Month: April 2020

The Wandering Law Library Ventilator, 1879

From the Northern Whig, 4 July 1879:

“Today, about one o’clock, the glass dome, with heavy leaden ventilator in the centre of the Consultation Room, adjoining the Library in the Four Courts, fell in with a great smash, strewing the floor beneath with broken glass and smashed sashes. The ventilator, three feet high and more than one hundredweight,lay with the side battered in. the room is small, and fortunately at the moment of the accident there was no one under the glass roof, but at the desks lining the walls more than a dozen lawyers and solicitors were seated… None were injured, but all were startled by the occurrence, which took place without any preliminary warning.

The instant before the roof fell, Mr Justice Barry and the Attorney-General were standing in the room. They had just gone into the library when the mishap took place. It turned out on examination that the sash was rotten, and unable to sustain the weight of the leaden ventilator fastened into the centre, and the whole structure, being loosened by the high wind, came down. It is not known whether the Board of Works, who have charge of the Four Courts and buildings, or the Library, are in default in connection with the state of the roof.”

The Attorney-General, Edward Gibson QC, and the judge, Mr Justice Barry, face one another left to right above under a sketch of the first Law Library. The ill-fated glass-domed consultation room nestles just above the crown of Mr Justice Barry’s hat.

No one wanted to accept responsibility for the recently installed ventilator. The Board of Works said that matters within the Law Library were matters for the Benchers; the Benchers issued, through their architect, a statement that they had had nothing whatsoever to do with its installation.

The first Law Library appears to have been particularly unlucky with regard to roof collapses; read about an earlier one here.

The mystery of what one newspaper described as ‘the wandering ventilator’ continues to this day!

Picture Credit: (bottom left image) (bottom right image)

Human Remains Beside the West Wing, 1834

From the Dublin Observer, 4 January 1834:

“Some workmen, employed in the course of the past week in sinking a sewer from the Four Courts to the river, in the course of their excavations discovered, at the depth of about two feet from the surface, and approaching the pallisading enclosing the upper yard from the flagway, a pavement in tolerably good preservation. On clearing this away, and sinking about 18 inches beneath it, they came on another pavement… About three feet under this latter, a considerable quantity of human bones were discovered, and thrown up.

The circumstances, of course, attracted several spectators to the spot, and much curiosity appeared to be excited as to how these relics of mortality came to be deposited in such a locality… It appears that the site of the Four Courts was formerly that of the Friary of St Xavier, founded in or about the year 1202… From the facts thus stated it may be reasonably inferred that the spot where the remains were found had once formed part of the cemetery attached to the old religious institution… and account for what might at first appear to be rather a singular circumstance…“

The area where the bones were found appears to be just behind the north-west corner of the western wing of the main Four Courts.

A further thirty skeletons were found close by in 1967, when the ballroom at the rear of the Four Courts Hotel (now the rear portion of Aras Ui Dhalaigh) was being constructed.

Which begs the question – how many other long-forgotten bodies lie beneath the south-west corner of the current Law Library car park?

The day-to-day concerns of practitioners passing over this once-sacred ground pale in comparison to the transience of human existence and the inexorable passing of time!

Unacceptable Sanitary and Timekeeping Arrangements, 1874

From the Freeman’s Journal, 13 October 1874:

“The Barristers’ Library is a crying disgrace… Barristers “look up” their cases in the Library, and also use it as a “trysting place” for meeting Attorneys. The Library is a room utterly unfit for the purpose to which it is devoted. It is not half large enough to accommodate comfortably the number of men who use it. Its arrangements for air, light and ventilation are abominable. Not a single one of the precautions which modern sanitation suggests have been taken to secure for its habitués that grand necessity of life, pure air, and in summer time the atmosphere is purely fetid.”

Furthermore

“In the Hall of the Four Courts there is a very fine clock. It is in the highest degree important for professional men having business in the Four Courts that they should be able to fix the time… by the public clock. A judge sits at eleven; a barrister has a motion for the sitting of the court; he is talking in the hall on business to a solicitor; it is convenient for him to look up at the clock and thus protract his conversation to the last minute. Well, the clock in the Four Courts Hall stopped some six months ago at 10.25, and there remained all through the summer… It is still stopped, but since last term, someone had moved the hands on to five minutes past twelve, at which figure we suppose it will remain for the balance of the year.”

Clearly the Irish Bar did not return in a very good mood from the Long Vacation of 1874!

Complaints about the timekeeping of the Four Courts clock were to feature in the Freeman’s Journal on many subsequent occasions; a loving account of the long-running saga may be found in McDonnell Bodkin’s ‘Recollections of an Irish Judge’ available to read in full here.

The Law Library mentioned was of course the First Law Library situate just behind the Round Hall, which had already been through some trials and tribulations! A subsequent attempt to resolve the problems highlighted by the Freeman was to result in a further disaster!

Picture credit: Punch’s Barrister Issue (well worth a read)

A Judicial Levee in a Haunted House, 1901

From the Belfast Newsletter, 15 April 1901:

“Tomorrow the Easter sittings in the High Court begin, and according to old time ceremonial, Easter marks the beginning of the legal as it does the Christian year. So the Lord Chancellor Lord Ashbourne holds a levee at his residence, 12 Merrion Square in his gorgeous robes of black and gold and all the majesty of a full-bottomed wig, receiving members of the Bar of Ireland and the principal officials of the courts… The exodus from the mansion forms into a stream of carriages and cabs thence to the Four Courts. In the great hall, the full company are marshalled into procession, walking with stately head, to the Benchers’ Chamber.”

Lord Ashbourne

According to the Dundee Evening Telegraph, 16 December 1896, the Ashbourne residence at 12 Merrion Square

“was once tenanted by a husband and wife, the former of whom, being mortally ill, discovered that the latter had laid in a stock of widow’s weeds… annoyed at what he considered misplaced foresight and thrift, he angrily told her to take her chloral and go to bed, but she took an overdose and died.”

Subsequently both Lord and Lady Ashbourne experienced visitations from this ghost, ‘sometimes in a white dress and sometimes in a black.’

The real story may be somewhat more prosaic. An article in the Chemist and Druggist details an inquest in the Dublin Morgue on the remains of a girl named Mary Canning, a lady’s maid to Mrs Jackson, the previous occupier of the house. Mary had been found dead in her bed in 12 Merrion Square on a Saturday night. The explanation given for her death was that, suffering from toothache, she had secured a bottle of chloroform, which she had saturated in a piece of wadding and applied to her cheek, dying from the effects of the overdose.

Servants’ gossip as the explanation for the ghost? Unless two different women had separately died from chloral in the house, which would of course raise the question of a 12 Merrion Square curse!

Lord Ashbourne is best known for being the father of Violet Gibson, who later attempted to assassinate Mussolini. Perhaps her childhood in a haunted house had something to do with it?

Photo Credits: (top photo) (middle photo) (bottom photo)

Young Bar Fracas, 1829

From the Belfast Newsletter, 6 November 1829:

“On Saturday morning, at four o’clock, Mr Scully, the barrister, accompanied by Mr Blake, of Galway, and his brother-in-law, Mr R. Browne, were taking oysters, in Duke Street, Dublin, and entered into conversation with the Rev. Mr Grady, Mr Armstrong and Mr C. Browne. The parties were not, at that time, known to each other.

The conversation turned upon the trial of Grady and Richards, when Mr Scully said that Mr O’Connell had been too lenient on the trial to Mr H. Deane Grady. The Rev. Mr Grady denied this, and gave Scully the lie. The latter demanded gentlemanly satisfaction.

Mr C. Browne said that Grady ought to kick Scully down stairs, and accordingly, Browne kicked Scully, Blake kicked Browne, Grady kicked Blake and Robert Browne kicked Brady, until they literally kicked each other into the streets!

It was then agreed that Mr Grady and Mr Scully should meet, at six the same morning. Mr Scully had the pistols of a fighting young baronet, but could get neither powder nor balls. However, they all met at the place and time appointed, when Mr Blake, as the friend of Mr Scully, demanded time until the powder shops were opened. Mr C. Browne, as Grady’s friend, refused to concede this right and called their antagonists cowards. They then separated, and in the course of the day Mr Grady apologised.

Mr Blake afterwards carried a message to Mr Browne, on behalf of Mr Scully. It was accepted, and on Monday morning, at seven o’clock, they met at Portobello. Mr Scully was attended by Mr Blake, and accompanied by Mr R Browne; and Mr C. Browne was attended by Mr Armstrong, and accompanied by Mr Thompson, an ex-officer. The ground was measured, and the principals fired three shots each, without effect.

Mr Thompson then came up to Mr Blake, and called him a blood thirsty fellow. A message was the consequence, and they agreed to settle the affair on the spot. Blake was seconded by Mr R. Browne, and Thompson by Mr C. Browne, who had been a principal only a few minutes before. Mr C. Browne won the toss and gave the signal.

Upon being placed on the ground, the signal agreed by them for a mutual discharge of pistols was ‘make ready’ and ‘fire!’ Mr Blake misinterpreted the signal, and discharged at the words ‘make ready,’ upon which Mr C. Browne called out, that he had fired before his time. Mr Blake then said, ‘My opponent shall have every opportunity of firing at me; and he walked up deliberately towards his antagonist, and, when within a short distance of him, Mr Thompson discharged his pistol, and the ball passed between the thighs of Mr Blake.

The moment Mr Thompson discharged his pistol he flung it at Mr Blake, and struck him with the butt-end of it. The instant he did so he perceived that he himself had been wounded in the hip, from which he then saw the blood flowing. They were carried off the ground by their respective friends, and it is said that the first principals in this extraordinary deed intend meeting again.”

Oysters in town after a night out, political discussion ending in disagreement, a good mutual kicking, followed by not one, but two duels and a pistol-whipping. Just another weekend for the Young Bar of 1829!

Picture credit: Pinterest (not of Messrs. Scully, Browne & Co but I like to think they may have looked like this!)