“Well,” he continued, “I thowt as I should ’ave a summons first.”
“But you must have had a summons,” I said, “or how did you get here?”
“’E towd me case wor on,” he said, pointing to the Plaintiff, “so I coom.”
I looked up matters and discovered that service of the summons was duly
reported, and informed the Defendant, who seemed much relieved.
“You see,” he said, “I’m no scholard, and we got a paaper left at our
’ouse, and I took it up to Bill Thomas in our street, a mon as con read,
an’ ’e looks at it, an’ says as ’ow may be it’s a coolvert paaper. ‘I’m
not certain,’ ’e says, ‘but I think it’s a coolvert paaper.’ So I asks
him what to do wi’ it, and he says, ‘Put a cross on it, and put it in a
pillar box,’ and that wor done. But if you say it wor a summons, Bill
must a bin wrong.”
One can gather something from this poor fellow’s difficulties of the
trouble that a summons of any kind must cause in a domestic household,
and one can only hope for the day when England will follow the example of
other civilised countries and at least do away with the judgment summons
and imprisonment for debt.
The hundred judgment summonses will have taken us until about eleven
o’clock, and meanwhile in an adjoining Court the Registrar has been
dealing with a list of about four hundred cases. The bulk of these are
undefended, and the Registrar enters up judgment and makes orders
against the Defendant to pay the debt by instalments at so much a month.
A small percentage—say from five to ten per cent. of the cases—are sent
across to the Judge’s Court for trial, and small knots of folk come into
Court to take the seats vacated by the judgment debtors and wait for the
trials to come on.
The trial of a County Court action on a black-letter day, where Plaintiff
and Defendant appear in person, where neither understands law, evidence,
or procedure, and where the main object of each party is to overwhelm
his opponent by a reckless fire of irrelevant statements, is not easy
to conduct with suavity and dignity. The chief object of a County Court
Judge, as it seems to me—I speak from many years’ experience—should be
to suffer fools gladly without betraying any suspicion that he considers
himself wise. Ninety-nine per cent. of the cases are like recurring
decimals. They have happened, and will happen again and again. The same
defence is raised under the same circumstances. To the shallow-witted
Defendant it is an inspiration of mendacity, to the Judge it is a
commonplace and expected deceit. All prisoners in a Police Court who
are found with stolen goods upon them tell you that they have bought
them from a man whose name they do not know. There is no copyright in
such a defence, and it sounds satisfactory to each succeeding publisher
of it. No doubt it is disappointing to find that the judge and jury
have heard it before and are not disposed to believe it. In the same
way in the County Court there are certain lines of defence that I feel
sure students of folk-lore could tell us were put forward beneath the
oak trees when the Druids sat in County Courts in prehistoric times.
The serious difficulty lies in continuing to believe that a Defendant
may arise who actually has a defence, and in discovering and rescuing a
specimen of a properly defended action from a crowded museum of antique
mendacities. Counter-claims, for instance, which of course are only filed
in the bigger cases, are very largely imaginative. The betting against
a valid counter-claim must be at least ten to one. It is, of course, in
finding the one that there is scope for ingenuity. It is the necessity
for constant alertness that makes the work interesting.
The women are the best advocates. Here, for instance, is a case in point.
A woman Plaintiff with a shawl over her head comes into the box, and an
elderly collier, the Defendant, is opposite to her. The action is brought
for nine shillings. I ask her to state her case.
“I lent yon mon’s missus my mon’s Sunday trousers to pay ’is rent, an’ I
want ’em back.”
That seems to me, as a matter of pleading, as crisp and sound as can be.
If the trousers had been worth five hundred pounds, a barrister would
have printed several pages of statement of claim over them, but could
not have stated his case better. My sympathies are with the lady. I know
well the kindness of the poor to each other, and, won by the businesslike
statement of the case, I turn round to the Defendant and ask him why the
trousers are not returned and what his defence may be.
He smiles and shakes his head. He is a rough, stupid fellow, and
something amuses him. I ask him to stop chuckling and tell me his defence.
“There’s nowt in it all,” is his answer.
I point out that this is vague and unsatisfactory, and that the words do
not embody any defence to an action of detinue known to the law.
He is not disturbed. The lady gazes at him triumphantly. He is a slow
man, and casually mentions “The ’ole street knows about them trousers.”
I point out to him that I have never lived in the street, and know
nothing about it. He seems to disbelieve this and says with a chuckle,
“Everyone knows about them trousers.”
I press him to tell me the story, but he can scarcely believe that I do
not know all about it. At length he satisfies my curiosity.
“Why yon woman an’ my missus drank them trousers.”
The woman vociferates, desires to be struck dead and continues to live,
but bit by bit the story is got at. Two ladies pawn the husband’s
trousers, and quench an afternoon’s thirst with the proceeds. The owner
of the Sunday trousers is told by his wife a story of destitution and
want of rent, and the generous loan of garments. Every one in the street
but the husband enjoys the joke. The indignant husband, believing in
his wife, sues for the trousers and sends his wife to Court. The street
comes down to see the fun, and when I decide for the Defendant there is
an uprising of men, women, and babies, and the parties and their friends
disappear while we call the next case. These are the little matters where
it is easy to make a blunder, and where patience and attention and a
knowledge of the ways and customs of the “’ole street” are worth much
legal learning.
One must learn to sympathise with domestic frailties. I was rebuking
a man, the other day, for backing up his wife in what was not only an
absurd story, but one in which I could see he had no belief.
“You should really be more careful,” I said, “and I tell you candidly I
don’t believe a word of your wife’s story.”
“You may do as yer like,” he said, mournfully, “but I’ve got to.”
The sigh of envy at the comparative freedom of my position as compared
with his own was full of pathos.
A case of a workman who was being sued for lodging money gave me a new
insight into the point of view of the clever but dissipated workman. His
late landlady was suing for arrears run up when, as she said, he was “out
of work.”
The phrase made him very angry.
“Look ’ere,” he said, “can that wumman kiss the book agen? She’s swearin’
false. I’ve never been out o’ wark i’ my life. Never.”
“Tummas,” says the old lady, in a soothingly irritating voice. “Think,
Tummas.”
“Never been out o’ wark i’ my life,” he shouts.
“Oh, Tummas,” says the old lady, more in sorrow than in anger. “You
remember Queen’s funeral. You were on the spree a whole fortneet.”
“Oh, ay!” says Thomas unabashed; “but you said out o’ wark. If you’re
sayin’ on the spree I’m with yer, but I’ve never been out o’ wark i’ my
life.”
It was a sad distinction for a clever working man to make, but a true one
and to him an important one, and I rather fancy the nice old lady knew
well what she was doing in her choice of phrase and hoped to score off
Thomas by irritating him into an unseemly exhibition by the use of it.
A class of case that becomes very familiar arises out of the sale of
a small business. A fried-fish shop is regarded by an enterprising
widow who does not possess one as a mine of untold gold. She purchases
one at a price above its value, fails from want of knowledge to
conduct it successfully, and then brings an action for fraudulent
misrepresentation against the seller. Of course, there are cases of fraud
and misrepresentation; but, as a rule, there is nothing more than the
natural optimistic statements of a seller followed by incompetence of the
purchaser and the disgust of old customers. In a case of this sort, in
which up to a point it was difficult to know where the truth lay, owing
to the vague nature of the evidence, a graphic butcher gave a convincing
account of the reason of the failure of the new management. He had come
down to the Court in the interests of justice, leaving the abattoir—or as
he called it “habbitoyre”—on his busiest morning.
“Yer see,” he said, “I knew the old shop well. I was in the ’abit of
takin’ in a crowd of my pals on Saturday neet. So when the old Missus
gave it up, I promised to give it a try wi’ the new Missus. Well, I went
in twice, an’ there wor no sort o’ choice at all. There worn’t no penny
fish, what there wor, wor ’a-penny fish, and bad at that, an’ the chips
wor putty.”
It was obvious that the Plaintiff had started on a career for which
Nature did not intend her, and that the cause of the failure of
the business was not the fraud of the Defendant, but the culinary
incompetence of the Plaintiff.
It is amazing how, apart altogether from perjury, two witnesses will
give entirely different accounts of the same matter. No doubt there is a
great deal of reckless evidence given and some perjury committed, but a
great deal of the contradictory swearing arises from “natural causes,”
as it were. A man is very ready to take sides, and discusses the facts
of a case with his friend until he remembers more than he ever saw. In
“running down” cases, where the witnesses are often independent folk
and give their own evidence their own way, widely different testimony
is given about the same event. One curious circumstance I have noticed
in “running down” cases is that a large percentage of witnesses give
evidence against the vehicle coming towards them. That is to say, if a
man is walking along, and a brougham is in front of him and going the
same way as he is, and a cab coming in the opposite direction collides
with the brougham, I should expect that man to give evidence against
the cab. I suppose the reason of that is that to a man so situated the
brougham appears stationary and the cab aggressively dangerous, but
whatever the reason may be the fact is very noticeable.
On the whole the uneducated man in the street is a better witness of
outdoor facts than the clerk or warehouseman. The outdoor workers have,
I fancy, a more retentive memory for things seen, and are more observant
than the indoor workers. They do not want to refresh their memory with
notes.
A story is told of a blacksmith who came to the farriery classes held
by the Manchester Education authorities. The clerk in charge gave him a
notebook and a pencil.
“Wot’s this ’ere for?” asks the blacksmith.
“To take notes,” replied the clerk.
“Notes? Wot sort o’ notes?”
“Why, anything that the lecturer says which you think important and want
to remember, you make a note of it,” said the clerk.
“Oh,” was the scornful reply, “anything I want to remember I must make
a note of in this ’ere book, must I? Then wot do you think my blooming
yed’s for?”
It is the use and exercise of the “blooming yed” that makes the
Lancashire workman the strong character he is. May it be long before
the mother wit inside it is dulled by the undue use of the scholastic
notebook.
Witnesses are often discursive, and the greatest ingenuity is devoted
to keeping them to the point without breaking the thread of their
discourse. Only long practice and a certain instinct which comes from
having undergone many weary hours of listening can give you the knack of
getting the pith and marrow of a witness’s story without the domestic and
genealogical details with which he—and especially she—desires to garnish
it.
I remember soon after I took my seat on the bench having an amusing
dialogue with a collier. He had been sued for twelve shillings for three
weeks’ rent. One week he admitted, and the week in lieu of notice,
which leads to more friction between landlord and tenant than any other
incident in their contract, was duly wrangled over and decided upon. Then
came the third week, and the collier proudly handed in four years’ rent
books to show nothing else was owing. The landlord’s agent pointed out
that two years back a week’s rent was missing, and sure enough in the
rent book was the usual cross instead of a four, showing that no rent had
been paid for that week.
“How did that week come to be missed?” I asked the collier.
“I’ll never pay that week,” he said, shaking his head stubbornly. “Not
laikely.”
“But,” I said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to. You see you admit it’s owing.”
“Well, I’ll just tell yer ’ow it was. You see we wor ’aving rabbit for
supper, an’ my wife——”
He looked as if he was settling down for a long yarn, so I interposed:
“Never mind about the rabbit, tell me about the rent.”
“I’m telling yer. Yer see we wor ’aving rabbit for supper, an’ my wife
’ad got a noo kettle, an’ we don’t ’ave rabbit every——”
“Oh, come, come,” I said impatiently, “just tell me about the rent.”
He looked at me rather contemptuously, and began again at the very
beginning.
“I’m telling yer, if yer’ll only listen. We wor ’aving rabbit for supper,
an’ my wife ’ad got a noo kettle, an’ we don’t ’ave rabbit every neet for
supper, an’ my wife ’ad just put the kettle, the noo kettle——”
“Oh, never mind about the kettle, do please get to the rent,” I said, and
was immediately sorry I had spoken.
“I’m getting to it, ain’t I?” he asked, rather angrily. “We wor ’aving
rabbit for supper”—I groaned inwardly and resolved to sit it out without
another word—“an’ my wife ’ad got a noo kettle, an’ we don’t ’ave rabbit
every neet for supper, an’ my wife ’ad just put the kettle—the noo kettle
with the rabbit—on to th’ fire, when down coom chimley an’ aw into middle
o’ room. Was I going to pay rent for that week? Not laikely!”
It turned out that I was wholly in the wrong, and that the destruction
of the rabbit was a kind of equitable plea in defence to the action for
rent. When I am tempted now to burst in too soon upon an irrelevant
story, I think of the rabbit and am patient. Of course all rabbit stories
are not even equitable defences, but the diagnosis of what is purely
domestic and dilatory and of what is apparently anecdotal but in reality
relevant gives a distinct charm to one’s daily work.
One day of my life every month is given up to the trial of Yiddish cases.
The Yiddisher is a litigious person, and his best friend would not
describe him as a very accurate witness. One ought to remember, however,
that he has not had generations of justice administered to him, that he
is a child and beginner in a court of law, and that the idea of a judge
listening to his story and deciding for him upon the evidence is, in
some cases from personal experience and in all cases from hereditary
instinct, an utterly unfamiliar thing. The fact, too, that he speaks
Yiddish, or very broken English, and never answers a question except
by asking another, always gives his evidence an indirect flavour. One
strong point about a Yiddisher is his family affection, and he swears in
tribes, so to speak. A Christian in a family dispute will too often swear
anything against his brother, and is often wickedly reckless in his sworn
aspersions. A Yiddisher, on the other hand, will swear anything for his
brother, and most Yiddish evidence could be discounted by an accurate
percentage according to the exact relationship by blood or marriage of
the witness to the Plaintiff or Defendant.
It is needless to say a foreign-speaking race such as this gives one some
anxiety and trouble in a small-debt court. One of my earliest Yiddish
experiences was a case in which two Yiddishers each brought his own
interpreter. A small scrap of paper cropped up in the case with some
Hebrew writing on it. One interpreter swore it was a receipt, the other
that it was an order for a new pair of boots. Without knowing anything of
Hebrew, it occurred to me that these divergent readings were improbable.
The case was adjourned. I applied to some of my friends on that excellent
body, the Jewish Board of Guardians, a respectable interpreter was
obtained, and the Hebrew document properly translated. There is now an
official interpreter attached to the Manchester Court, and I think I can
safely congratulate the Yiddish community on a distinct improvement in
their education in the proper use of English law courts.
That some of them have the very vaguest notions of the principles on
which we administer justice may be seen from the following story which
happened some years ago. A little flashy Yiddish jeweller who spoke very
bad English, had taken out a judgment summons against an old man who
appeared broken down in health and pocket. I asked the little man for
evidence of means which would justify me in committing the debtor to
prison.
“Vell,” he says, “I vill tell you. He ish in a very larsh vay of pizness
indeed. He has zree daughters vorking for him and several hands as vell,
and zare is a great deal of monish coming into ze house.”
The old man told a sad story of ill-health, loss of business, and said
that his daughters had to keep him. It turned out that there was a
Yiddish gentleman in Court, Mr. X., who knew him, and Mr. X. corroborated
the defendant’s story in every particular. He had had a good business,
but was now being kept by his daughters, having broken down in health.