“TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN DEAR SIR – [D]uring the discussion before of the House of Commons of the Alliance Gas Bill, your reporter… has omitted both the names of Mr O’Hara and myself from the list of counsel retained against the bill. And further, in the report of the Tramways Bill on Friday, my name was also omitted, although I cross-examined and examined several witnesses on behalf of the prosecutors of the bill… I ask you to set the matter right. I have no doubt it arose from inadvertence, but you know that to a junior barrister the omission of his name from such cases is a positive injury… JOHN NORWOOD.”
John Norwood was a Junior on the North-Eastern Circuit at the date of this letter, before later becoming a Magistrate in Dublin. His letter illustrates the importance to Counsel of news reports featuring their names in an era where there was little other opportunity to publicise one’s areas of expertise!
“Miss Lillie Tyndall, a young lady of prepossessing appearance, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer outside Arklow [was] charged with having thrown a bottle of… vitriol into the face of [Mr John Kelly Toomey, a well-known solicitor].
[Information sworn by Mr Toomey, from hospital] Lillie Tyndall came to my office… asked me to write a letter that I had no intimacy with her beyond a business acquaintance… to get paper I turned my back…, and [she] threw something against the right side of my face and ran…”
[Counsel for Miss Tyndall] It was in the defence of her virtue and honour that she threw this bottle of acid. “
Subsequent prosecutions of Mr Toomey for indecent assault and for Ms Tyndall for assault with intention to cause grievous bodily harm both resulted in acquittals.
Miss Tyndall (now Mrs Gyll, having married the manager of a local chemical works) claimed that the married Mr Toomey had made improper advances to her, and that she had been forced to throw the acid to stop him violating her. Mr Toomey asserted that he had done no such thing and that Ms Tyndall had been driven to carry out a premeditated attack by her then fiancé’s completely unfounded jealousy of him.
Fortunately, the vitriol did not get into Mr Toomey’s eye, and his presence of mind in speedily tearing off his clothes saved him from burns that could otherwise have proved fatal.
The Wexford People of 2 August 1884 summed up as follows:
“There are those, who, considering the position of the parties and the unpleasant character of the sensational occurrence, may deem the proceedings satisfactorily concluded; but it may be observed that it is scarcely in the public interest that both sides should escape where one or other was undoubtedly guilty of an abominable crime – either he attempted her virtue, or she attempted his life.
One feature of the case, outside the guilt or innocence of the parties, will not have escaped attention. the delightful impartiality of the legal mind or, as it might be put, the highly accommodated conscience of the bar was never more conspicuously displayed. Sergeant Hempthill, Mr Anderson QC and Mr Armstrong prosecuted on behalf of the Crown when Mrs Gyll stood in the dock… the identical counsel prosecuted on the same behalf, when Mr Toomey was the accused…“
The married Mr Toomey was indeed fortunate to avoid any serious injury to his face, though perhaps not his reputation, the general view being that, although Miss Tyndall hardly happened to have a bottle of vitriol on her by accident, there might well have been improper advances made to her on previous occasions.
As for the jealous Mr Gyll, he appears to have escaped unscathed. I wonder where that bottle of vitriol came from?
“Kingstown regatta opened today in ideal weather – bright sunshine and a fair sailing breeze… Sympathy was felt for Mr Justice Boyd, whose fine yacht, Thalia, was competing, while he himself, anxious to be on board, had to sit administering justice in the Four Courts… between four executive creditors and a claimant as to the title of certain goods seized.”
Yachting, a very popular summer pastime for the Irish Bar, often proved perilous. On the 3rd June 1872, Daniel O’Connell, grandson of the great O’Connell, was drowned at Kingstown after his small boat was upset in a squall.
A further tragedy occurred off the Pigeon House, Dublin, in 1907, when Mr Michael Joseph Dunn KC, who had left Kingstown with his nephew with the intention of sailing to Dublin, failed to arrive. His son James, who had just missed the departure of the yacht, subsequently found the body of his father in about two feet of water beside the Fort. Life was not quite extinct, but before assistance could be brought Mr Dunn expired.
The yacht was subsequently found drifting in the vicinity, and on board the vessel was the lifeless body of Mr Dunn’s nephew. It was surmised the yacht capsized on the Shelly Banks and that after struggling in the water for some time the men succeeded in righting her. It was thought that after this the younger man climbed aboard and subsequently succumbed from exhaustion, while the older man was washed away.
Heartbreakingly, it transpired that despite the men’s cries for help having been repeatedly heard earlier that evening, the Coastguard Station, concerned about the extent of its jurisdiction, had refused to send out a lifeboat. Ironically, the person best placed to advise on the jurisdictional issue was Mr Dunn himself, not only an enthusiastic amateur sailor (and Temperance advocate) but an expert in admiralty, maritime and shipping law. His last words were ‘I am exhausted’. Very sad.
The Pigeon House had earlier been the scene of another legal drowning in the last decade of the 18th century when the ‘very learned, very rich and very ostentatious,’ Baron Power of the Exchequer avoided imminent prosecution for embezzlement by walking into the sea carrying an umbrella. His body was washed up some time later. One hopes that this death did not put a curse on the place for future lawyers.
Perhaps be careful next time you are down at the Pigeon-House?!
From the Dublin Morning Register, 20 December 1836:
“Garret Moran and James Doolin, two nice-looking young lads, were next brought up, charged with drunkenness and disturbing the peace.
The watchman stated that he found them fighting in the yard of the Four Courts.
Moran declared that he had a situation there, and could go in and out when he liked; that when he was going in on Saturday night he met Doolin in the yard talking to some women and that without saying more he knocked him down.
The magistrate said it was shameful for those persons connected with the Four Courts to leave the yards open all night – that they were the rendezvous of robbers and pickpockets during the night.
A wag who was present said – Aye, and during the day.
The watchman stated that both young men were drunk.
Fined five shillings each.”
One thing is certain: this was not the first nor yet the last fisticuffs in the Four Courts yard!
The Christmas of 1893 was a very sad one for the Law Library. It started in early December when no less than nine members of the Bar went down with typhoid. This was quickly followed by the news that one of the afflicted, Martin Burke QC, had lost his battle with the disease and passed on at his residence in Baggot Street.
On 12th December a meeting of the Irish Bar unanimously resolved:
“That a committee should be appointed to enter into discussions with the Benchers, the Incorporated Law Society and the Board of Works with a view that steps be forthwith taken to enlarge the Law Library and put it into a proper sanitary condition…[and] that such committee immediately proceed to employ a sanitary engineer of the highest position to inquire into and report to them upon the ventilation and sanitary condition of the Law Library.”
The report on the condition of the Library subsequently prepared by Ireland’s premier architect Sir Thomas Drew was damning enough to provoke a shock of surprise in those who read it, causing the Dublin Evening Telegraph 7 April 1894 to remark that
“[t]o those who had not had the painful felicity of wearing wig and gown, the life of the barrister seemed to be made up principally of forensic reputation and corresponding fees, but with the grim details of defective sewers and execrable air supply, the gilt was, so to speak, removed from the ginger bread, and it was generally conceded that, after all, the lawyer was a man and a brother.”
Of particular concern was the discovery that the cubic feet allocated to each barrister (190 cubic feet) was significantly less than the minimum statutory requirement for a factory hand (250-400 cubic feet).
Alterations proposed by Sir Thomas involved extending the Library (situate on the first floor of the main building, immediately behind the Round Hall) into the space occupied by the Rolls and Nisi Prius Courts behind it, thereby increasing its square footage from 2,200 superficial feet to 4000 superficial feet, being ample seating accommodation to satisfy the needs of all the barristers frequenting it. Funding for the project was proposed to come from the general fund of unclaimed money belonging to suitors in the courts, and the Telegraph was optimistic that it would be promptly carried out – perhaps in time for the start of the 1894 legal year.
Sadly, this plan never came to fruition, due to opposition from an unexpected source – the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. Extending into the Nisi Prius and Rolls Courts would necessitate rehousing these courts in new premises extending across to meet the wall of the then Solicitors’ Building. The Council of the Law Society, already at loggerheads with the Benchers regarding what it viewed as the woefully inadequate provision then afforded to solicitors in the Four Courts, would only agree to this if its own building was reconstructed as part of the scheme.
What happened next is summarised in the Council’s own Annual Report published in the Freeman’s Journal of November 1894:
” The Bar Committee not being willing to comply with the terms of the Council’s proposal, the Council declined to assent to the extension of the Bar Library towards the buildings of the Society. A Bill was introduced into the House of Commons to provide funds for the purpose of enlarging the Library and the Council took steps to have a clause inserted in the Bill providing that the premises of the Society should not be altered without the consent of the Society.
The Bill passed into law, and a new library is now being provided in the right wing of the Four Courts. The plans of the new library show that proper space has been set aside for a room in which solicitors can see counsel, and it is hoped that the library will shortly be completed… It will be seen that the Society is on every side watchful for the interests of solicitors, and that its care and energy are productive of much good.”
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And so the first Law Library came to an end. How did the second Law Library (1897-22) work out for the Bar? Find out here!
