Came across this today, and it is rather nice – lawyers, historians – let’s be friendly and interdisciplinary!
(from F. Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (London, 1890), 45(
Now wouldn’t that be nice?
Legal History goals for 2023 …
[Editing out the latter parts of this chapter, celebrating Empire in a very hubristic way …]
GS
30/12/2022
A couple of newspaper snippets caught my attention today, both on the topic of female incursion into the male domain of history. In one case, from 1895, this seems to have been treated with some scorn:
In the other case, from 1901, I suppose it is treated with some amazement:
I must say, a night out watching a child answering history questions sounds absolutely thrilling! Why doesn’t somebody bring that back?
GS
29/11/2022.
Although the president of this learned society seems to be a woman, this seems (unless I am missing or mis-reading something) to be an entire year’s programme made up of entirely male speakers. Concerning in 2022-3.
GS
18/11/2022/
Sometimes the spirit moves me to attempt a cartoon. Snag: absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever. Nevertheless, I am moved to share this fine work of comparative legal historical art created during a very good presentation on an aspect of contract law history, as a contribution to the gaiety of nations on a dark November day …
GS
14.11.2022
2/11/2022/
The law is a wordy profession, and, in some ways, it is not surprising that, at various points in history, lawyers have felt that they might turn their mind and hand from the deployment of words in argument to their employment in the drafting of poetry. It does not usually go well. Attempted poetry was one of the offences committed by the Welsh solicitor in this story from the newspapers of 1894.[i] Another involved serious (and bad) lying. The thing which got him, in the end, however, was his breach of a promise to marry a young woman.
In 1892, Mr James Benjamin Price, solicitor, of Neath, found himself on board a steamship, the P & O ship Carthage, which was bound, eventually, for India. He also found himself in the company of, amongst others, a Miss Grace Rani Mitchell (19 at the time of the trial, so 17 at the time of the voyage), orphaned daughter of Mr James Mitchell, formerly of West Norwood, and, more interestingly, god-daughter of the Rajah Rampal Singh of Oudh (her mother’s sister having married him). They met on the hurricane deck. Before the ship got to Malta, he had proposed marriage. The young lady, quite properly according to the conventions of the time, sought her guardian’s consent. There followed a period of separation – she in India, he in Britain – and much correspondence. This is where the poetry comes in, and some of the lying. His letters were ‘unusually amorous’, and talked up his wealth, his lands, his legal practice. Miss Mitchell said ‘yes’, once she had her guardian’s consent. She returned to Britain, no doubt keen to get married to this amorous, wealthy catch of a man. Price, however, was not to be found. Miss Mitchell’s enquiries were met with a telegram from Price’s uncle, telling her that price had died ‘suddenly, at Bristol, from blood poisoning’. This was completely pants on fire untrue.
Price did not manage to evade detection, because plucky Miss Mitchell went and hit the archives, looking for primary sources (find myself liking her …). There was, it turned out, no death certificate. Price was unearthed. He made a failed attempt to pay Grace off with £20, and tried to persuade her that she would be open to ridicule, if she went ahead with legal action. But Grace was not having it. The matter ended up in court – the London Sheriff’s Court in Red Lion Square – a breach of promise suit. He could not say much, really – he had been caught red-handed (or burnt-bottomed, as a result of the combusting smalls?). There was substantial evidence that he had promised marriage, and that he had broken his promise. All he could do was try and argue that he was an absolutely huge liar, and that, despite his tales of wealth, assets, success, he was actually rather impoverished. This succeeded to some extent, and the damages award of £300 might have been higher, had he really been as wealthy as he had made out to Miss Mitchell.
A very dim view was taken of Mr Price’s conduct, and, in court, there was, apparently, applause, when an official said ‘happy was the woman who had escaped becoming the wife of such a man as the defendant’. The plaintiff herself received good press – she was ‘a prepossessing young lady, stylishly dressed, wearing a large feather boa.’ That does indeed sound a stylish accessory for a court-room appearance.
And what of the poetry? Well, there is an interesting suggestion that a solicitor writing poetry is rather ridiculous: ‘That a solicitor, of all people in the world, should take to writing love poetry appears to be an inversion of the order of nature, which, if the example were widely followed, would throw our whole legal machinery into inextricable confusion.’ Probably it is both the overall reputation of the law as a prosaic thing, and also the idea of solicitors’ work as not hugely intellectual, in comparison to that of the ‘upper branch’ of the legal profession, that contributed to this idea of incongruity. There is likely to be more than a touch of snobbery there. On the other hand, the poetry (and, mercifully, only a couple of lines are reproduced) really is pretty bad:
“Though now in another country
and many miles apart
I cannot see my darling,
but no other has my heart!”
Mmm – corny. Though I suppose there can be few of us who would relish having our clumsy expressions of love in letters, or indeed bad poetry, picked over in court and newspapers.
I do wonder what became of Mr Price and his legal practice after this. On his evidence, he had been disappointed as to an inheritance, and the practice was not really flourishing – and this was at least part of the reason that he had not gone through with the wedding to Grace. So I am assuming that he did not become a big figure in the legal profession. Grace does seem to me like a bit of a star – and wouldn’t this all make rather a nice one-off courtroom drama?
In comparison to many of the events in law-courts – certainly the other grisly cases I have been looking at lately, this seems relatively light stuff: nobody died, and the young woman did get some financial compensation for her disappointment (interesting question as to what she actually lost by not getting married to a lying humbug, one might have thought … but the jury said £300 plus costs). Going beyond seeing it as somewhat light, though, breach of promise cases were frequently treated as a bit of a laugh: certainly, they gave newspapers and their readers a chance to nose a bit into the often-ridiculous personal lives of others, and, though there had long been grumbling about the fairness of breach of promise actions (lying, exaggerating women …. poor, poor men manipulated and fleeced … familiar bleating), the Birmingham Gazette gives a good indication of the general attitude:
‘Can any man with a fit and proper sense of humour really desire to abolish breach of promise cases?’
… which is an interesting thing to ponder: legal cases as comic entertainment for a wider public. In many ways, this was the heyday of such nosy commentary in newspapers, since, at this point, they had both divorce cases and breach of promise cases to cover, in this light, joking, intrusive fashion. Apparently it sold units.
GS
31/10/2022
Image – feather boa. I am imagining Grace turning up like something out of Drag Race – completely historically accurate … Photo by Alexandra Vázquez on Unsplash
[i] See also these:
Breach of Promise Case.|1894-04-27|South Wales Echo – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
-Neath Breach of Promise Case. ..|1894-05-11|South Wales Echo – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
MITCHELL V. PRiCE.|1894-05-02|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
It is a wet morning and I am stuck indoors, an arm stiff from a Covid jab: not up to doing anything terribly energetic, but in need of some distraction. Naturally enough, I have turned to reading about some favourite topics – law, humour and poetry (loosely so-called). All of them come together in this report of goings-on in a county court in Cardiff, in 1907: Lloyd Meyrick, ‘Limericks and Law’. It alludes to the occasion, on 8th May 1907, when a judge, William Stevenson Owen, at Cardiff County Court, brightened up a dullish case by breaking out into a limerick.
This tale contributes to the image of this particular judge as something of a funny fellow. Newspapers of the period could not get enough of his ‘humorous’ remarks and caustic quips. Meyrick noted that, in court, Owen elicited laughter, ‘weak cackles and short hysterical yelps’, that he was known as one for ‘polished periods and sparkling epigrams’, but it was only at that point that he had revealed an ‘unsuspected vein of poetry’.
Mentioned in passing in this report were limericks about ‘A young lady from Chichester’ and another young lady, this time from Exeter, but Meyrick did not give the verses themselves. I had a bit of a search for possibles and found some rather rude ones.[i] (At least there was no hint of people hailing from Nantucket. If you don’t know, use your imagination). But, perhaps not surprisingly, there was no serious rudeness in Judge Owen’s court.
Luckily, the judge’s own limerick was reproduced in other, anonymous, reports, from 8th May 1907. Here it is in all its glory:
There was a young woman of Chichester
who went to see a solicitor.
He asked for his fee,
she said “Fiddle-de-dee:
I simply called as a visitor”.
Have to say the rhymes are a bit dodgy, but, according to the ‘stage directions’ in the newspaper report, the response in court was loud laughter. The newspaper report does not really explain what the nature of the case was, but it does seem likely to have involved an issue of whether somebody was consulting a solicitor professionally or not. Did he make it up there and then (in which case some struggling rhymes would be forgiven), or did he sit up for hours the night before, composing and polishing it (in which case, they would not)? In any case, it all adds to the picture of power-dynamics in court at this point, and, so it seems to me at least, the self-regard of judges.
I have quite a collection of judicial ‘humour in court’ reports now, and also a fair bit of material on Owen, who does seem worth investigating further.
Working from the newspaper archive (the easiest place to start!), the Welsh newspaper obituaries[ii] give us these apparent facts about his life:
1834 Born (1st February). Son of William Owen, of Withybush, Pembrokeshire (deceased), from a ‘well-known and highly-respected family in the county’.
?date Married to Miss Ray, Kent family, had three daughters and a son.
1856 Called to the Bar 1856. Became a Chancery barrister. Travelled the South Wales Circuit. ‘An accurate lawyer and a skilled equity draftsman’.[iii]
1883 Appointed County Court Judge in Mid-Wales
1884 Transferred to ‘Circuit No. 58’ (County courts at Cardiff, Newport, Barry, Chepstow, Abergavenny, Tredegar, Pontypool, Monmouth, Ross, Crickhowell and Usk.
1895 Chair of Pembrokeshire Quarter Sessions. Chair of Haverfordwest Quarter Sessions. Retired 1907.
1909 Died (4.30 a.m., 20th October) , at home in Abergavenny, Ty Gwyn, after an operation on ‘an internal complaint’.
1909 23rd October. Funeral, parish church, Llantilio Pertholey, nr Abergavenny. Grave on south side of church.
At the time of his death, he sat on the County Court Bench.
His legal views
Obituaries[iv] emphasise some detailed, technical views:
His character or characterisation: ‘dry humour’ and ‘caustic and scathing observations’
In death, he was called a man ‘of strong character and striking individuality’,[v] and, in private life, ‘a charming host and a man of warm-hearted disposition’. [vi]
it was commented that he was ‘noted for the dry humour which he introduced into the prosaic proceedings of the county court’, and that ‘his smart, laconic commentaries frequently provoked laughter’. On the other hand, his ‘caustic and scathing observations … were things to be dreaded, as many a solicitor [would] admit’.[vii] There is a lot to interrogate there – both in terms of the apparent nature of his ‘dry humour’, and also the slightly sniffy suggestion that the proceedings of the county court were ‘prosaic’. My initial reading suggests that he was very keen to play up the importance of this, apparently scorned, jurisdiction. More on that in due course!
Obituaries noted the speed with which he picked up common law, that his judgments were rarely upset on appeal, that he was very fair to prisoners, in Quarter Sessions, and, in the County Court, ‘very much alive to the processes of the court being used to oppress the poor’, with particular attention to claims made by tallymen and moneylenders, and not to ask too much of poor defendants in terms of paying debts. Much, much more to say, I am sure, once I can delve further into his cases and the reports.
I note that the obituaries do not mention his poetical efforts. They do say that he had a ‘distinguished career’.[viii] That was clearly in law rather than literature, though.
GS
24/10/2022
Image from The Evening Express, 20th October, 1909.
A pious young lady of Chichester
made all of the saints in their niches stir
and each morning at matin
her breast in pink satin
made the bishop of Chichester’s britches stir
(shame about the double use of stir, to my mind, but Chichester/britches stir is rather skilful).
There was a young lady from Exeter,
So pretty that men craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.
(grim and creepy, obviously).
No refs to author, nor date, given.
Just how the Exeter verse mentioned by Meyrick was thought to end, we can’t be sure, but the first two lines were not quite the same as the rude version above – it began ‘There was a young woman from Exeter/ and a happy young man sat next to her’ [needs another syllable, doesn’t it ‘Sat down next to her’?]
[ii] See, e.g., ,. DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-22|The Cambrian – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales) JUDGE OWEN DEAD|1909-10-20|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales) DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
[iii] DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
[iv] ,. DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-22|The Cambrian – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
[v] DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
[vi] DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
[vii] ,. DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-22|The Cambrian – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
[viii] JUDGE OWEN DEAD|1909-10-20|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)
Well, the day could not go unmarked by a work of literary genius, now could it?
Hollow LOL[lo Rosso]
So, Liz Truss, it is kale and farewell.
Lettuce note though, before this gem fell,
she sowed chaos; the pain
won’t wilt; we will romaine
tossed undressed in kosterity hell.
GS
20/10/2022
Image – well I mean it is quite out of date, from all those days ago at the start of her stint as PM … courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
(Do like the ‘Ring of Power’ necklace – waiting for the captioned versions of that: ‘One Ring to Rule Them All* *terms and conditions apply’ is my best effort – a bit weak, I know …]
One of the more interesting characters of the legal profession of the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century was a lawyer from Denbigh, North Wales, T. Artemus Jones. Anyone who has looked into the law of defamation is likely to have come across him as the plaintiff in Hulton v Jones (1909) – the case which made it wise for writers of fiction to start off with a claim that their work is fiction, even if it coincidentally hits upon the name of a real person (and e.g. suggests he might have been up to no good with a woman other than his wife, in Dieppe). He had an interesting pathway to the legal profession, rather admirably pulling himself upwards via journalism and part time study.
Once he became a barrister, he continued to communicate to wider audiences. A newspaper report in an issue of the Denbighshire Free Press in 1907 reported on his lecture – returning to Denbigh Literary and Social Society’s Hall as a ‘local boy made good’.[i] There was ‘very good attendance … notwithstanding the inclemency of the (March) weather’, to hear Jones speak on the theme ‘The Humorous Side of the Law’. Obviously, this appeals to those of us with a passing interest in legal humour and there is also some legal historical content. So what laughs were there in matters legal, and what was the interest in legal history, as far as Artemus was concerned?
In fact, a fair amount of the lecture seems to have been taken up by discussions of legal history of a sort: a comparison of ‘now’ and ‘centuries ago’, ‘days gone past’, or the past as a bit of an undifferentiated lump. He discussed Ashford v Thornton (albeit situating the initial acquittal in the Common Pleas rather than a criminal court), oddly drew a direct link between ‘the blood feud’ and the petty jury (saying that the feud involved 12 men from each side). There was considerable use of the language of ‘barbarism’ to describe the criminal justice system of the past, as if seeing matters as a story of upward ‘progress’ to his present 9like the good Liberal he was), though, we might take a different view of the perfection of the ideas of his time, when we see that there was reported to have been applause when he remarked that ‘the punishment of whipping still existed, and he thought that, for a certain class of offences, it was an excellent remedy’.
A little baffling today but apparently regarded as amusing was a Lord Eldon anecdote: Lord Eldon ‘had said that a wife was like a tin canister tied to one’s tail’ [which does not sound complimentary!] Both baffling and groan-inducing are the great lines in response to Lord Eldon, from the Society Journal which Jones cited:
‘Lord Eldon presuming to rail
Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one’s tail;
And fair lady Ann while the subject he carried on
Seems hurt by his Lordship’s degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? Considered aright
A canister’s polished and useful and bright.
And should dirt its original purity bide,
That’s the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.’
This was funny, right! The newspaper reports laughter.
Partly funny, partly deadly serious was his treatment of a gripe of his own age and country – critical comments by English judges on the veracity of Welsh witness. Here, Jones played to his audience: he could ‘assure them that more lies were told in the courts of London in two days than the whole of Wales in three years’. This, as might have been expected, elicited applause from the good men of Denbigh.
Going back to humour, he gave his listeners a story of a murder trial in which there had been a conviction, but then the man allegedly murdered appeared in court. Although the judge ordered that the jury’s verdict would have to be withdrawn, ‘the foreman of the jury said that the prisoner must be guilty, as he knew him for a rogue, as he had stole his bay mare three years ago’. How they laughed! Likewise, mirth was caused by amusing tales of drunk judges and judges being ‘witty’.
There was a bit of a mixed judgment in the end, by Jones, on the ‘system of justice in England’ [and yes, there is that slipping, characteristic of the period, between portraying England as separate from Wales, and speaking as if Wales was absorbed in England]. On the one hand it was ‘a pattern for the whole world’, on the other ‘there were defects in the system’. Finally, he gave his listeners some homework – to learn about the laws of their country, he recommended:
Damn – will have to revise my reading lists now.
All in all, an interesting little insight into this ‘character’ of the law, and into the ideas of his time, about Wales, law, and humour. Probably somebody who deserves a bit more attention today, for these reasons amongst others.
GS
19/10/2022
[i] Intro: in the chair was the Rev. James Charles, who, reading between the lines, may have been hogging the limelight a little. In a bit of a ‘back to me’ moment, he seems to have described his own appearances as a witness, and in what sounds like some very heavy attempted humour, making comparisons between law and theology. There was said to have been laughter and applause at all of that, though, so no accounting for (early 20th C North Welsh) taste.
For more on the libel case, and background on Jones, see in particular Paul Mitchell, Artemus Jones and the Press Club.” Journal of Legal History, vol. 20, no. 1, April 1999, pp. 64-68.
A short post, this one, just inviting the world to marvel at the forgotten literary greatness of the nineteenth century legal profession. Here we have a creation in rhyming couplets, from a report in 1850, in which a deceased judge of the North Wales circuit, shared with the world, and with posterity, his amusing thoughts on slate. Yes, slate. Now, I suppose that is not quite as random as it might seem, given that the slate quarrying industry was very big and important in North Wales at this point. (It is still a very big deal in North Wales, got a UNESCO heritage site and everything). Still, a whole poem about slate? And not only that, but about the supposed humour of the fact that slates are classified on a system using female social ranks (Queen, Duchess, Countess, Lady …).
We are told that this is a ‘witty turn’, just in case it would not otherwise have been obvious … And we could certainly ask questions about some of the imagery about peasants getting their grubby paws on various degrees of noble ladies, but still, here it is, enjoy it and ponder on the mirth and literary skills of judges.
GS
13/10/2022
Suitably slatey image: Blaenau Ffestiniog, Photo by Jack B on Unsplash
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