Month: May 2020

A Successful Haunted House Defence, 1885

From the Cambridge Independent Press, 28 February 1885:

“A remarkable case was heard on Saturday in Dublin. Mr Waldron, a solicitor’s clerk, sued his next door neighbour, who is a mate in the merchant service, named Kiernan, to recover £500 damages for injuries done to his house. Kiernan denied the charge, and asserted that Waldron’s home was haunted and that the acts complained of were done by spirits or some person in plaintiff’s place…

Every night from August 1884, to January 1885, [Waldron’s] hall door was continually being knocked at and his windows broken by stones which came from the direction of defendant’s yard. Mrs Waldron swore that one night she saw one of the panes of glass in the window cut through with a diamond. A white hand was inserted through the hole it made in the glass. She caught up a billhook and made a blow at the hand, cutting one of the fingers completely off… the hand was then withdrawn, but on her examining the place, she could find neither the finger nor any traces of blood…

Kiernan’s family, on being taxed with causing the noises, denied such was the case, and suggested it was the work of ghosts, and advised the Waldrons to send for a Roman Catholic clergyman to rid the house of its uncanny occupants.

A police constable swore that one evening he saw Waldron’s servant kick the door with her heels at about the time the rapping usually commenced.

Chief Justice Morris said the affair suggested the performances of the Davenport Brothers, was quite inexplicable from the absence of motive, and remained shrouded in the mysterious uncertainty of the Man with the Iron Mask…

The jury found for the defendant.”

A rare-as-hens-teeth legal acknowledgment of the existence of ghosts or an example of how those who work in the law should never be litigants?

You decide!

Two Nights with Rose Lovely, 1823

From the Morning Chronicle, 10 October 1823, yet another lesson in the dangers lurking for the unwary on the journey home from the Four Courts:

“THE LOVELY ROSE – A dashing Cyprian, whose charms were quite in accordance with her name, Rose Lovely, was indicted for having robbed William Kelly, a very respectable man of forty years of age.

[Mr Kelly] was walking along the quay, when near the Four Courts he was accosted by the prisoner. Though he had been the most virtuous man in the world for the last twenty years, she revolutionized his whole system and he suffered himself to be led by her to a house in Strand Street…

The next morning he awoke as if out of a trance… on searching his pocket he found about £67 in bank notes and £3 13s in silver all gone… The girl put her finger in a little hole in the pillow and took out all the bank notes, but she denied knowing anything about the silver.

He forgave her… and continued with her the remainder of that day, walking through town with her, and treating her in cake shops… his confidence in her was such that a second bedding took place. In the morning on looking at his breeches he found them disorganised, and the bank notes absent…

The Jury found the prisoner guilty, which appeared to affect the prosecutor considerably, and he stated to the Court that he forgave her… upon a sentence of seven years transportation being pronounced, the prisoner cried most violently and the prosecutor was evidently much affected.“

Rose certainly seems to have had almost supernatural powers!

I hope she got on well in Australia – assuming that her smitten victim did not succeed in getting her released before departure!

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The Affair of the White Waistcoat, 1899

From the Belfast Telegraph, 17 June 1899:

“Yesterday, in the Four Courts, Dublin, in the course of a trial, Lord Chief Justice O’Brien observed that one of the Queen’s Counsel appeared in a white waistcoat, which was not professional costume.

The MacDermot QC, leading counsel for the Corporation (who, by the way, holds the old title of Prince of Coolarin), immediately closed the front of his silk gown.

Mr Ronan QC., observed that last week in London a judge stated he would not hear any barrister who did not appear in bar costume.

Lord Chief Justice – And I won’t hear any barrister who comes into court wearing anything unprofessional.

The MacDermot said he had not intended any disrespect to the Court, or to do anything untoward. He had been in the library, and hurried down, not having had time to put on his costume.

Mr Shaughnessy QC, then, amid much laughter, handed The MacDermot a pin, and, for the remainder of the trial he kept his gown closed in front.”

Given the status of the MacDermot QC – a former Attorney-General some years older than the Lord Chief Justice, whom he had previously led in a number of cases – it was inevitable that this story would be taken up by the Press, with the following interesting consequences.

Firstly, Westminster judges, not to be undone by their Four Courts counterparts, started throwing barristers out of court for even the merest glimpse of white around their midriff – an interesting example of English courts following Irish procedural precedent!*

Secondly, the Lyric Theatre, Dublin, made substantial profits from re-enacting the entire event described above on a nightly basis over several months ‘in a very laughable way and to the intense enjoyment of a large audience.’

It is not recorded whether Lord Chief Justice O’Brien ever came to regret his remark. Perhaps he felt all the trouble was worth it if it put a stop for once and all to the indulgent practice of barristers wearing white waistcoats in warm weather!

*White waistcoat reprimands were reported to have been given by judges in the Whitechapel County Court, in July 1899, in the Chancery Court, in July 1901 and in the Chancery Court again in July 1933.

More about the White Waistcoat Affair in Mathias O’Donnell Bodkin’s ‘Recollections of an Irish Judge,’ which includes an anonymous parody of the incident, published in the Freeman, and generally attributed to Bodkin himself (it most definitely has his style!) It did not improve his already stormy relations with Lord Chief Justice O’Brien.

That white waistcoat certainly caused a lot of trouble!

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The Devil’s Own, or, the Bar and the Boers, 1900

From the Freeman’s Journal, 22 February 1900:

“We have never been quite able to understand why the Four Courts has not raised a ‘Devil’s Own’ Corps for service in the present war. It was not that there were not plenty of juniors and others, with sufficient leisure for soldiering, nor yet was it that business was coming in too rapidly. Perhaps the explanation will be found in the fact that, during the Napoleonic Wars, when the danger of invasion had passed, the lawyers’ corps were anxious to retire from military life, they were not allowed to do so, the Government of the day insisting that they were bound to serve during the continuation of the war. The great Erskine’s opinion was taken at the time, and after its expression we are not surprised that the members of the Library, who expend so many words in supporting the Constitution, have professed to warm the calves of their legs at the Library fire rather than to proceed to the front on behalf of Queen and Country.”

Perhaps inspired by this article, a number of young devils did in fact enlist in the Boer War, including Andrew Marshall Porter, the son of the then Master of the Rolls, described by the Belfast Newsletter as

“just the type of man to be the hero of a romance – refined, dignified, accomplished, with grit and fortitude to endure patiently, and the courage of a lion to face danger. Parting with a brother barrister and cricketing chum when leaving Dublin, his last words were – ‘Well, whatever happens I won’t be taken alive.‘”

He wasn’t. On the 8th June 1900 a private telegram from the War Office travelled along the pneumatic tube from the GPO to the Four Courts to inform his father of young Master Porter’s death at Ladywood. Sir Andrew received the telegram while sitting on the Bench. Another young barrister, Mr W Holmes, son of Lord Justice Holmes, was dangerously wounded in the same skirmish.

One can only feel for these young barristers and their families. Bad enough nowadays hanging around the Four Courts for work, without having to deal with newspaper suggestions that, because you have time on your hands, you should go out and risk your life in a different hemisphere!

Jingoism has a lot to answer for!

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Lawyer Relieved of Silk Handkerchief by Female Cutpurses, 1818

From the Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser, 7 March 1818

“A few days since, a Professional Gentleman, on his return from the Four Courts, was accosted in D’Olier Street, Dublin, by two females, who said “Sir, some dirty people have put filth upon your coat,” and offered very obligingly to remove it with their handkerchiefs, to which the Gentleman thankfully acceded: the operation of cleaning having been performed, they took their leave with a courtesy; the Gentleman, at the same time giving a low bow for the favour conferred: but they had not parted many minutes, before the Gentleman discovered that while these artful females were employed in removing the filth themselves had put on his coat, they paid themselves for their trouble by picking his pocket of a new silk handkerchief.”

Presumably the decision not to name the ‘professional gentleman’ (presumably a lawyer) was to save his blushes at having been robbed by mere females. Perhaps for the same reason, it does not seem that either the ladies in the case or the silk handkerchief were ever apprehended!

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