ever,
celebrated his silver anniversary on the circuit. I was present at the
banquet given to him by the circuit, and as he stood before us,
four-square to the winds of criticism and popular――or perhaps I should
say unpopular――disapproval, what human sympathy and enthusiasm rang
out in our cheers. We knew him only as a hard-working, conscientious
judge, as a clean, honest man, and as that _rara avis_, a south
country man who understood and admired the bracing atmosphere of the
north. He told us how, when he was junior judge and the circuits were
chosen, that every circuit was taken by his seniors except that
containing Manchester and Liverpool, for which he had to start out
with the condolences of his brethren. Now when he was senior judge he
had the first choice, and despite his years he came back to Liverpool
and Manchester because he liked the straight, manly business methods
in which the work of the Northern Circuit is done. And what he said
was no mere after-dinner compliment, it was as honest and true as the
cheers of those who welcomed him back. I have seen Grantham at his
very worst sitting on the bench, trying a political libel action; I
have seen Grantham at his very best standing in an old Sussex wagon
and judging a Bar point-to-point steeple-chase, and I have seen him
presiding as judge in many different cases with varying success, but I
have never seen him do anything but what he believed to be the only
straight, honest thing to do. That is why he was so exasperating and
lovable. He not only had strong, simple English ideals, but he acted
up to them in open daylight. Any man of his ability and without his
sincerity could have steered a safer and easier course. Grantham could
only steer the straight course――once his course was set, he followed
it with dogged fidelity. Small wonder, therefore, that sometimes he
ran on the rocks. But when he did he bore no malice to the
rocks――indeed, so optimistic and full of good humour was he that he
scarcely knew that there had been a collision.
A little while ago Grantham made a speech to the Liverpool grand jury
which attracted much attention. A few days afterwards I was present at
the banquet given to the judges at the Town Hall, and the Lord Mayor
of Liverpool called upon me to propose the toast of the grand jury.
There were no reporters at these festivities, so it was not
inconvenient to make some humorous remarks at the learned judge’s
expense――if one dared. I recall the shudder of aldermanic apprehension
when I started, and its quick change to purple laughter when it was
seen that Grantham was thoroughly enjoying it all. I remember as we
left the banqueting hall his friendly pat on the shoulder and his
kindly laugh as he said, “Very good fun, Parry! Just like old times!
But I was quite right, wasn’t I?” And there you had the man at his
best. There was no meanness or littleness about him. He was honest,
simple, outspoken, cocksure, keen to do right and English to the
backbone. There was no policy or finesse in anything that he did, and
he was out for work and business. That is why he was so welcome and
beloved on the Northern Circuit.
But his slackness in finesse often cost him tricks in the Court of
Appeal. Here is an example of what I mean.
I appeared for a small carpenter whose shop had been injured by the
pulling down of adjoining buildings to clear the site of a new
infirmary. The defendants were trustees of the institution. The claim
was £175 11_s._ 2_d._――or some such figures――and I got a verdict for
every pound, shilling, and penny, in spite of Gully’s eloquence.
Grantham started his summing-up as follows――I quote, of course, from
memory:――
“Gentlemen of the jury, if you are as heartily glad as I am that this
is the last case at the Manchester Assizes, and that, after this, we
shall be able to get away into pleasanter surroundings, you will not
be long in doing substantial justice to the plaintiff.”
I shall never forget how strange the words sounded in the cold, grey
light of the Court of Appeal, and how Lord Esher roared out an encore
to Gully when he read them to the Court. We did not keep that verdict.
Smyly, Q.C., led me, and Esher, in one of his wild humours, romped
round the court with him in playful savagery. One gem of Grantham’s
was in reference to Gully’s defence: “Then, gentlemen of the jury, Mr.
Parry is told he should have sued the contractors instead of the
trustees, and the contractors would have said ‘sue the foreman,’ and
the foreman would have said ‘sue the hodman,’ and so it would have
been like the house that Jack built.”
“Which house is that, Mr. Smyly?” said Lord Esher.
“Really, my lord――――”
“Is it on either of the plans you have put in?” continued the Master
of the Rolls, waving them about impatiently.
Bowen smiled like a benignant Cheshire cat.
“I am not certain,” continued Smyly, cautiously, “that the house in
question is in any way connected with the case.”
“It must be,” said Esher, “or why did Mr. Justice Grantham tell the
jury about it.”
I was tugging away at Smyly’s gown, and he turned round and asked what
on earth the house that Jack built was all about.
“A nursery rhyme. Don’t you know it? This is the house that Jack
built. This is the malt――――’”
“Oh, of course,” interrupted Smyly, turning round to the Court with
great seriousness. “I have consulted my learned junior, and he agrees
with me that the house that Jack built is not set out on the plans,
and that the house referred to by the learned judge is in the nature
of a literary allusion.”
Lord Esher laughed loud and long, and Bowen’s smile broadened even
more benignantly. The appeal was lost, and we went to the House of
Lords with no success. Lord Hannen shook his head at me sympathetically,
saying, “Of two evils, I had rather have a judge dead against me than
strongly in my favour.”
Lord Justice Vaughan Williams, who is now a pillar of the Court of
Appeal, used to come on circuit a great deal. He began as a
Commissioner, and we stood greatly in awe of him, for he was a very
learned lawyer, and rather insisted on things being done in legal
decency and order. Some of the business short cuts of the Northern
Circuit he did not appreciate.
I remember winning an important bankruptcy case before Judge Heywood
in Manchester. On appeal we came before Vaughan Williams and R.S.
Wright, J.J. The other side had Sir Robert Finlay, Q.C., and Yate Lee,
afterwards the Stockport judge, a great bankruptcy expert. Sir Horace
Davey, Q.C., was to lead me. The case came on in the morning, and Sir
Horace Davey was down at the House of Lords. Finlay, seeing his
advantage, opened the case in twenty minutes as an obvious mistake in
the court below, and Yate Lee said nothing. I was called on to hold
the fort against a hostile court until reinforcements in the shape of
Sir Horace Davey arrived. I had several cases to quote, but the judges
would not have them at any price, and Vaughan Williams kept putting
wonderful legal conundrums to me, which I tried to answer or evade as
seemed the safer course at the moment.
When Davey came in about half-past three, I think I had won Wright
over to see there was something in the points I had raised. Davey told
me to sit down, and he started at once. In his thinnest, most arid,
and contemptuous tones he explained to the judges that it really did
not matter which way they decided, because the case would have to go
to the Court of Appeal. Still, it was a more convenient thing that
their lordships should decide rightly, or, in other words for him, in
accordance with the authorities.
It is a great and rare gift to be able to talk like that to High Court
judges, but I felt we were seeking trouble. Vaughan Williams listened
for a while, then looked sternly at Davey, and began very quietly:
“Sir Horace, I have put a proposition to your learned junior which he
is utterly unable to answer, and it is this――――”
The proposition was put.
Davey heard him with theatrical impatience and weariness, and replied:
“My lord, I can understand my learned junior not replying to your
lordship’s proposition. Your lordship’s proposition has nothing
whatever to do with this case. As I was saying when your lordship
interrupted me,” &c.
Of course we lost that appeal. The two judges laughed Judge Heywood’s
decision out of court, and a few weeks afterwards the Court of Appeal
restored Judge Heywood’s decision, with appropriate astonishment at
the reasoning of the Divisional Court. Such is the glorious
uncertainty of the law.
Mr. Justice Hawkins was often on circuit in the earlier days. In the
Crown Court he was painstaking, but in the Civil Court anything like
figures or business details he found irksome. In one business case,
counsel began discussing the question of the fall of 1-16d. in the
price of yarn, when Hawkins indignantly interrupted him by asking
whether the time of her Majesty’s judges was to be spent in dealing
with fractions of the smallest coin of the realm. Finding that in the
result it came to a goodly sum, he referred the case, and spent the
rest of the day elucidating a slander action, which resulted in a
verdict for another fraction of a penny.
Mr. Justice Cave very often visited the Northern Circuit. He was a
stout, heavy, round-faced man, spoke with a nasal twang, and
occasionally slept on the bench, but in spite of his peculiarities he
was a straightforward, useful lawyer, and a not unkindly judge. He
treated the junior Bar with good-humoured toleration, but I cannot say
he suffered them gladly. Louis Aitken, who was the most scrupulous
prosecutor on circuit, was one day prosecuting a thief before Cave at
Lancaster, and finding that a statement of a policeman on the
depositions was made in the absence of the prisoner, and therefore not
evidence, properly and carefully omitted it. Cave, who was following
the depositions with his thumb and a blue pencil, pulled him up:
“Ow now. Ow now, Mr. Aitken,” he said, in his snarling voice. “This
won’t do, you know. You’re garbling the evidence. That’s what you’re
doing, garbling the evidence.”
Aitken was too stunned to say anything, and Cave took the policeman
through the whole statement. When he had finished, he snapped out:
“Any other questions, Mr. Aitken?”
“Only this, my lord,” said Aitken, who had recovered his equanimity.
“Was the prisoner present during that conversation?”
“No,” replied the officer.
“Ow,” grumbled Cave, as he took his blue pencil and scored it out of
his notes. “Remember, gentlemen of the jury, to forget all that. It’s
not evidence. Go on, Mr. Aitken.”
A few days after Aitken was dining with the judges, and Cave nodded
across the table to him and said, “Lucky we spotted that evidence
point at Lancaster, Mr. Aitken.”
I remember, too, in a small libel case the perfect sang-froid with
which he transferred the blame of his proceedings on to the shoulders
of Lancaster Woodburne, one of our most serious juniors who had
something of the south country style. On a hot summer afternoon
Woodburne had opened a very unimportant case in a highly impassioned
speech, and when he had finished was horrified to find that Cave
really was fast asleep. We had often seen him make the attempt, but
this was the full offence. The weather and the luncheon hour were
accessories before the fact.
“What on earth shall I do?” he muttered to me. I suggested he should
call a witness, but Woodburne objected that the judge would not hear
his evidence. As I was on the other side this did not seem to me to be
very material. The judge’s clerk was out of court, the Associate, well
knowing the state of affairs, was busily writing below the bench with
his eyes glued on to his papers. The jury, indeed, were smiling
broadly. There was no doubt that it was a painful moment for Lancaster
Woodburne. Suddenly a pile of books near my elbow upset on the floor.
Cave opened his eyes and shouted angrily at my opponent:
“Now then, Mr. Woodburne, why are you wasting the time of the Court?
Are you going to call a witness, or am I to sit here all day doing
nothing?”
How different again in manner and manhood was Mr. Justice A. L. Smith.
We were all glad to hear that he was coming the circuit. “A. L.,” as
he was affectionately called, had a strong, breezy business manner of
doing his work that suited Manchester admirably.
Sir Charles Russell once said to a new County Court judge, “Better to
be strong and wrong than weak and right.” It is a counsel of
perfection to all judges of first instance. “A. L.” understood the
idea and acted upon it, and went one better by being seldom wrong. The
main reason of his popularity and success as a judge was that he knew
his own mind and was always ready to take responsibility promptly.
One of my earliest recollections of “A. L.” was in 1887, when a man
named Thomas Leatherbarrow was put in the dock and charged with the
murder of a woman. The prisoner had been very violent in the police
court, and the chief witness against him was another woman he had
tried to kill. He came into the dock, a powerful giant, surrounded by
three or four warders. He lurched forward to the rails and gazed
wildly round the court like a savage animal looking for prey.
Mr. Shuttleworth, the Clerk of Assize, read the indictment.
“Guilty,” growled the prisoner.
“Do you understand what you are pleading guilty to?” asked Mr.
Shuttleworth.
“Yes, I understand.”
“It means killing intentionally.”
“Yes,” said the man with a burst of passion, “and I would have killed
the other, too, if I could have got at her.”
“Have you anything to say?” asked the Clerk of Assize.
“Not a word,” answered the prisoner carelessly.
“A. L.,” who had been thoughtfully watching the scene, assumed the
black cap and passed sentence without comment.
The prisoner nodded to him, picked up his cloth cap from a chair, and
said, “Thank you, sir.”
“A. L.” and the prisoner were perhaps the only two men who at the
moment were clear and contented that the right thing had been done.
But it was in the County Courts that one learned one’s first lessons,
and as more and more those courts are becoming the elementary schools
of advocacy it becomes increasingly important that the judges who
preside should have had some sound experience in the business
themselves. We youngsters in Manchester were greatly to be
congratulated on the presence of Judge Russell, the learned author of
a well-known treatise on Mercantile Law, who presided in the
Manchester County Court. Russell sifted out his advocates very
rapidly. At first when you knew little or nothing about it he did the
case more or less for you. If he found you had any initiative capacity
at all he allowed you to flutter your wings on your own. But if you
tried to soar to absurd heights he non-suited you on the wing, as it
were, to prevent more serious accidents in the course of your
aviation; indeed, he was if anything too fond of the non-suit,
regarding it as a very present help in time of trouble. But though
somewhat strict in technical matters, he was a good lawyer and a
useful judge for a junior to practise before. If you could do your
work to his satisfaction you need not fear making your bow in the High
Court. He was an autocrat, but his autocracy was beneficial to
business and justice. Anything like trickiness or ill-faith was
abhorrent to him. On one occasion a very learned but rather artful
counsel read a correspondence to him and omitted a damaging letter,
hoping, no doubt, to deal with it later on. When the letter came out
Russell looked very black.
“Is that letter in your bundle of correspondence, Mr. X.?” he asked.
“Yes, your Honour――and I was going――――”
“Were going――――” repeated Russell sarcastically. “Judgment for
defendant.”
It is wonderful how easily a good or bad reputation is made, and how
careful the young advocate should be to keep his shield unspotted. I
remember having a very bad class of insurance claim which was tried
before Lord Coleridge. Some Blackburn people had insured an old
gentleman, described as an egg merchant, who died very shortly
afterwards. It appeared that the deceased’s employment in recent years
had been leaning against the door of a public-house and falling in
when it opened. He had not merchanted any eggs since 1862. These
things and the rascality of the whole proceeding, which was little
short of a conspiracy to defraud, became so apparent as the case went
on that at last I said I could not believe in the truth of my
evidence, and refusing to call any more witnesses told Lord Coleridge
my reasons, and retired from the case.
Lord Coleridge smiled somewhat sarcastically, as I thought, saying, “A
very candid expression of opinion about your clients, Mr. Parry, and I
have no doubt the jury will agree with you.”
A few weeks later I was supporting a counterclaim in a weary,
complicated case at Liverpool, the last in the list before Coleridge,
without a jury. I felt sure that if he would adjourn to the next day I
could make him see there was something in it. Addison, who was for the
other side, ridiculed it, and I quite thought Coleridge would cut it
short and run up to town. About 6 o’clock, however, Coleridge said, “I
haven’t the least idea what Mr. Parry’s counterclaim is about, and you
think it is all nonsense, Mr. Addison; but I am sure he believes in
it, and, as I know he wouldn’t continue a case unnecessarily, I shall
adjourn.” We had the best part of next day at the details, and my
client got a substantial verdict.
Judge Hughes, when he was appointed, was expected to do wonderful
things, and so, in truth, he did, but the authorship of “Tom Brown’s
Schooldays” was not a particularly good apprenticeship for the rough
and tumble of the County Court, and his short cuts to ideal justice
were seldom successful. One of his earliest exploits, when asked to
decide who had won a race and was entitled to the prize, was to order
it to be run again, with himself as referee! Apart from the judgment
being without legal sanction, the point at issue was not who could
win, but who had won the race. On another occasion, during the trial
of the disputed ownership of a dog, the animal came into court, and
the learned judge had him up on the bench. He then ordered the
defendant to go to the other side of the court and call the dog. This
the defendant did, and the dog came to him. Immediately judgment was
given for the defendant, but the plaintiff complained that he had not
been allowed a similar experiment, which very likely would have
resulted in a similar way.
Chancery law was supposed to be a speciality with Judge Hughes, but I
doubt if he had any real grip of any kind of legal principles. For
instance, Byrne and I had a case before him in which a lady claimed
specific performance of an agreement. It was a home-made agreement
about the transfer of furniture, and it contained, among other things,
a promise to marry. Judge Hughes in his kind-hearted, impulsive way
espoused the lady’s cause most warmly. “Why did my client refuse to
marry the lady? It was abominable conduct.” For the defendant I tried
to urge legal difficulties about decreeing specific performance to
marry, but Judge Hughes only shook his head indignantly and kept
muttering to himself, “I shall see that agreement carried out――every
line of it! Every line of it!”
During the adjournment I chaffed Byrne about his agreement――of course,
he had not drawn it――and asked him how the judge was going to carry
out his order to compel my client to marry. Both our clients were very
obstinate, but in the end Byrne and I made a full and fair settlement
of all matters in dispute, though I shall always believe that my
client was the more easy to deal with, because he believed that Judge
Hughes intended to have him locked up, and only released when he
consented to go quietly to the altar. When we returned into court and
announced the settlement the learned judge was very vexed with Byrne,
and waved us away, saying, “I wasn’t frightened at Mr. Parry’s law,
and you needn’t have been. I’d have had that agreement carried
out――every line of it! Every line of it!”
As a Druid under an oak tree or on some island far from the Court of
Appeal, Judge Hughes would have administered his own equity to
perfection, and the suitors would have had an honest, righteous and
sporting tribunal. But the administering of laws made by others was
altogether beyond his imagination. He was stone deaf to common law,
and his equity dated back to a period before the discovery of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil.
Coventry, the judge of the Blackpool Circuit, was a different type of
man altogether. Silent, reserved, and patient, he listened at too
great length to both advocacy and evidence, but his decision when it
came was sound in judgment and of few words. Charles Costeker, of
Darwen, who loved a sporting litigation, once instructed me to defend
a most unusual case before Coventry in the Blackburn County Court. The
defendants were the vicar and churchwardens of a Darwen church. It
appeared the plaintiff had taken a dislike to hearing the curate
preach, and used to walk out in order to avoid doing so. This insult
to the curate the churchwardens resolved to avenge, and one Sunday
morning, when the plaintiff tried to leave the church as usual, they
locked the door and sat near it and prevented him going out. He,
therefore, sued them for damages for false imprisonment. The vicar
knew nothing about it, but as far as the churchwardens were concerned,
there was really no answer, though I discovered a canon of the Church
that makes it one’s duty to stay and diligently hear the sermon.
Coventry, however, was not having anything to do with such an obscure
affair as canon law, and the common law was clearly against us. I am
afraid the judge, who was of Quaker origin, and some of the advocates
were woefully at sea over the details of the Church service, and an
old Lancashire verger amused us greatly with one of his replies to
Coventry. He was asked when he first noticed the plaintiff come into
the church.
“It was during Venaite!” he replied.
“How long after the service began?” asked Coventry.
“It was during Venaite,” he replied.
“I don’t want to know anything about the Venite,” said Coventry, who
hadn’t an idea of its liturgical position. “What I want to know is was
it ten minutes after the service began, or when?”
“It was during Venaite.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that,” said Coventry, putting
down his pen in despair. The verger thought the word Venite was
puzzling the learned judge, and with great friendliness and a pleased
smile of superiority turned round and said to him, “I’ll tell yer
about Venaite. It’s like what you an’ me if we were talking to
ourselves ’ud say: ‘O coom, let’s sing to the Loord.’”
Crompton Hutton, a very learned man of a curious, cantankerous
character, held sway over the Bolton and Bury district. He had had a
large practice in London as a junior, and though his methods were
irregular they did not lack common sense. He never wore robes, and I
was told it was an offence to appear in his court in robes. The first
time I went before him was at Bury, where he sat in a club-room
adjoining the court. I was very frightened, and he glared at me in a
way that did not make me less nervous. I and the solicitor against me,
Mr. Anderton, sat on each side of him at a long table with the fire
opposite the judge. I found out afterwards that if you could get one
of your opponent’s witnesses to stand between Crompton Hutton and the
fire he was dismissed the room, and his evidence was never heard. I
did not know these and other rules of the court then. The judge
pointed to a seat, and I sat down.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Parry,” I replied.
“What does he say his name is, Mr. Anderton?” he asked my opponent,
turning his back on me.
“Mr. Parry,” replied Anderton.
“H’m. How do you spell it. I never heard such a name,” he grumbled.
This made me very angry, and I retorted, in much the same tone: “Of
course you’ve heard it constantly. I’ve seen your name in the law
reports with my father’s, Serjeant Parry, many a time.”
Crompton Hutton rose in his chair and spread out his arms as though he
was going to hug me.
“What, are you a son of the dear old Serjeant? Really, now. And what
are you doing in these God-forsaken parts? Sit down. Delighted.” And
he wrung me by the hand in the most friendly fashion.
The case was about a milk float and a lurry. I was for the lurry, and
we won, mainly, as far as I remember, because an imaginative office
boy of Anderton’s had drawn his client’s milk float galloping up the
road on the wrong side of the way with the driver waving his whip, and
Crompton Hutton regarded it as a conclusive admission of facts.
Anderton was a big, heavy, red-faced man of the elder Weller type, and
quite as kind-hearted and straightforward. As we walked across to the
Derby Arms for some lunch when the case was over:――
“I tell you what it is,” he said to me, “you’ll do very well with
Crumpy, but you’ll have to do what he tells you.”
“About what?” I asked.
“About wearing that toggery. He won’t stand it.”
However, he had to stand it, and, fair play to him, though he used to
tease me about it, we never quarrelled over it. I went before him
often, and much pleased him by persuading the Divisional Court to
uphold him on appeal in a building case.
I became quite a favourite of his, and he would always take a case of
mine first when he could. I remember once two Chancery men with long
affidavits and witnesses to cross-examine were ahead of me, and
Crompton Hutton as soon as they were seated turned round to the
defendant’s counsel and said, “Call your client.”
“Call my client?” said the astonished advocate. “I want to
cross-examine the plaintiff’s witnesses first.”
“I know you do,” said the judge with a sneer, “but we don’t waste time
that way here. You will be asking for further consideration next, but
you won’t get it here.”
“But I’m entitled to――――”
“Certainly, but not at other people’s expense. Now, Mr. Parry.”
And the Chancery protests were unavailing. I got heard and sent away.
I just caught the beginning of the Chancery case. The defendant’s
counsel was again asked to put the defendant in the box, and refused.
“And I’ll tell you why,” said Crompton Hutton. “I’ve read those
affidavits, and unless the defendant swears the necessary additional
facts you’ve no case, and if he swears the necessary additional facts
I’ll commit him for trial for perjury. That’s all!”
There was a lot of common sense about Crompton Hutton.