Читать книгу The Judges and the Judged - Charles Kingston - Страница 5

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The cleverest men are rendered human by their weaknesses, and no matter how learned a man may be there is always at least one subject of which he is completely ignorant. Lord Brougham, of whom it was said that if only he knew a little law he would know a little of everything, affected omniscience, and thereby often blundered badly. Lord Campbell was another famous judge who had a high opinion of his own abilities, a failing which may have been responsible for the story which gained wide circulation and credence that Campbell in his younger days did not recognize a certain play by Shakespeare when he saw it. The story was to the effect that the youthful Scotsman was asked by a journalist friend to deputize for him on the occasion of a first night at Drury Lane Theatre. Campbell willingly agreed, and duly took his place amongst the critics. The play was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and the Scotsman, so his anonymous traducer said, not finding the name of the author on the programme, assumed that it was by a novice in the dramatic art, and in the course of half a column patronized him with unconscious humour, pointing out several defects, but predicting fame for the hitherto “unknown dramatist.” It might have been supposed that such a story would have been killed by ridicule, but it was believed in by many, and a contradiction by Campbell and the derision of his friends failed to kill the canard. Once a greatly daring barrister, having made a Shakespearean quotation in Lord Campbell’s court, blandly explained to his lordship that Shakespeare was a more or less celebrated writer of plays. Everybody in court thought that the judge would be unable to control his anger, but he wisely ignored the gratuitous insult, possibly because he had no wish to give an advertisement to a barrister not likely to rise by his own efforts.

Judges sometimes add to the gaiety of newspapers by affecting ignorance of the universal and the commonplace. “Who is Connie Gilchrist?” asked the bland and urbane Lord Coleridge, when the lady who is now Countess of Orkney was the most talked about actress in England. Mr. Baron Martin, who was devoted to the turf, avenged himself on a prosy and pedantic counsel by pretending to be completely opposed to what has been termed the “sport of kings.” For more than an hour his lordship listened patiently to a long-winded, dull and excessively dry oration, and only when counsel suddenly introduced the name of the prophet Jeremiah that he decided it was time to protest.

“Don’t talk to me about prophets,” he said testily, “there isn’t one of them who wouldn’t sell his own mother, and I’ve never yet heard of one of them who tipped a winner.”

“But, my lord,” exclaimed counsel in amazement, “I was not referring to turf prophets but to Jeremiah.”

“Don’t place too much reliance on your friend, Mr. Meyer,” said Martin gravely. “I haven’t the least doubt that he’s just as bad as the rest of the prophets.”

The speech concluded hurriedly and the barrister departed, disgusted by the judge’s ignorance of biblical matters, but when he laid his complaint before a friend all he got for his pains was derisive laughter.

“Why, man, Martin knows more about the Bible than you’d be likely to learn in a century,” was his friend’s summing up, and for a long time the story was a favourite in places where barristers congregate.

As I have indicated, however, no man can know everything. When Sir Charles Russell was retained in a big case arising out of a collision at sea he was specially coached by nautical experts so that he might not commit any technical blunder when conducting the defence in court. But in spite of all his precautions he was nonplussed by the simple word “Starboard” used by one of the witnesses, an ordinary seaman, who had obviously primed himself with beer so as to gain courage for his encounter with the great barrister.

“I was abaft the binnacle, sir,” he said, in answer to a question.

“And where is that?” said Russell.

The seaman stared at him in blank amazement and then recovering his speech, cried in ringing tones, “There’s a nice lubber of a lawyer not to know where abaft the binnacle is! Bless my eyes, I’ve never seen such a lubberly fool before.”

By the time the laughter died away Russell was ready with a retort.

“I admit I am deficient in nautical knowledge,” he said calmly, “but, my friend, you’ve taught me the meaning of one nautical term, and that is, ‘half seas over.’ ”

“What is a mosquito?” asked a judge, beloved of the caricaturist because he was only five foot four.

“One of those little things sent to try us, my lord,” said counsel, and his lordship marvelled that it should be necessary for him to threaten to clear the court if the laughter did not cease.

That judge, however, did not always have the worse of an argument even if singularly deficient in humour, but I suppose every man is witty at least once in his life. It is the only explanation of his lordship’s score at the expense of a bishop who in the course of an after-dinner conversation compared the functions and powers of the hierarchy and the judicial bench, giving it as his opinion that he had greater power than the judge.

“I don’t know about that,” said the latter whimsically. “Supposing you say to a sinner, ‘You be damned,’ how do you know that he will be damned? Now if I say to a man, ‘You be hanged,’ he is hanged.”

Perhaps the bishop might have spoilt a good joke by reminding him that there was such a thing as a reprieve, but at the time sentence of death was invariably carried out.

Considering the high character and mental achievements of most of our judges during the last hundred years it is surprising how little they have contributed to social reform and how reluctant they have always shown themselves towards an amelioration of punitive methods. When it was the custom to hang a girl for a paltry theft and send to the gallows a burglar or a passer of counterfeit bank-notes no member of the bench raised his voice in protest and it was left to the layman to harry Parliament into advancing with the times. It was only a few years before Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne that a judge gave it as his opinion that no man’s property would be safe if burglars and housebreakers were sent to jail instead of to the scaffold. It is true enough that when a man is debased no amount of punishment will reform him, but one lesson at least we have learnt from the history of the last century is that to reform one must first educate.

When the law was most savage and brutal, and thieves were punished by death, juries, horrified by the scenes which were witnessed at the almost daily battues of men and women in the name of justice, acquitted prisoners even where there had been practically no defence, shrinking from participating in the scandalous system which allowed a boy of sixteen to be executed for stealing a cheap watch. Yet even all those who thus escaped could not appreciate or benefit by their good fortune. One young man, taken in the act of stealing from a jeweller’s shop in the Strand, was declared not guilty by the jury who declined to make him pay the penalty of death. One would have imagined that such a narrow escape from death would have had a salutary effect, but at the very next sessions at the Old Bailey he was again in the dock, and this time he did not escape.

Looking back now one is amazed that the judges of England did not protest against these murders by the state. I am not writing of the dark ages but of the period when all the arts were developing and humanity was gradually rising to higher planes of charity and goodwill. Sheridan was an established dramatist and Wordsworth a famous poet when a girl was hanged by the neck until she was dead for stealing a few yards of material.

There was one judicial murder which ought to have inflamed the whole of England but which excited very little agitation. A girl employed as a housemaid was invited to a dance and wishing to make the most of her appearance she borrowed a diamond brooch belonging to her mistress but without asking her permission. She knew that the brooch was worn only on Sundays and that therefore all she need do would be to restore it to its usual place in the chest of drawers in her employer’s bedroom. The party was a great success, so successful, indeed, that the time passed too quickly and when at last the girl returned to her mistress’ house there was not a light to be seen. Greatly distressed she knocked and rang, but received no answer, and finally set off for a relative’s house a mile away, and was accommodated there until the morning. Meanwhile, however, her absence had been discovered and the first thought of her mistress was that the girl had robbed her and run away. A thorough search was therefore made of the house and the fact that the diamond brooch was missing was brought to light. Immediately the police were sent for, and the girl was arrested.

In the present year of grace it is impossible to imagine that a charge of theft could have been brought against her, or even if it were there is no doubt that it would be dismissed. But when George III. was king many of our judges believed that the hangman’s rope was the only safe barrier between civilization and barbarism, and so the poor girl was tried for the capital offence of stealing an article worth more than forty shillings and there were twelve men willing to find her guilty and a judge to condemn her to death.

It is not surprising that the administration of brutal laws made the administrator brutal. Some judges did not hesitate to indulge in ribald jokes at the expense of the condemned, hurling insults at the shivering wretch in the dock, feeble and puerile jokes but none the less brutal because of that.

“And that is checkmate for you!” exclaimed a Scottish judge, after passing sentence on an old acquaintance with whom he had been in the habit of playing chess.

When a butcher’s assistant was tried at the Old Bailey for stealing a quantity of beef the judge seized the opportunity to adapt to the occasion a well-known witticism of Curran’s.

“Beef to be good must be hung well,” he said, a smirk on his bloated countenance giving the signal to his satellites that he was about to make a joke, “so I will try to make you good by hanging you.”

There were humane judges, of course, but they were not in the majority. One of these saved a man’s life by advising the jury to find that the solitary article stolen by the youthful burglar in the dock was not worth more than forty shillings. As the law then stood breaking into a dwelling-house and carrying off anything more valuable than a couple of pounds was punishable with death, and the judge did not wish to pass such a sentence for a comparatively trivial offence. On hearing his lordship’s observation the prosecutor became indignant.

“Why, my lord, the fashion of the watch alone cost more than that!” he exclaimed.

“Well, I am not going to hang a man because of a fashion,” the judge retorted.

The strongest indictment of the brutality of the criminal laws of England towards the close of the eighteenth century is to be found in the case of Mary Jones. Mary was only seventeen when she entered a draper’s shop in Ludgate Hill and being a lover of finery had her attention attracted by a few yards of cheap silk lying on the counter. There were several customers in the shop and all the assistants were busy, and Mary was tempted. The prospect of wearing a silk dress filled her with longing and made her forget temporarily the risk she was running. Glancing quickly to left and right she thought that she was unobserved and stretching out her hand she lifted the silk from the counter. For about half a minute she held it concealed under her shawl and then realizing that for the first time in her life she was a thief she repented and replaced the material. But she had not been unobserved and she had scarcely let go of the silk when she was gripped by the indignant owner of the shop.

It is hardly believable that Mary Jones was arrested, committed for trial at the Old Bailey, placed in the dock, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed!

Her fate was a nine days’ wonder and then was forgotten. Executions were too frequent to excite wonderment, and even those persons who busied themselves with philanthropic projects accepted judicial savagery as necessary and desirable.

When Fauntleroy, the banker who was executed for forgery, was lying in the condemned cell two of his most intimate friends visited him the night before his execution.

“We have done all we could to obtain a reprieve but failed,” said one of them, “and now there is nothing else for you but to prepare for the worst.”

The prisoner bowed his head and murmured a few words of thanks for their exertions. Then followed an awkward interval, Fauntleroy too unhappy to speak and his visitors apparently unwilling to disturb his thoughts. Finally one of them ended the silence.

“By the way, Fauntleroy,” he said, with a preliminary apologetic cough, “now that you’re certain to die and you can have no further interest in this world would you mind telling me where you got that special brand of wine you used to give us at your dinners.”

Fauntleroy started, flushed and sank on to his chair.

“No, I won’t,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “I’ll carry the secret with me to my grave.”

The next moment he was alone, and his two friends dining that night with a large party, mourned, not the passing of one who whatever his faults may have been had been a kind and generous host, but their failure to obtain the secret of his cellar!

That such an incident was possible as recently as 1824 seems incredible, but more people were interested in freeing the blacks from slavery than humanizing our laws and protecting “prisoners and captives” from “insult, shame and wrong.”