Barristers’ brief-bags, as depicted above, were primarily designed for carrying the traditional rolled up briefs tied with a ribbon. They work less well for bound A4 booklets. Today, the bags tend to be used to carry only wigs and gowns, and various miscellaneous but personally essential items varying from barrister to barrister. Image via Ebay.
From the Belfast Telegraph, 28 January 1875, a story which gives a unique insight into everyday life in the Four Courts, and Dublin, in the mid-to-late 19th century. All of human life is here: the barristers with their bagfuls of briefs transitioning back and forth from court, to the Law Library, to their homes, as the need takes them; the transportation service (staffed by women!) available to assist them; the lucrative trade in old waste paper; and the unfailing ingenuity of the Dublin criminal network:
“EXTRAORDINARY THEFT
Everyone who is in the habit of frequenting the hall of the Four Courts, Dublin, is familiar with the custom of barristers, when their day’s business is finished, of handing their brief bags to women who are waiting to carry them to the gentlemen’s residences. Each woman has her “clients,” and on receiving the last bag she bundles them all into a sack, shoulders it, and starts off to deliver them at their several destinations. It was in this way that, on the 15th inst, Jane McCarthy left the hall with seven bags in a sack. At the corner of Cuffe Street she took one bag out, and left the remainder in charge of a strange woman, who promised to take care of it until her return. When she came back the sack and strange woman were gone. The police of the detective division were put on the scent, and it was soon discovered that a provision dealer, named James Whelan, of Pill Lane, had purchased of a marine storekeeper named Bridget O’Grady, of 2 Temple Street, a quantity of waste paper – namely, the missing documents – at 1d per lb. Mrs O’Grady was promptly put under arrest, and admitted that she bought the papers from a woman whom she did not know. She gave up other documents, pertaining to the stolen property, which consisted of briefs, cases stated, drafts, original deeds etc. She was brought up before Mr O’Donnell, at the Northern Divisional Police Court, charged with receiving the papers with guilty knowledge, and Mr Ritchie QC, Mr Wm French, Mr Trench, Mr Campion and Mr French identified the papers as belonging to them. The prisoner was remanded.”
Characters from the Land League Trials at the Four Courts of 1881, via Ebay. A bagwoman crossing the Round Hall is depicted top right.
The informal Four Courts bagwomen system operated throughout the 19th century until replaced by a company by the name of the Legal Express. The job had its hazards apart from the risk of theft of the bags – one bagwoman, Mrs Bridget O’Shaughnessy of Sandwith Lane, no doubt overladen with briefs, collapsed and died on the floor of the Round Hall of the Four Courts in 1885, just outside where Court 3 is today.
One has to admire the strength and determination of these women. Brief bags were not light, to the extent that an Irish barrister’s arm was gleefully reported to have been dislocated as a result of carrying one. The physical toll on Four Courts bagwomen- not to mention the emotional stress of dealing with barristers getting ready for court – must have been enormous.
The busy Round Hall of the Four Courts, where bagwomen once travelled back and forth with barristers’ briefs. Travel back in time via a description of it in 1853 here.
Thefts of waste paper from the courts were commonplace, and all too often the paper ended up for sale in shops in nearby, increasingly disreputable, Pill Lane. In an era in which solicitors tended to send the fee attached to the brief (often causing subsequent problems if Counsel did not later turn up to the case), there could be other lucrative rewards from a brief-bag haul.
Interested in knowing more about the barristers whose brief bags were taken? One of them, Serjeant William Bennett Campion, had already enjoyed an early brush with the Dublin criminal scene after being abducted as a boy. Read some extracts from his Memoirs, including his abduction story straight out of ‘Oliver Twist’ here.
Because barristers cannot receive instructions directly from the public, and are dependent on solicitors to give them cases, it can be challenging – and sometimes impossible – for a young advocate to get established. It used to be said that, as a rule of thumb, at least two of the following were needed – talent, luck or contacts. Traditionally, even the most talented young barristers were, if without connections, dependent on luck to build up a practice.
“When Mr Curran was called to the bar, he was without friends, without connexions, without fortune; conscious of talents far above the mob by which he was elbowed, and cursed with sensibility which rendered him painfully alive to the mortifications he was faced to experience… After toiling for a very inadequate recompense at the sessions in Cork, of Cork, and wearing, as he said himself, his teeth almost to the stumps, he proceeded to the metropolis, taking for his wife and family a miserable lodging on Hog Hill. Term after term, without any profit or professional reputation, he paced the hall of the five courts; yet even thus he was not altogether undistinguished. If his pocket was not heavy, his heart was light; he was young and ardent. and he took his station among the crowd of idlers who he amused with his wit or amazed with his eloquence; and some there were who observed the brightness of the infant luminary struggling through the obscurity that clouded its commencement. Amongst those that had the discrimination to appreciate, and the heart to feel for him, luckily for Mr Curran, was Mr Arthur Wolfe, afterwards the unfortunate but, respected, Lord Kilwarden. The first fee of any consequence which he received, was through his recommendation, and his recital of the incident cannot be without its interest to the young professional aspirant, whom a temporary neglect may have sunk into dejection.
‘I then lived,’ said Curran, ‘upon Hog Hill, my wife and children were the chief furniture of the apartment, and as to my rent, it stood pretty much the same chance of its liquidation with the national debt. Mrs Curran was, however, a barrister’s lady, and what was wanted in wealth, she was determined should be supplied in dignity.
The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any other gradation except that of pounds, shillings and pence. I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, my mind you may imagine in no very enviable temperament. I fell into the gloom to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence – I returned home almost in desperation. When I had opened the door of my study, where Lavater alone could have found a library, the first object which presented itself, was an immense folio brief, and twenty golden guineas, wrapped up beside it, and the name of old Bob Lyons marked upon the back of it. I paid my landlady – bought a good dinner – gave Bob Lyons a share of it – and that dinner was the date of my prosperity.’”
The brief was in the election petition case of Ormsby v Wynne, and, all in all, netted Curran the sum of 1100 pounds – a huge fortune in those days. This would all have happened around 1779. Hog Hill, the street in which Curran had his lodgings, is now known as St Andrew’s Street. It was a popular residence for lawyers at the time; the Solicitor-General, the Judge of the Prerogative, and various Commissioners of Bankrupts all lived nearby.
St Andrew’s Street, Dublin (formerly Hog Hill) today, via Wikipedia
It was not long before Curran moved with his family to a more salubrious townhouse in Ely Place, and a country estate, the Priory, in Rathfarnham. Sadly, the absence of landladies failed to placate Mrs Curran, who, after twenty-seven years of marriage, and eight children, ran off with a clergyman by the name of the Reverend Abraham Sandys. Curran’s subsequent action against Sandys for criminal conversation resulted in merely nominal damages, which suggests that there might have been some fault on his side as well. The case is said to have cost Curran many of his friends.
Bob Lyons, who gave Curran his lucky brief, was a very successful attorney from Mullaghmore, in Sligo. More about him here.
Arthur Wolfe, Lord Kilwarden, the barrister who reputedly recommended Curran to Lyons, later became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, only to be tragically killed during the 1803 Irish rebellion – a rebellion led by another Irish barrister, Robert Emmet, beloved of Curran’s daughter Sarah.
The Irish legal world of the time was a small one, but more eventful than any soap opera.
Aficionados of the counterfactual may wonder if things might have turned out differently for Kilwarden had he not so kindly recommended Curran for Ormsby v Wynne…
Who knows!
The Dictionary of Irish Biography contains much superb information on Irish lawyers. Read Patrick M Geoghegan’s comprehensive entry on Curran here.
“Mr. Albert Wood, SC, who has been retained to lead in the appeals of Peter Barnes and James Richards, before the Court of Criminal Appeal, London, from their convictions on the charge of the murder of a girl shop assistant who was fatally injured in an explosion at Broadgate, Coventry, will travel to London next weekend. Mr. Wood will be accompanied by Mr. Con Lehane, solicitor, of the firm of Lehane and Hogan, Dublin, who, acting on behalf of relatives of Messrs. Barnes and Richards, retained Mr. Wood’s services in connection with the appeal.
The grounds of appeal in both cases set out that the trial judge’s refusal to grant applications for the trial of Messrs. Barnes and Richards separately from that of two women jointly charged, gravely prejudiced the men’s own trials and caused embarrassment; that the judge’s refusal to withdraw the women’s case from the jury at the close of the case for the prosecution prevented justice being done in the cases of the appellant, and that the judge failed to direct the jury that the evidence of the women jointly charged required corroboration.
In the grounds of appeal in the case of Barnes, it is set out among other matters, that the judge failed to point out to the jury that Barnes’ statement that he was not and never had been a member of the IRA was unchallenged; that Barnes visits to Coventry had no relation to any IRA activity and that he had no knowledge of any proposed explosions, and that the judge failed to direct the jury that they must dissociation their minds from the prejudice which the charges entailed and in fact told them that they were incapable of any such prejudice.”
The explosion occurred in Broadgate, Coventry, at 2.30 p.m. on the afternoon of 25 August, resulting in the deaths of five people, with 450 others injured, 12 of them seriously.
There was some interest in the English newspapers regarding the appearance of an Irish barrister before the English Court of Appeal. According to the Bradford Observer,
“Mr. Wood was exercising a legal right left intact by the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He had had no legal connection with the English bar since 1922.”
A report in the Londonderry Sentinel indicates that Wood’s formal instructions came from Coventry solicitor Walter John Mealand, who had represented the accused at their trial.
A more soleful take on Wood’s involvement in the case may be found in Gertrude Gaffney’s ‘Your World’ column in the Irish Independent, 19 January 1940:
“The Barrister’s Boots That Went to Mass
“[Regarding] Mr. Albert Wood’s engagement to appear for the defence in the Coventry trial. The best story I have heard about Mr. Wood was told to me by one of his colleagues many years ago.
Under the old regime Mr. Wood was engaged for the defence in a murder trial which was to take place at a provincial Assizes. He and his colleague had arrived at the local hotel on Saturday and on Sunday morning, the colleague, unable to get his own boots in time for Mass, went off wearing Mr. Wood’s boots, while Mr. Wood, not being a Catholic, was in a position to remain comfortably in bed. Mr. Wood appeared at the murder trial the next day wearing the boots that had been to Mass, and won the case for the defence.
The story goes that the boots were carefully preserved and henceforth woman when Mr. Woods was appearing for the defence in a murder trial, and that always when he was wearing the boots he won the case.
I suppose it would be easy enough to check up on this story without consulting the subject, but it would be a pity if the result of the check spoiled a good yarn. I have been wondering what the length of life of a pair of carefully preserved boots is.”
Those lucky boots must have worn out or been passed on by 1940, as Barnes and Richards’ appeal was ultimately dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 23 January. Despite representations by, among others, Eamon de Valera, they were executed on 7 February.
Albert Wood of the lucky boots died not long after in 1941. His last reported appearance in court was in February 1940, representing Thomas McCurtain, the son of the former Lord Mayor of Cork, charged with the murder of a Free State detective. The trial had been adjourned on several occasions to facilitate Wood appearing in the Barnes and Richards appeal.
Other cases in which Wood appeared during his long and impressive career included the following:
-James Larkin’s 1927 injunction proceedings in the Dublin High Court, described by Mr Justice Meredith as ‘an action involving the right of the citizen to walk in the streets of Dublin unmolested and without interference by the police.’ Wood appeared for Larkin, but the lucky boots must have been at the cobbler; the application was refused.
-The trial of Thomas Hough for allegedly having entered Portland House, an orphanage for Protestant children in Tipperary, and destroyed it by fire. The lucky boots were still doing their job and the accused was found not guilty.
The bankruptcy proceedings of sculptor Jerome Connor in the Dublin Bankruptcy Court, in which Wood asked Connor to admit that he had ‘a worldwide reputation, almost’. Connor, well able for him, replied, ‘I cannot measure that.’
-The Grange Golf Club case of 1938, in which a golfer, hit on the forehead and rendered unconscious by an ill-aimed shot from another member of the club, sued the latter for damages. Wood, for the plaintiff, argued that ‘a golf ball propelled through the air with force was a dangerous missile, and the man who struck the ball was in the same position as a man with a motor car. He must keep a proper lookout for everything.’ The claim failed, but then boots and golf are irreconcilable.
– The Croker hearing in the American Consulate, Dublin, at which Wood represented the Croker children. At this hearing Wood annoyed American counsel BF Pay, representing Mrs. Croker, to the extent that Bay threatened to slap Wood’s face. By Irish Bar standards, this was a result.
A patron of the arts, in 1921 Wood paid for eight men of the Cork (No 2) Brigade Flying Column to travel to Dublin to sit for the painting ‘Men of the South’ by Sean Keating. Among the men in the painting was Sean Moylan, Commander Brigade of the IRA, a man with more reason than most to be grateful to those lucky boots – Wood had previously represented him on a charge of possession of arms and levying war against the Crown, an offence carrying a capital penalty.
Moylan was later to describe Wood, an Englishman from Norwich, as
‘a man of considerable presence, beautifully dressed and groomed with an accent that seemed to be the quintessence of Oxford.’
Wood’s son Ernest (who appeared with him as junior in some of his cases) likewise went on to a distinguished career at the Irish Bar, almost as if (perhaps he had!) been passed on those oh-so- lucky boots.
Ernest Wood SC, as depicted by Sean Keating, in a sketch appearing in the Sunday Tribune, 8 September 1991.
Following Ernest Wood’s death, barrister and journalist Ulick O’Connor wrote of him in the Sunday Tribune of 8 September 1991:
“When one was a young barrister and spent a lot of time chatting in the Law Library coffee room, what Ernest Wood had said in court on the previous day would be a frequent topic of conversation. His handling of a witness in cross examination, his replies to judges, his oratorical feats addressing juries would be recounted, to pass into legal lore. When the news would get around the Library that Ernest was about to close a jury case you could see the place emptying as his peers went out to watch him in one of his remarkable performances. The court would become almost a theatre when he was on his feet, in which he both acted and wrote his own plays, but always within the strict parameters and convention of the profession… he had a resonant baritone voice and perfect elocutionary enunciation, so that every word snapped out as if it had been carefully prepared the instant before to do the exact job it was intended to do. He had every vocal register, soft, sarcastic, savage… his opening sentence could make the jury sit up and known they were in for a rare experience. Once he began with ‘You will hear, gentlemen of the jury, a witness whom I think will impress you as one of the foulest pieces of wreckage which the tides of war have washed up on the Irish shore.’ Yet, on the other hand, when it seemed he should go for the jugular, he would pull back and use the art of cross examination with exquisite understatement.”
An ‘eminent senior judge’ quoted in the O’Connor article, described the younger Wood as
“The quintessential barrister. He didn’t give a damn about anybody but his client. He thought there should be a natural enmity between a barrister and a judge. He had in fact contempt for barristers who played golf or otherwise socialized with judges. He taught us all what it was to be a barrister and the price of standing up for a client against a judge.”
The article concludes with the following thought-provoking paragraph:
“One carries in one’s mind the memory of that voice in full oratorical cry, the rhythms spontaneously evoked and subtly sprung to hold the jury’s attention, the wide vivid eyes sweeping the court. It was a style of forensic eloquence, whose fame was legendary in these islands in direct line from Curran, O’Connell, Seymour Bushe, Butt and others and would still have been in existence when Ernest first came to the Bar. Were we listening to a dying fall, the end of a tradition? [T]he orator’s art, unlike the writer’s, is a transient one and lives on only in the minds of those who have heard the speaker himself. Can it be transmitted to posterity? Perhaps only an echo. But that should not deter us from trying to convey to others the excitement generated when Ernest Wood stood on his feet in a court room to exercise the full power and prerogative of his profession.”
Are there any Ernest Woods, Currans, O’Connells, Bushes or Butts at the Irish Bar today? And, if not, why not, and if not, should there be?
Are Irish barristers of today falling short in the exercise of the full power and prerogative of their profession?
If only it was all as simple as lending your boots to a Catholic colleague to put on for Mass!
In the first days of a New Year, we find ourselves chatting of joybells. It seldom occurs to the present generation of Dubliners that our local peal of bells has figured in anything but joyous litigation, and in the old Four Courts too. The story is told in the Memoirs of William Bennett Campion, Serjeant-at-Law. Shortly after the erection of the bells of St Bartholomew’s, residents began to complain to the ecclesiastical authorities that the bells pealed at night, and played tunes every three hours, as they do still. The bells did not mind the remonstrances, and Serjeant Campion was consulted. He advised an action, and, strangely enough, immediately afterwards, chancing to drive past when the peal rang out, his horse bolted and galloped along Blackrock [now Merrion] road before it could be checked, narrowly escaping a collision at the corner of Elgin Road. The bells had won the first round.
The Bells Win
The application for an interlocutory injunction was based on six suitably strong affidavits testifying to the annoyance caused by the bells. The Master of the Rolls was against the chimes, and only granted an adjournment for three weeks on an understanding that the bells in the meantime were to stop altogether. The bells lost the second round, but at once rallied their supporters to the tune of forty affidavits firmly denying that ‘any rational person could be disturbed by the peals.’ Some even went so far as to swear that they found the ‘noises’ positive aids to slumber and were quite depressed by their temporary silence.
The bells were leading in the third round, and the memoir most pathetically adds:
‘Mr. Campion found himself completely outsworn. The judge veered round absolutely in favour of the defendants, who won in a canter.’”
A letter to the newspaper by Dr Maurice Neligan, who wanted the bells to stay.
Another letter to the newspaper, this time by the man who had taken the case against the bells, Arthur K Deane, published shortly after losing it.
A rare reference to the potential karma imperiling a barrister who has annoyed someone by the outcome of their advice or pleading! As anyone who has heard their beautiful peals can attest, the bells of St Bartholomew do indeed possess an esoteric power, and this story corroborates it. Perhaps it was fortunate for Serjeant Campion that he did not succeed in the case.
As it was, the Serjeant, the acknowledged doyen of the 19th century Irish Equity Bar, lived happily on for many years thereafter, passing away at the age of 92 in 1907 after a knee-sprain at his summer residence in Greystones. The Belfast Telegraph of the 1940s recalls him as “a tall gaunt, well remembered figure, who worked on almost to the end in the Law Library, fond of saying in his old age: ‘my father was born 146 years ago.’”
Brought up in a rectory in Cork, each year the Serjeant’s family visited Dublin, and here on one occasion in the 1820s or 30s the children were sent off in the care of a nursery maid who was so excited by the wonders of the shop windows and the delights of the city that for a time she forgot about her charges and young William was lost. A search, conducted for hours, proved futile until his parents, driving along one of the streets leading to Stephen’s Green, saw a chimney sweep dragging along a boy, obviously a captive. It was the missing William. The man was pursued, and his victim rescued. According to the Daily Express of 1 February 1912, “[i]n those days it was a not uncommon occurrence for children to be stolen and sold to sweep as the latter found it difficult to find the little slaves they needed to crawl and clean the dark and filthy chimneys. But for this chance rescue, as stated, the boy’s future might have been vastly different.”
Far from being disillusioned by the metropolis, young William subsequently returned to Dublin at the age of 15 to enter Trinity College. Later, he was to combine his professional practice with a forty-eight year lecturing gig in English Law at Queen’s University, Galway, lasting until his death. In the early years of the 1850s and 60s, his journey to Galway was initially taken in a barge that started from Portobello and took him as far as Mullingar, the remainder of the distance being accompanied by coach – in total two days; continuous travelling!
His obituary in the Freeman’s Journal of 21 September 1907 states that “he took no public part in politics himself, which probably accounts for him never having received what the lawyers call ‘promotion’ and the public call a job.”
A nice write-up of the Memoirs is to be found in the Irish Independent of 15 January 1892, which describes them as
“a brief, but far from uninteresting, record of the life of one of the ‘old school of brilliant Irish lawyers of the 19th century… William Bennett Campion was one who may not have made history, as the saying is, but at the same time it would have been a pity had he passed without the world being able to see the worth and charm of a personality hitherto known only to intimate friends. ‘Simplicity and childlikeness are the traits that one specially recalls of William Bennett Campion.’ Thus writes the author of this memoir, and certainly as one looks at the singularly open and expressive countenance as portrayed in the frontispiece, one realizes that there was a man of a ‘steadfast character which never deviated by a hair’s breadth from the lofty moral principles guiding a strenuous life that extended into the reigns of four different sovereigns’…
Records of the busy life of a successful lawyer are sometimes apt to drag, particularly when there are interspersed records of the case in which they may have happened to appear, but there are few dull pages in this short but exceedingly well-written book. It is those portions that deal with the personal traits and the character of a very charming figure that most interest centers. About the many brilliant lawyers with whom he came into contact during the last century, there is also much that is very readable. The Serjeant lived, indeed, among a race of giants in the law, and it is all the more remarkable to quote, therefore, the following advice – ‘Avoid litigation,’ he would say again and again, ‘remember it is the very last resource.’
Perhaps the most touching pages in the whole book are those which deal with the close of an active and honourable life. We cannot do better to finish this brief review than by repeating the closing lines of the book – ‘There amongst the quiet hills he was laid to rest, far from the busy scenes of which he once seemed such an inescapable part. But until the last of those who knew him have also passed away, he will not be forgotten.”
The Newry Reporter of 16 May 1912 records some other good stories from the Serjeant’s memoir, including a father who arranged a match for his daughter with a pig as a dowry, only to repent that the girl was pretty and might find a husband on easier terms, which was unlikely to be the case with his older daughter. ‘There’s Mary, the ould wan’ he said to the other father – they of course, were negotiating the affair – ‘She can have the pig with her and welcome.’ Mary and the bridegroom married and lived happily ever after.
Another story involved an eminent counsel who ‘accepted a brief and did not come near the court. After a while, his clerk wrote to the solicitors suggesting that the fee should be paid. ‘It had been sent, they explained, ‘pinned to the first leaf of the brief.’
Another eminent bishop was famous for his eloquence. Once, when he had been heard with enthusiasm, it turned out that he had come without a discourse and had borrowed one from the rector, who was regarded by his flock as driest of the dry. As an Equity barrister of acknowledged brilliance, Serjeant Campion would have well appreciated how a really good lawyer – or bishop – will know how to make the driest content sparkle!
‘A Brace of Public Guardians,’ by Thomas Rowlandson, via the Met Museum.
From the Irish Independent, 12 November 1907, this fantastic piece on ‘The Charleys,’ or the Old Dublin Watch, by D.J.M. Quinn, with an amusing story in its last paragraph about how an eminent and somewhat officious ‘gentleman of the wig and gown’ of times past found himself magnificently outwitted by a ‘Charley’ he had sought to reprimand:
“THE CHARLEYS
OR
THE OLD DUBLIN WATCH
Could the good citizen, who, gazing today on the stalwart form of the Dublin Metropolitan policeman as he paces with measured tread the streets of the city, take a glance backwards, say to the end of the 18th century, he would behold a vastly different type of custodian of the law. At that period there existed in Dublin a body whose official designation was ‘the Watch,’ but who were known to the gallants of the day by the sobriquet of ‘The Charleys.’ The origin of the latter appellation is said to date back to the time of the gay King Charles II, in whose reign the Watch was first instituted.
SENILE GUARDIANS OF THE PEACE
‘The Charleys,’ who were the only guardian of the streets at night (there were none during the day), were generally old and feeble men, many of whom had, in their earlier days, been the domestic servants or retainers of members of the Corporation and of their friends. They wore long frieze coats with large capes and low-crowned hats, and were armed with a single weapon, which they used for offensive and defensive purposes alike. This was a long pole, with a spear at one end, and at the other was a crook for the purpose of catching runaway offenders. They also carried a rattle, which they twisted violently round, made a harsh and discordant noise like that of a gigantic corncrake; with this, when in trouble or danger, they summoned fellow watchmen to their assistance.
THEIR DUTIES.
The duties of these senile guardians of the peace were, to patrol a certain beat, to quell riots, and to arrest and bring to the watchhouse disorderly characters. The first of these tasks they carried out fairly well, but the latter two, owing to their old age and stiff joints, was naturally a somewhat difficult and often an impossible achievement. At times, however, they did manage to effect an arrest, but such an event was invariably brought about through sheer force of numbers. They had also, as they walked along their beat, to call out the hour and the state of the weather, such as ‘Past 12 o’clock and a cloudy night,’ or ‘Past 2 o’clock and a stormy morning.’
FROZEN TO DEATH
For each ‘Charley’ at the end of his beat, was provided a small sentry-box, somewhat after the fashion of the shelter supplied at present to the night watchmen of the implements of the Corporation workmen. In this, in bad weather, and often in good, he might be seen comfortably dozing away the silent watches of the night, oblivious to all the disturbance which were, at the time, the rule rather than the exception, of the hours of darkness. But frequently his seeking after comfort proved his undoing, for it was no uncommon incident during a severe winter to find a ‘Charley’ stiff and cold in his box – literally frozen to death. This was notably the case in the winter of 1785, when Dublin was visited with a terrible and prolonged spell of frost. An old chronicler tells us: – ‘The Liffey was frozen over for weeks, traffic was at a standstill, and the Lord Mayor caused huge fires to be lit in the market-places to warm the poor.’ During this period no fewer than five ‘Charleys’ were found frozen to death in their boxes.
BEATEN BY RIOTERS
To show how utterly impotent were the ‘Charleys’ as preservers of the peace, the riot of 1790 between the frequenters of the coffee-houses in Dame Street will plainly show. At midnight in December of that year, a duel was fought between two of the young Dublin bloods, each of whom asserted that the other had grossly insulted him. During the progress of the fight, the supporters of the combatants had words, and in a short time two formidable forces were opposing each other with every conceivable weapon, naked fists included. Above the din of the fight the loud buzzing sound of the Watch’s rattle was heard, but their advent had no effect whatever on the mob who, placing their own differences to one side, banded together to attack the common enemy, with the result that the Watch were severely mauled; their hats and cloaks were torn, their crooks and rattles taken from them, and they were chased from the courtways, where they endeavoured to secrete themselves. The Lord Mayor, hearing of the riot, set out in his coach with the object of trying to restore order, but after a futile attempt to do so, he hurried to the Castle, where he invoked the aid of the soldiery, at whose approach the midnight disturbers of the peace made a rapid retreat.
‘Tom Getting the Best of a Charley,’ by Cruikshank, via Meisterdrucke.uk
FIRST TRINITY BOYS
The greatest plague, however, with which the unfortunate ‘Charleys’ had to deal was the Trinity boy. These young gentlemen would sally out at night from one of the theatres (where they had perchance suddenly blown out all lights and left the audience in darkness) and walk in a body up the main streets of the city. They usually contented themselves with flattening the hats of the ‘Charleys,’ who were out of their boxes, but those who were unfortunate enough to be inside fared much worse. Creeping noiselessly behind him, they tilted the box over, thus imprisoning the unlucky Watch as securely as if he were under lock and key in the Watchhouse. There he remained until his muffled shouts attracted some of his fellows or until some righteous citizen gave the alarm and summoned help to liberate him from his uncomfortable and undignified position.
TROPHIES OR SALE
If there was anything more than another which increased the respect of the Trinity boys for one another, it was some trophy borne triumphantly away after one of those midnight encounters, and as a result the walls of some of their ‘dens’ in the College were lavishly ornamented with crooks, rattles, hats, and even cloaks, wrested from time to time from the unfortunate ‘Charleys’. So great became this practice that the Lord Mayor was forced to offer a reward ‘to any person or persons who would give information leading to the arrest of anyone despoiling the Watch of the various parts of their uniform.’ Notwithstanding the reward, however, the Trinity boys always managed to escape scot free, and at one time they had the audacity to advertise, whether in joke or otherwise is not known, a sale of property ‘most suitable to persons following the occupation of watchmen.’
THE LAWYER TRICKED
A good story is told of a celebrated barrister of those days and an astute ‘Charley.’ The gentleman of the wig and gown returning to his home late at night came across a watchman asleep in his box. Hastily shaking him up the man of opinions soundly rated him for his dereliction of duty and threatened to report him at headquarters for being asleep. The ‘Charley,’ though recently awakened from a sound sleep, proved himself equal to the occasion, for swinging his rattle quickly round his head, so that its noise attracted a neighbouring watchman, he laid violent hands on the interpreter of his dreams. When the other ‘Charley’ arrived on the scene, the disturbed one complained bitterly of the legal man’s bad language and disorderly conduct. The barrister protested his innocence, but all to no purpose, and with a crook securely fastened in his coat tails, to prevent any attempt on his part to escape, he was ignominiously escorted by his captors to the Watchhouse, where he stormed and raved until morning, when he was brought before the magistrate. Here things were somewhat cleared up, as the magistrate had a full knowledge of the prisoner’s character, and liberated him. The ‘Charley’s purpose had, however been effected, as it is, of course, unnecessary to say how futile the barrister’s complaint of finding him asleep in his box would have been after he had himself been arrested for disorderly conduct.
D.J.M. QUINN.”
A wonderful article impossible to resist transcribing in its entirety!
Point to Ponder: Could the well-known expressions: ‘a right Charlie,’‘get back in your box,’ and ‘you’re out of your box’ originally have been referable to the ‘Charleys’?
