From the Irish Independent, 30 April 1910, this account of the character of Dickens’ ‘Miss Flite,’ the elderly, eccentric lady litigant from ‘Bleak House,’ as encountered by English and Irish lawyers and judges in real life:

“MISS FLITE AND MISS FLIGHT
Busy as the world is over the triumphs of flight, a journal of high repute and literary interests examines the term from a very different standpoint. For several weeks it has been inviting opinions on poor Miss Flite of ‘Bleak House’… There are still old legal men in the London Temple who remember an alert, eccentric dame who haunted the law courts daily for many a year, armed with a bundle of yellow papers regarding ‘her case.’ She was even known as ‘Miss Flight’ and enjoyed remarkable privileges.  When the most learned of judges was in the full swing of an awful judgment ‘Miss Flight’ would rise and, shaking a lean fist at the soul of sagacity in horsehair, exclaim: ‘Oh, you vile man! You wicked old man, give me my property! I will issue a mandamus and have your habeas corpus.”

The interruption might cause a momentary glisten of perspiration on the nose of ermined virtue. But no usher dared send forth his gooselike hush; no policeman attempted a removal. ‘Miss Flight’ sat with the Junior Bar and her seat was never disputed. By subscription, the barristers allowed her ten shillings a week, which was punctually paid till she disappeared… Up to a rather recent time a tiny, keen, bright-faced lady of similar characteristics was much about the Four Courts. Her command of legal phraseology was irresistible.”

The most likely candidate for the ‘tiny, keen, bright-faced lady’ of Flite characteristics mentioned above is Margaret McManus, a regular at the Four Courts until some years previously, whose obituary in the Lurgan Mail of 10 January 1914 states:

“[f]or years Miss McManus had always been at law over something, and she always pleaded her own cases, even before the highest tribunals. In one case she fought through all the courts and eventually appeared before the House of Lords. Some years ago, she was a very well-known figure around the Four Courts… Lately she became rather eccentric, and her activities were practically confined to an occasional interruption of the Monaghan Quarter Sessions or Petty Sessions Courts. She visited Monaghan very frequently and never failed to carry with her a brief bag, from which she could always produce documents from Somerset House and the Tower. Like Miss Frite (sic), of ‘Bleak House, whom Dickens drew with whimsical yet tender sympathy, she laboured under the delusion that she was to fall into big property. She died in poverty. In all her litigation she had always the sympathy and support of her brother Owen, who survives her.”

Unlike their English compatriots, there is no record of the Irish Bar having taken out a subscription for the support of Miss McManus!

Above illustration of Miss Flite (character on left) via Wikimedia Commons.