Month: April 2020

Case Citations and Personal Law Libraries, pre-1836

From the Freeman’s Journal, 1 September 1890:

“Modern text books now enable practitioners to dispense with much memorised learning laboriously acquired in former days… Within the recollection of men still living the library at the Four Courts did not exist, and it was considered a breach of etiquette to bring a law book into court, the judges being supposed to know all the cases on the mere names being cited. Nowadays the multiplication of reports has compelled Bench and Bar to abandon the pretence that any lawyer knows the law, i.e. carries in his head the thousands of decisions which complicate the administration of justice. “

There was another reason why it was not a good idea to refer to books in court in the early days of the Four Courts. In an era of intense competition between lawyers for the best private law library, to refer to a book with which the judge was not familiar could be taken as a personal affront.

Barristers too could be insulted by remarks made by judges about their libraries! The Freeman, 11 January 1896 describes the bibliophile judge Sir Hercules Langrishe (later to provide the nucleus of the library of the Honourable Society of King’s Inns) as

“chiefly remembered for a hasty and inconsiderate remark made by him to [John Philpot] Curran when arguing a case as a very young man. Curran observed that he had consulted all his law books, whereupon the judge said ‘I suspect, sir, that your law library is rather contracted.‘”

Curran’s reply was as follows

“It is very true, my lord, that I am poor, and the circumstances have rather curtailed my library… I have prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few books than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty… many an example shows me that an ill-acquired elevation by making me the more conspicuous would only make me the more universally contemptuous.”

Ouch! I suspect that, like a lot of quotes attributed to Curran, this was made up after the event. It does, however, serve to illustrate how, prior to the establishment of the first Law Library in the 1830s, the status of a barrister was inextricably linked to the quality of that barrister’s own personal law book collection!

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The Pill Lane Fishwives, 1835

From Saunders’ Newsletter, October 1835:

“SIR – I beg, through the medium of your valuable Paper, to again call the attention of the Commissioners of the Paving Board to the intolerable nuisance, which has been so long suffered to continue in Pill Lane. Nearly from the corner of Arran Street to that of Charles Street, stands of putrid fish, tripes &c., are in the street, and on the flagging, to the great annoyance of passengers, particularly during the law term, when many barristers and solicitors, residing at the north side of the city, are hourly going through Mary’s Abbey and Pill Lane to the Four Courts and frequently insulted by those fish women.

A highly respectable professional gentleman residing in Mountjoy Square, yesterday looked into the act of parliament, which he states, gives full power and authority to the Paving Board to have the nuisance abated, and, should it not be immediately attended to, he purposes waiting on Lord Morpeth, and pointing out to him the clause in the act, but I trust the highly respectable Commissioners of the Paving Board will render his taking that step unnecessary, by forthwith compelling their officers to do their duty.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

A CITIZEN”

Local customary rights to sell fish made it difficult to get the stalls off the eastern end of Pill Lane, immediately behind the original Four Courts. The problem was eventually resolved by incorporating most of Pill Lane into an enlarged Four Courts complex and building a fish market.

The Dublin Almanac of the next decade shows no less than eight Senior Counsel alone residing in Mountjoy Square with the same number residing in adjoining streets such as Gardiner Street, Rutland Street, North Great George’s Street and Summerhill. This area of Dublin was the most popular area of residence for the legal profession until the late 19th century.

I wonder if the ‘highly respectable professional gentleman’ of Mountjoy Square might have been the letter-writer himself?

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The Litigant who became a Barrister, 1853

From Saunders’ Newsletter, 3 July 1853:

“The spectator in the Hall of the Four Courts may, if it pleases, sometimes see, in his costume, a tall, portly looking young man whose history is about as romantic as that of any learned gentleman in the Four Courts.

Mr Wall… before his admission to the Bar… was remarkable for a monastic disposition.  His confessor was a Franciscan friar.  He had frequently heard him speak of the excellence of his order, and been commended by him to attach himself to it… the preliminary requisite… was, that he should take a vow of holy poverty, and assign to trustees all his property, to be applied by them for a charitable purpose…

Mr Wall, being under the conviction that he was in all things bound to obey the reverend gentleman… was duly admitted to the Convent for Irish Franciscan Friars in Rome… He soon discovered that there was a marked difference between theory and practice… the Franciscan friars were not the austere and rigid old gentlemen that they had been represented to him to be. They had no very ungallant partiality for the rules of chastity, and as for poverty and abstinence they did not possess for them as many attractions as a well-filled purse or a good round of beef…

He took the liberty of remonstrating with the heads of his fraternity on their gross departure from their laws, but he was very soon told: ‘Away, thou troublest me – I am not in the vein.’ Mr Wall wrote to the Pope himself, but his Holiness treated him with silence…

In all probability this most troublesome devotee would have been thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition, had not the [1848] Revolution broken out in Rome… Mr Wall… was released from his confinement.  He returned to Dublin, and… applied to a convent in that city to admit him, but he was refused admission on the grounds that he had not completed the preliminary course in Rome. 

His adherence to principle had reduced him to a condition of very great poverty… a lawyer… advised him to file a bill to set aside the deed under which he [had] surrendered his property for the purposes of the Church, on the grounds of fraud and undue influence… but as his means did not admit him to carry on the suit with sufficient rapidity, an application was made to dismiss for want of prosecution. 

The case came before the Master of the Rolls.  His Lordship refused to dismiss the bill, and granted the order sought by the cross-notice, giving liberty to Mr wall to sue in forma pauperis, and assigning to him counsel and solicitor, the result of which was, that last term, the case was put down for hearing, and the Lord Chancellor made a decree declaring that the deed was void ab initio…

Mr Wall appears disposed to pursue the legal profession, and being learned and studious may make it profitable; at all events it seems that he has swallowed a very considerable dose of the Franciscan Order, and is quite resolved to keep aloof from the fraternity.“

Mr Wall ended up a very popular Dublin magistrate, living in… you’ve guessed it… Monkstown!

More about his subsequent career, filled with excitement and romance, here.

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Long Hours for Law Clerks, 1865

From the Freeman’s Journal, 13 May 1865:

“The general half-year meeting of the Attorneys and Solicitors’ Society was held yesterday in the Solicitors Hall, Four Courts [now the Law Library]… to consider the propriety of giving a half-holiday each Saturday to their employees.

Mr Molloy observed that the early closing movement had been carried out in Dublin with great success.  The merchants of the city had generally adopted it, and he did not see why they should be behind the merchants. the law clerks of Dublin were in general a respectable class of men, and they deserved this half-holiday, which would allow them to pursue their business better on the Monday, and would also afford an opportunity for recreation to their employers also. He therefore moved that its meeting declared its opinion in favour of the Saturday half-holiday, and authorised the Council to communicate with the proper authorities and take such steps as might be necessary for that purpose...

Mr Gaussen also supported it.  For the past ten years he had adopted the system of allowing his clerks to cease business early on Saturday during the summer months, and it had worked very satisfactorily.  He just kept one person in the office to receive motions.

Mr Creagh thought the half-holiday would be altogether for the law clerks, and not at all for the solicitors’ benefit.  The law clerk on getting the half-holiday would go off and drink his salary. He was sorry to say, the greater part of the law clerks in Dublin spent their money to that way.

Mr Gibson had hoped the resolution would have passed unanimously, and he rather thought Mr Creagh would stand alone in his opinion.  He should not have said anything but for Mr Creagh’s observation regarding the clerks.  He knew there were in the body of clerks a great number of middling subjects, but there were others who were just as well conducted as the solicitors themselves, and just as respectable (hear, hear).

The motion was then put and passed unanimously…”

Subsequently, however, the Council felt that it had no authority to bind individual solicitors, and it was not until 1884, after much lobbying by the newly established Law Clerks’ Association, that the proposed half-holiday came into being.

Two decades of precious Saturday afternoons lost!

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The Lord Chief Justice’s Phantom Coach, 1803-

The position of Lord Chief Justice, accorded to the most senior judge of the Queen’s Bench, did not bring good luck to the first such office-holder to sit in Court 1.

Lord Kilwarden, by all accounts a decent and humane man, was set upon, stabbed and killed in 1803 while driving to a Privy Council meeting in the midst of the Emmet Rebellion. Even worse, his terrified horses then returned at a gallop to his home, Newlands Cross, Clondalkin, where Lady Kilwarden met the empty coach.

Such horrifying events inevitably result in some sort of ghost story, and, indeed, ever since, the sounds of horses’ hooves have been reputed to be heard on the avenue at Newlands Cross, accompanied by the loud rumble of heavy coach wheels.

Another Lord Chief Justice, Baron O’Brien, was later to reside at Newlands. Although his daughter Georgina admits in her father’s ‘Reminiscences‘ to hearing on a number of occasions the rumble of a non-existent coach, she attributes this to an echo in the grounds carrying noise from a distant road. If in fact attempting to commune, Kilwarden must have felt very frustrated with such prosaicism!

What would be the closest office to Lord Chief Justice in the current system? Perhaps if the judiciary were to attend at Newlands (now a golf club) Lord Kilwarden might appear to assist in making the decision?

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