Month: March 2020

The Bridge That Never Was, 1802

Saunders’s News-Letter of 31 December 1802 reported that

“[t]here is… a talk of casting a very broad bridge over the river in front of the Four Courts, which shall form an open area equal to the extent of the building; there will afford an opportunity to our architects of showing their genius by making various designs.”

A bridge in front of the new Four Courts certainly made sense from an aesthetic point of view. However, on 16 May 1808, a letter was published in the same publication saying that

“a bridge… exactly opposite the Four Courts… would be a national impropriety… it would be a nuisance to the Four Courts….a street as proposed, to run up from this bridge direct to High Street… would run from the lowest part of Dublin, the river level, straight to the highest part of it, in the middle of High Street… a coach drawn by six horses could not ascend it… a coach to be drawn up such a street, would require a windlass in the middle of High Street, to draw it up there…”

The bridge did not go ahead, but until the late 20th century, as shown in this illustration by Flora Mitchell, there was a gap on the quays immediately opposite the Four Courts, offering to the imaginative gazer a sense of what might have been!

The Corridor between the Four Courts and Rear Yard Extension, 1857

The 1836 works to the Four Courts not only included fitting a new Law Library, Rolls Court and Nisi Prius Court into the back of the original building, but also involved the erection of an additional rear building comprising a Solicitors Building (situate where the current Law Library is today), Benchers’ rooms and coffee room and various Chancery offices and courts.

The construction of this rear edifice as a separate building linked to the main Four Courts by a small open passage caused much dissatisfaction among members of the Bar, culminating in the following threatened memorial to the Benchers published in the Dublin Evening Mail of 28 October 1857:

“Your memorialists beg leave respectfully to call your attention to the great inconvenience and danger to health to which those members of the Bar who practise in the courts and chambers of the Masters in Chancery are exposed when required to proceed in court costume to discharge their duties in those courts, especially during the winter season, in proceeding uncovered and unsheltered from the inclemency of the weather across the open court yards… members of the Bar being constantly called from overheated courts to proceed through the open air without change of or addition to their dress..”

It is not clear whether the memorial was ever sent. However all subsequent maps of the Four Courts show the passage covered over. An early victory for the Bar!

The First Barristers’ Robing Rooms, 1851

From the Dublin Weekly Nation, 14 August 1875, an illustration of the Liberator Daniel O’Connell exiting the original robing room of the Four Courts.

This room’s situation below the Round Hall rendered it vulnerable not only to flooding, but also to incursions by curious members of the public, one of whom was bold enough to publish the following letter of complaint in the Freeman’s Journal of 6 November 1851:

“During Term Time a person anxious for the encouragement of Irish Manufacture, who had easy access to the Dressing-Rooms of the Four Courts, counted all the outside coats which the Professional Gentlemen had left behind them whilst in their robes, and out of close of Four Hundred Paletots, how many of the owners had the humanity to think that Irish Tailors and Woollen Drapers could not live without employment? Neither more nor less than Twenty-Three…

Professional Gentlemen, who complain of the want of business, let me ask you, how can you have it, when you deprive the trader of his fair share of profit, and unless in the Bankrupt or Insolvent Court at the same time, deprive yourself of any chance of the tradesman’s ever becoming your client?”

An early campaign to buy Irish? Mr O’Connell, partial to a well-cut Irish coat himself, would doubtless have approved!

The First Law Library, 1850

The 1830 Law Library* formerly situate in the upper airspace of today’s Supreme Court was lit almost wholly from the roof – an elegant arrangement which, on at least one occasion, threatened not only the Bar’s safety but, even worse – its dignity!

As reported in the Dublin Weekly Mail (20 April 1850):

“A most extraordinary scene was presented in the Law Library of the Four Courts when hailstones burst over it. There were sixty or seventy barristers writing in the inside room when a sudden flash of lightning was succeeded by a shower of hailstones, some as large as grapes. Instantly every pane of glass was shivered, and the fragments dashed down on the learned heads. The wig proved a helmet, but notwithstanding this protection, briefs, books and bills were instantly deserted. Some were protected under the old folios, spreading these capacious volumes over them, whilst others wrapped their gowns turban wise round their heads, whilst the hail pelted in and glass flew about in every direction, but when the storm passed over the destruction was visible, and many a forsaken wig had received the contents of folios of drafts which were totally washed out and obliterated.”

This disaster was merely the first in a series of unfortunate events for the first Law Library!

*Not to be confused with the current Law Library, or indeed its immediate predecessor, the 1894 Law Library.

The Gambling Devil, 1836


For young 19th century lawyers not yet able to afford their own carriages, the daily trip to the Four Courts not only posed health and safety risks but also – in circumstances where it was impossible to reach Inns Quay without passing at least one of the numerous gambling dens or ‘hells’ encircling it – devastating threats to their finances.

In Autumn 1836 the Dublin Freeman breathlessly reported that:

“[a] young man who previously held a lucrative situation in the Four Courts, but from his being a constant visitor of the Arcade Hell, lost 1000l, was obliged to pass bills – was thrown into prison – was disinherited by his uncle, from whom he expected a fine property, and now lives in the most abject misery!”

Tragic stories have a way of provoking reaction and indeed the Arcade Hell closed when the Royal Arcade on College Green burnt down mysteriously the following year. Sadly, its conspicuous destruction, beautifully depicted by William Sadler above, did nothing to stop many other Dublin hells wreaking financial havoc on future generations of barristers.

But what else, after all, could anyone possibly expect from a profession also heavily dependent on luck and chance, full of young members at a loose end and even christened “devils”?!