Ruth Cannon BL, Barrister, Four Courts History

From the Southern Star, 6 February 1926, this interesting account of the trial of Herbert McBride Campbell and Wilfred Watkins for armed robbery of £70 from the Greystones sub-branch of the Northern Bank, the robbers having arrived and left on a motorcycle without disguise. The remarkable Averil Deverell BL, a Greystones woman herself, acted as barrister for one of the accused.

“Severe strictures were passed by Judge Doyle at Wicklow Circuit Court on the verdict of ‘not guilty’ brought in by a jury in the case of Wilfred Watkins, Greystones, in connection with the Greystones Bank robbery.

In the case of Herbert McBride Campbell, who, as already reported, was allowed out on bail, the plea was put forward that he was ‘morally unsound.’

Watkins was first put forward charged with armed robbery of the bank and with possession of a revolver.

Mr. Dickie, KC, who, with Miss Deverell, BL (instructed by Mr. JJL Murphy), appeared for Watkins, objected at the outset to the evidence of the other accused, Campbell, against Watkins being admitted.

Mr. Bewley, BL (instructed by Mr. A Cullen, State Solicitor) for the State, held that the evidence was admissible.

Evidence was then given by Campbell, the bank officials, and other witnesses, similar to that given at the District Court.

The jury returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’ on all counts, and his Lordship, in discharging the prisoner, said that it was a great satisfaction to him to feel he had no responsibility for that verdict.

Campbell was then put forward, and pleaded ‘guilty’.

Mr. Lupton, KC, who (instructed by Messrs. E Byrne), appeared for accused, pleaded for leniency, and submitted that the accused was morally unsound as distinct from intellectually unsound, the only plea the law allowed.  This contention was now being widely accepted.  Accused was irresponsible and unsound, very susceptible to influence and suggestion.

Evidence was given by Geo. Overend, Rev J. Tobais, Robert E Maguire, and Herbert Miller of accused’s irresponsible conduct and thoughtless practical jokes while a member of the Leeson Park troop of scouts, of which they were masters for several years.  He seemed never to consider what would be the consequences of his actions or jokes, and had no conception of pain.

Instances quoted included: Lassoing the public from a roof; running up and down a roof until he fell through it; entering a swimming race when he knew nothing of swimming, and winning the first prize, admitting afterwards that he ran on the bottom.

His father related that, when a boy, accused sustained serious injury to the eye and never told of it, and ultimately lost his eye.

Dr Leeper, mental specialist, stated he had the accused examined in Mountjoy.  He considered him unsound, and irresponsible, and egotistical.

Dr Hackett, prison doctor, said the accused was perfectly sane and capable of pleading, but he admitted he was not altogether normal or morally sound. He lacked a certain amount of responsibility, and was full of puppyism and swelled headedness.

His lordship said that he had expressed the view they were equally guilty, and, if Watkins had been found guilty, had intended sentencing them both to the same punishment – penal servitude – allowing the consideration of this question of moral unsoundness to be treated by the medical authorities while he was undergoing sentence; but in view of the fact that Watkins had been allowed to go free he could not sentence this man to imprisonment.  It would not, he believed, be fair, and might give a certain amount of encouragement to the committing of crime, in the hope that when one came to trial one would find such a jury as Watkins did.

He allowed Campbell out on his own bail of £400 and two sureties of £200, to come up for judgment when called upon within the next five years.”

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The 1861 trial of Dublin cabman John Curran for indecent assault on a young passenger, Louisa Jolly, transfixed mid-Victorian Ireland.

The trial involved interesting issues relating to identification evidence, and reports and commentary associated with it give a fascinating insight into the Dublin of the time.

My article on the trial ‘Outrage in the Bloody Fields: Cabman John Curran and the Great Dublin Rape Trial of 1861,’ recently published in Law Magazine, is now available to read free of charge here.

For those intrigued enough to dig deeper, a detailed contemporaneous report of the 1861 trial proceedings is also available here.

Or you can alternatively watch this presentation:

From the Waterford Standard, 1 November 1905:

“CARMAN’S ACTION AGAINST A BARRISTER

Before Mr Justice Kenny on Monday the case of Ladley v Ryland, which as an appeal from the decision of the Recorder of Dublin, was heard.  The plaintiff is a Dublin cab-driver, and the defendant is a member of the Irish Bar.  On the 26^th May last Mr Richard Ryland was driving his motor car out of Dartmouth road into Upper Leeson street.  As he tried to avoid a cart that was just then coming along he put on his brake, but the motor car wheels skidded and the car ran up quite close to the plaintiff’s horse, without, however, actually colliding with it.  That had the effect of frightening the horse, and the car to which it was attached was knocked up against something which caused damage to a lamp.  No other injury was done, except that the effect upon the nerves of the animal was such as to render him useless to the plaintiff as a hackney horse.  The horse, which he had bought for £30 he had to sell for £16, and he brought an action to recover damages.  He valued the horse at £50.  A veterinary surgeon valued at £35.  The defendant denied negligence, and said that the accident, such as it was, was the result of the wheels skidding.  He offered to compensate the plaintiff.  The Recorder, having heard the evidence, gave the Plaintiff a decree for £6.6s.  Both parties appealed.

Mr Justice Kenny confirmed the Recorder’s decision but increased the decree to £15.  He remarked that the persons who drove motor cars ought to be more careful and drive slowly in a populous district.”

The Irish Bar had discovered motor cars, and the days of walking to work were over.  Throughout the 20^th century, road traffic accidents would produce consistent revenue for its members, although sometimes, as with Mr Ryland and Cecil (later Mr Justice) Lavery KC, they could find themselves featuring as defendants in such proceedings.  There was a minor crisis during the Emergency when constraints on petrol, motoring and consequently motor accidents led to this lucrative area of legal work temporarily drying up, leading to some Irish barristers having to join the British Army and Navy to support themselves and their families.

In the early days of motoring, Circuit Court barristers tended to travel en masse in the same car, with the first departure from the Four Courts in 1907 being a significant event recorded in the newspapers.   This collegiate practice died down somewhat after 1933, when Lord and Lady Farnham, of Farnham, Cavan, collided with a car containing four Dublin barristers at Lismullan, County Meath.  Lord Farnham escaped with a severe shaking.  Lady Farnham received cuts in the leg and a broken bone in the left hand.  The four barristers suffered mostly from shock and superficial scalp wounds.   Lord Farnham subsequently admitted negligence, and one of the barristers, Mr WE Wellwood, was later awarded £200 damages for injuries received.  He had been unable to attend to his professional duties for three months and suffered from shock and insomnia.  For some time if he slept at all he dreamed that he saw a big car coming down on him.  Mr Justice O’Byrne said the jury had been ‘generous.’

Mr Ryland, son of Theodore Ryland BL, happily took more care with his driving in future and -like a surprising number of members of the legal profession of his era – lived to the grand old age of 87!

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As the Irish Civil War raged, juvenile members of the population were not above taking advantage of its attendant confusion for their own benefit. From the Freeman’s Journal, 6 March 1923, this story reminiscent of the eponymous hero of Richmal Crompton’s ‘Just William’ series:

“At a juvenile court yesterday, before Mr Cooper KC, a boy named John Higgins, aged 12 and ½, was charged on remand with threatening and assaulting Mr Buchanan, assistant master of the Inchicore Model Schools.

According to the evidence, a ball which other boys had been playing with entered Mr Buchanan’s garden on Tuesday week, and when the boy, now charged, asked for it, Mr Buchanan refused to give it to him. Higgins then threw some stones and went away. Between 9 and 10 o’clock the same evening he returned wearing a mask, and carrying a toy pistol, which Mr Buchanan thought was a real one. The boy handed him a document inscribed ‘Proclamation, Beware of the I.R.A. Scouts’ and made a threat if he did not get back the ball.

The Superintendent of the Summerhill Detention Home gave evidence that on Friday week, four officers of the National Army, who were accompanied by the father of the accused boy, called on him to hand over the boy.

Mr WJ Gleeson, who (instructed by Mr Philip H O’Reilly) appeared on behalf of the accused, said that it was hardly necessary to point out that a case of this kind could not be taken seriously, nor was it necessary to say that this boy was not authorised as an emissary of the IRA, or anybody else.

Mr Cooper said he quite realised that and ordered a fine of 40s, and six strokes of the birch for the accused, who would also have to find two sureties of 20 pounds to give bail for his good behaviour for 12 months. As regards the boy’s removal from custody, he would have the papers sent to the Minister for Home Affairs and the Attorney-General, who could take action if they thought necessary.

Subsequently, on the application of Mr Gleeson, the magistrate deleted the sentence of birching.

The boy Higgins was not a pupil of Inchicore Model Schools.”

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From the Freeman’s Journal, 2 September 1898, this interesting account of the professional career of Irish patriot Theobald Wolfe Tone, best known for his unsuccessful attempt a century earlier to land in Ireland with French troops and supplies, followed by his capture, court-martial and subsequent suicide:

“WOLFE TONE AND THE LAW

BY JG SWIFT MACNEILL, Q.C., M.P.

A remarkable feature in Tone’s career has, so far as I am aware, been scarcely noticed – his cordial relations with lawyers and his own obligations to the study of the Bar.

Tone derived his Christian name from his god-father, Theobald Wolfe, a leader of the Irish Bar in the middle of the eighteenth century, and an uncle of Arthur Wolfe (Lord Kilwarden), who, as Attorney-General for Ireland in 1795, yielding to sentiments of generosity and clemency, permitted Tone to leave the country when he might have placed him on his trial for high treason, with every possibility of procuring a conviction…

It will probably be a surprise to persons well acquainted with the biography of legal celebrities to learn that Theobald Wolfe Tone became, in January 1787, a student of the Middle Temple.  He lived for two years at No 4 Hare’s Court on the first floor and has placed on record this somewhat disparaging account of his life as a law student in London:-

‘I had no great affection for study in general, but that of the law I particularly disliked; and to this hour I think it an illiberal profession, both in principles and practice.  I was, likewise, amenable to nobody for my conduct; and, in consequence, after the first month I never opened a law book, nor was I ever three times in Westminster Hall in my life.  In addition to the reasons I have mentioned, the extreme uncertainty of my circumstances, which kept me in much uneasiness of mind, disabled me totally for that cool and systematic habit of study which is indispensable for attaining a knowledge of a science so abstruse and difficult as that of the English code.’

Later on he describes his call in 1789 to the Irish Bar, in which one perceives the same note of self-deprecation in reference to all forensic aptitude or ability.

‘I purchased,’ he writes, ‘about £100 worth of law books, and determined, in earnest, to begin and study the profession to which I was doomed.  In pursuance of this resolution, I commenced bachelor of laws in February, 1789, and was called to the Bar in due form in Trinity Term following; shortly after which I went my first (the Leinster) circuit, having been previously elected a member of the Bar Club.  On this circuit, notwithstanding my ignorance, I pretty nearly cleared my expenses; and I cannot doubt, if I had continued to apply sedulously to the law, but I might have risen in some eminence; but whether it was my incorrigible habits of idleness, the sincere dislike I had to the profession, which the little insight I was beginning to get into it did not tend to remove, or whether it was a controlling destiny, I know not; but so it was that I soon got sick and weary of the law.’

In these notices Tone does himself an injustice.  The legal ability of his first pamphlet, in which he discussed the constitutional position of the Irish Parliament, commended him to the notice of Mr George Ponsonby, then a leader of the Irish Bar, who in 1806 became Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and was, from his resignation of the Irish seals in 1807, till his death in 1816, the Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons.  Mr Ponsonby gave the best proof of his belief in Tone’s ability as a lawyer by directing him to be retained, when scarcely a year at the Bar, as counsel for one of his relatives in an Irish election petition.

It would not be difficult to show conclusively, that Tone’s merit as a political controversialist is essentially due to his knowledge of the principles of law.  His pamphlet on the Penal Laws could only have been written by a trained lawyer, and the late Mr Isaac Butt, who was, with the sole exception of O’Connell, the greatest Irish constitutional lawyer of the present century, when expressing in a highly technical argument the constitutional position of Ireland in relation to Great Britain before the Union, stated that he could not describe these relations more accurately than by a quotation from Mr Tone’s pamphlet published in 1791…

The obligations of Wolfe Tone to the law which he derided form a subject of contemplation only less curious than his personal intimacy with distinguished lawyers, some of whom were bitterly opposed to his principles.  His friendship with the Right Hon George Knox, a member of the Irish Bar, who represented Dublin University in the House of Commons, and was an uncompromising foe to Tone’s principles, lasted through his life.

Tone was also on terms of closest intimacy with TA Emmet and Sampson, Irish barristers, who in the main sympathised with his views.  His friendship, however, with Peter Burrowes, a barrister, a man of most powerful and comprehensive mind, and William Johnston (subsequently a judge), a lawyer of respectable talents, were contracted nothwithstanding the widest differences on political matters.  Peter Burrowes, indeed, with respect to whose constitutional principles there was never for a moment the shadow of a doubt, liberally provided for some relations of Tone who were left in impoverished circumstances on his tragic death.

But the strongest irony in Tone’s relations to law and lawyers consists in the fact that Tone’s case (27, State Trials, 614) reflects credit on the Irish Judicial Bench.  It is thus summarised by Professor Dicey:-

‘Nothing better illustrates the noble energy with which judges have maintained the rule of regular law even at periods of revolutionary violence, than Wolfe Tone’s case.  In 1798 Wolfe Tone, an Irish rebel, took part in a French invasion of Ireland.  The man-of-war in which he sailed was captured, and Wolfe Tone was brought to trial before a courtmartial in Dublin.  He was thereupon sentenced to be hanged.  He held, however, no commission as an English officer, his only commission being one from the French Republic.  On the morning when his execution was about to take place, application was made to the Irish King’s Bench for a writ of habeas corpus.  The ground taken was that Wolfe Tone, not being a military person, was not subject to punishment by court martial, or in effect that the officers who tried him were attempting illegally to enforce military law.  The Court of King’s Bench at once granted the writ.  When it is remembered that Wolfe Tone’s substantial guilt was admitted, that the court was filled with judges who detested the rebels, and that in 1798 Ireland was in the midst of a revolutionary crisis it will be admitted that no more splendid association of the supremacy of law can be found than that made by the Irish Bench.’

(Dicey’s Law of the Constitution, pp302-303)

Nor have we yet exhausted the interesting subject of the association of Wolfe Tone with lawyers.  The first Lord Plunket, the Irish Chancellor, lived, in his college days, with his mother and sister in Jervis street, within a stone’s throw from the residence of Tone’s father in Stafford street.  Lord Rathmore, in his ‘Memoir of Lord Plunket’ records that Tone and Bushe, subsequently Chief Justice of Ireland, were on terms of intimate friendship with Plunket, and frequently guests in his house.  Bushe, indeed, when an attack was made on Tone in the Irish House of Commons, on March 24, 1797, thus spoke of Tone:- “I knew him from early infancy, friend and companion of my studies, and while I bear testimony to the greatness of his abilities I shall also say of him that he had a heart which nothing but the accursed spirit of perverted politics could mislead.’”

A more romantic side to Tone relates to his romance with Matilda Witherington, whom he courted while he was a student at Trinity College.  An account of their meeting is given in an article by Doreen Mills in the Leinster Leader, 24 June, 1933:

“During his college days [Tone] often paced Grafton street where from her window he saw a beautiful girl who lived in that street with her grandfather, Matilda Witherington, whom he fell in love with at first sight – the attraction was mutual.  Shortly after they met, he proposed, she accepted, and one beautiful July morning they were married, the bridal pair went to Maynooth for their honeymoon.  Wolfe Tone brought his young wife to his father’s home in County Kildare where she was received with great affection, here she stayed while he went to London in connection with his profession.”

Matilda, who was disinherited after her elopement with Tone, survived him by many years, dying in the United States in 1849.  The Tone family’s connection with the Irish legal community survived even in exile – Tone’s son William was apprenticed in the law office of his former Law Library colleague William Sampson in New York, and later married Sampson’s daughter. 

More on Matilda, and Sampson.