Ruth Cannon BL, Barrister, Four Courts History
Sharing old stories from Ireland's historic centre of justice.
From the Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 26 November 1898, this remarkable account of a ‘Hello’ type visit to the summer home of the last Lord Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer:
“In the current issue of the ‘World’, Lord Chief Baron Palles is the ‘Celebrity at Home’ The writer of the article gives a delightful pen picture of the Chief Baron at his beautiful residence, Mount Annville, Dundrum, with some sidelights on his favourite pursuits.
Mount Annville is described
From the Derry Journal, 13 May 1913:
“BROKE JUDGE’S WINDOW
I’m sorry I hadn’t time to do more. Don’t you know I’m a suffragette?” was the answer given by a woman named Mary Fisher when arrested on a charge of smashing a window in the residence at Stillorgan of Lord O’Brien, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
In his evidence in the Dublin Police Court on Wednesday, Constable O’Brien [no relation] said he saw accused enter the front gate of Lord O’Brien’s
The new Dublin Police Courts behind the Four Courts opened for business in October 1868. A report in the Freeman’s Journal of 28 August 1868 stated that they had been erected by Mr Michael Meade, from designs furnished by the Board of Works, and had cost a sum of £20,000. Three years later, the Freeman attended at the Dublin Police Courts again, this time to report on the business which took place there. This is what it found.
From the Weekly Freeman’s Journal,
From the Evening Irish Times, 2 August 1910:
“LAWYERS ON LONG VACATION
HOLIDAY IDEALS OF BENCH AND BAR
Trinity Term came to a close on Saturday. At the Four Courts the only judge doing any business that day was Mr Justice Barton, who finished up a rather exacting term’s work by delivering two judgments and hearing some short applications. Other judges were either going, or had already started, on their Long Vacation; and a goodly proportion of the Bar had also taken the first
The start of the legal Long Vacation in August marked – and continues to mark – the annual abandonment of the Four Courts and the flight of its inhabitants further afield.
But, try as holidaying lawyers might to escape from the law, sometimes Justice draws them inexorably back.
Such was the case with the 78- year-old Father of the Munster Bar George Blake Hickson SC, whose 1865 vacation jaunt to London culminated in unanticipated testimony at the famed Bailey and Middlesex Sessions.
From the
