Ruth Cannon BL, Barrister, Four Courts History
Sharing old stories from Ireland's historic centre of justice.
From the Evening Herald, 13 April 1926:
“A music hall star well known 35 years ago as ‘Bonnie Kate Harvey’ and now Mrs Kate Macaulay, wife of an Irish barrister, brought an action in the King’s Bench, London, claiming damages for defamation in respect of a story in which it was alleged that she assisted a notorious crook to escape from arrest.
The story related to to a period many years ago when the plaintiff, touring in South Africa, had allegedly helped an admirer, Frank
From the Irish Industrial Journal, 4 September 1850:
“REBELLION OF THE IRISH BAR – Lord Clonmel, upon occasion, in the Court of King’s Bench, used rough language to Mr Hacket, a gentleman of the Bar, the members of which profession considered themselves as all assailed in the the person of a brother barrister. A general meeting was, therefore, called by the father of the Bar; a severe condemnation of his Lordship’s conduct voted with only one dissentient voice; and an unprecedented
In 1921, Irish women became eligible for jury service on civil and criminal trials. This article by Anna Joyce from the Freeman’s Journal of 9 February 1921 brings us back in time to the very first High Court trial involving women jurors:
“Some people suffer from boredom to an excessive degree, and some do not suffer from it at all.
None of the lady jurors at the Four Courts yesterday appeared to be its victims, and when I tentatively suggested to one of them that being on a jury was a tiresome
From the Sheffield Daily Telegraph , 5 January 1894:
“The Kilrush correspondent of the ‘Freeman’s Journal’ says:
‘At the Quarter Sessions here yesterday a milliner brought an action against a pension for goods supplied to his daughter, who is now in America. His Honour Judge Kelly said women were the ruin of the country. Nothing pleased women nowadays but those extraordinary fashions comprising parasols, petticoats, feathers and all this ludicrous headgear which
From the Belfast Morning News, 2 January 1861:
“Joseph Dwyer is now in custody on a charge of having made one of the most daring and diabolical attempts to deprive a fellow-creature of life, for the mere purpose of pecuniary gain, that perhaps the world ever heard of. A young man of simple appearance, scarcely to be known out of his own street, had taken a stable which he sought to convert into a slaughter-house and a cemetery.
The stable in question had been, it is said, in the possession
