“Mr Fred H Mullan, solicitor, Trevor Hill, Newry, has just received a very interesting account from Mr John Cusack, BL, of the Easter Rising in Dublin. Mr Cusack states:-
About 12.30 p.m. on Monday I received a telephone message at my house that the Sinn Feiners had seized Stephen’s Green. I walked there, and found the rebels in possession. They had barricaded the gates with garden seats and pieces of wood, and armed sentries were walking up and down inside, while the rest were digging trenches.
On Tuesday morning early I called to see the Attorney-General, whose election was being held that day, and found at his home the Solicitor-General, who had passed the night at the Castle. As he was returning there in his motor I went with him to the Castle. The Upper Castle Yard was most unhealthy, as the rebels were still sniping.
I soon left , and made my way to Sackville Street, where I found Judge Orr coolly watching the performance. I then went to the Club in Stephen’s Green North on the invitation of a member. We stayed there some time watching a military machine gun operating on the rebels in the Green from the top of the Shelbourne Hotel, and noting the effect of the returned fire on the rebels. In the coachhouse at the back of my house the father of the anatomy porter of the Royal College of Surgeons resides, and from this porter I learned that in the College they had captured a quantity of rifles and ammunition, and they even barricaded the windows with the dead bodies which were in the College for anatomy purposes, which they removed from the tanks.
On Wednesday the Sherwood Foresters came marching in the broiling sun in close order from Kingstown. Nothing occurred till they reached immediately opposite my house, when they were suddenly taken unawares by a fierce fire. The officers, now recognising what they had to meet, caused the neighbourhood to be searched. With rebels sniping all round us, the military entered my home during the search. Luckily some official papers were lying on my desk with a couple of large envelopes, endorsed OHMS and Chief Crown Solicitors’ Department, Dublin Castle, and thus my respectability was vouched for, and the search proceeded no further.”
Mr Cusack, originally from Newry, lived at 9 Waterloo Road, Ballsbridge. He was a barrister with a large practice on the North-East Circuit who had been appointed counsel to the Attorney-General James Campbell earlier that year. He had also acted as counsel to the previous Attorney-General, now Mr Justice Gordon. Shortly after the Rising, he became a KC, and was later appointed County Court Judge for Kerry. He resigned in 1924 and went to live in England, where he was elected Lord Mayor of Twickenham in 1929.
Judge Cusack passed away at his home in Middlesex in 1940 while reading a newspaper. His own newspaper account of 1916, however, omits two interesting matters.
Firstly, while all the above events were happening, he and his wife Dora had a newborn son in the house. This son, born in mid-April 1916, later went on to become Sir Ralph Vincent Cusack, Judge of the High Court of England and Wales. Another son, Jake, was Minister of the Interior of Kenya during the Mau-Mau period.
Secondly, Judge Cusack appears to have neglected his duty as counsel to the Attorney-General in one vitally important respect – namely, that of ensuring that the Chief Law Officer for Ireland had enough ready cash to keep going until normal financial business resumed. By the following week, the Dublin Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph was gleefully reporting that
“[t]he deepest tragedy in Ireland in Ireland is always touched with tragedy, and everybody has a rebellion joke to tell. The joke of Dublin Castle is that the Attorney General and Solicitor General Mr JH Campbell [later Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of Ireland] and Mr James O’Connor [later Sir James O’Connor, Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Ireland] were besieged for nearly a week, and as no banks were open during the Rebellion they had to raise a loan in cash from a journalistic friend. The idea of an Irish journalist being in a position to finance an Attorney General has vastly entertained Dublin in the midst of its woes.“
The Attorney-General’s pocket was not the only element of the Irish legal system to be turned inside out by the 1916 Rebellion! Lots more small (and large) change to come!
“The Master of the Rolls having taken his seat on the bench on Tuesday last, proceeded with the hearing of motions of course. Before they had concluded, Mr Richard Major Hassard, the well-known litigant, who has been for some years past in the frequent habit of making viva voce appeals in person to the equity judges, made his appearance at the side bar, and addressed his Honor, complaining of an order lately made by him in one of the suits in which Mr Hassard and his wife are parties.
Master of the Rolls – I have made my order, and if you are dissatisfied with it you may appeal. I will not discuss it with you now… you must go to the Court of Appeal, which is now sitting, if you are not satisfied with my order.
Mr Hassard, notwithstanding his lordship’s intimidation, continued to press his complaints, interrupting counsel who were speaking in cases fixed for the sitting of the court.
His Honor – Sir, I will not allow you to disturb the court. If you persevere I must have you removed by the police.
Mr Hassard – Very well, my lord, give me into custody at your peril.
Policemen having come forward to remove Mr Hassard, he made a sudden dive under the table and disappeared to the laughter of all the spectators. The policemen, who were far beyond man’s ordinary stature, vainly endeavoured to squeeze their persons into the small space between the table and the floor which had readily admitted the spare figure of the disappointed litigant. After a time, one of them succeeded in getting on all-fours into his concealment, and gave chase. On Hassard’s sudden disappearance, the business of the court had been resumed, and Mr Hughes, QC, addressing the court, was obliged to throw down his brief convulsed with laughter. The hero of a hundred legal battles flying along, still under the table, from the policeman who was in pursuit of him, had seized the eminent Queen’s Counsel by the legs. On this circumstances becoming known, the bar, the spectators, and even the ordinarily immovable gravity of the learned judge, were overcome.
Nor were the sounds that issued from under the table of a character that tended to diminish the ludicrousness of the occasion. Kicks and plunges might be heard, mingled with such exclamations as these sounding through the wood, like the conversations of Gallagher, the ventriloquist:- ‘Let me go’ – ‘That’s not fair’ – ‘This isn’t justice’ – ‘I’m getting no fair play.’
Mr Hughes at length suggested to his honour the propriety of adjourning the court for a few minutes. To this the learned judge acceded, and left the bench. A few minutes afterwards Mr Hassard emerged from his hiding place at the opposite side from that at which he entered, starting up covered with dust amongst the Queen’s counsel as suddenly as he had disappeared, at the same time that his colossal pursuer came up at the other side, his face red and swollen from exertions in the unusual enterprise in which he had been engaged.
Mr Hassard then walked quietly out with the policeman, and remained for some time perambulating in the hall, an object of interest to all who saw him, and obviously pleased at the ‘sensation’ his antics had occasioned. His Honour immediately afterwards resumed his place on the bench, and the business was proceeded with as usual.”
On Thursday last week, the action of D Coffey, Derrymilleen, Co. Cork, farmer, v Denis P O’Regan, Farransbesbary, Enniskeen, Co. Cork, farmer, was listed for hearing in the Chancery division before Mr Justice Powell. The plaintiff sought specific performance of an agreement for sale by the defendant.
When the case was called, Mr DB Sullivan BL said neither of the parties had turned up, and he would have to ask his lordship to take the case out of the list for the present. They could only guess what had happened. Mr Bourke was for the defendant and he consented.
Mr JF Bourke BL – I can do nothing else but consent. We do not know what has happened. We can only guess. The fact is no witnesses are here on either side.
Mr Justice Powell – The best thing I can do is to strike the case out.
Mr Bourke – We have no definite instructions of what has happened.
Mr Sullivan – Let it stand out of the llst for the moment. We will mention it again in the event of it going on. I don’t suppose it will.
Mr Justice Powell – Very well. By consent take the case out of the list for the present.”
A barrister’s worst nightmare! Whatever could have happened? The date of the above events raises the suspicion that the missing parties had eschewed the Four Courts in favour of the Dáil Courts – the first alternative dispute resolution mechanism in Ireland since duelling went out of fashion midway through the previous century.
The first newspaper reference to Irish barristers being involved in such proceedings is to be found in the Evening Mail of 21st May 1920, which references one Kevin O’Sheil BL as presiding over a landlord and tenant dispute before an Sinn Féin Arbitration Court in Ballinrobe, County Mayo.
A subsequent court held in Ballinasloe, County Galway, the following week was presided over by an unnamed barrister of the High Court. Eight or ten solicitors of the Circuit argued cases. The evidence was taken in the usual way with a pledge of honour substituted for the oath.
The Ballinasloe Court – the largest Arbitration Court so far – led to a question being asked in the House of Commons as to what steps the Attorney General for Ireland, Denis Henry KC, proposed to take to deal officially with lawyers who participated in such court proceedings. Mr Henry’s response was that this was a matter, in the case of barristers, for the Benchers of the King’s Inns and, in the case of solicitors, for the Incorporated Law Society. The questioner, Colonel Ashley, then asked if he was to understand that the Crown had no power to deal with barristers or solicitors who had taken part in treasonable and illegal proceedings. There was no reply from Mr Henry.
On the 24th June, 1920, the news broke in the Four Courts that the Bar Council had, at a special meeting, passed a resolution declaring that it was professional misconduct for any barrister to practice in a Sinn Féin Arbitration Court. It was stated on behalf of those who attended that any barrister found so practising would be reported to the Bar Council and dealt with thereafter by the Benchers, who would have the duty of determining what sanction should be imposed against them. This was in contrast with the decision of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland not to interfere with the appearance of solicitors at such courts.
The Bar Council resolution created considerable hubbub, having regard to the fact that, during the 1913 Home Rule agitation in Ulster, many members of the judiciary and prominent lawyers had been members of a Provisional Government which declared its refusal to recognise the Home Rule Act, without any objection from the Bar Council.
On the 28th June a letter from Maurice Healy KC, 1 King’s Bench Walk, Temple, London, brother of controversial Irish barrister and politician Tim Healy, was published in the Irish Independent. Mr Healy stated that
“So far as I understand the position of a barrister he is entitled not only to appear before every court (other than certain statutory exceptions); he is also entitled to act as arbitrator or to appear as counsel before such arbitrator. Accordingly, the only objection that can be raised to a barrister appearing before a Sinn Fein court is that he is acknowledging the jurisdiction of an authority other than his Majesty’s government… whatever weight should be attached to this objection in 1920, should also have been attached to it in 1913.”
The following day a decree of the First Dail abolished the Sinn Féin Arbitration Courts and replaced them with Dáil Courts of wider jurisdiction.
On the 3rd July 1920 The Freeman’s Journal carried a letter from Serjeant McSweeney KC saying that the Bar Council resolution involved the threat of professional ruin to Irish barristers and deprivation of their means of living. He also pointed out that the resolution was not yet technically in force, as it had not yet been formally posted up in the Library.
The Londonderry Sentinel, on the other hand, regarded the Bar Council resolution as unnecessary, since no decent counsel would soil themselves by association with such tribunals:
“The slaves who are bullied into submitting to the Sinn Fein courts subscribe to the lie that the Irish Courts, of which every member of the Bar is an officer, are enemy organisations for the oppression of Ireland. No man, unless afflicted with the mind of a prostitute, could believe in this declaration and still desire to be a member of the Irish Bar.”
Of course, involuntary starvation can lead even the most chaste to sacrifice their virtue, and, as the Sentinel itself acknowledged, the official courts were by now practically empty throughout three fourths of Ireland, the only business being applications for criminal injury compensation, with the word in the Law Library being that when the judges went out on Circuit in 1921 there would be practically no business for them.
The forthcoming July Assizes showed that things were even worse than predicted. Lord Justice Ronan had practically nothing to do in the Record Court at the opening of the Mayo Assizes in Castlebar. This was due to the fact that a Dáil Court held on the previous day, and attended by a large number of barristers and solicitors, had heard almost all the appeals listed for the Assizes.
On 7th July 1920, it was reported that an informal meeting of the Leinster Circuit had resulted in a resolution of the majority of the Circuit that a member of the Bar, instructed by a solicitor, was entitled to appear before any Dáil Court.
Later that month, the news broke that the Attorney-General’s brother-in-law Hugh Holmes, son of Lord Justice Holmes of the Irish Court of Appeal, John Monroe, son of Mr Justice Monroe, and Mr Webb, a leading junior on the Connaught Circuit, were leaving Ireland to take up judicial positions in Egypt. Meanwhile, the Derry Journal of 27 August 1920 reported that three of their colleagues from Dublin were spending the long vacation learning Irish at Coláiste Cholmcille in Cloghaneely, Co. Donegal.
A meeting of the Bar to consider the June resolution, postponed due to the July Assizes, took place in the Law Library on 5th November 1920. It was held in response to a requisition signed by about seventy members of the Bar and there was a large attendance. Tim Healy, in an address frequently interrupted by applause throughout, expressed the view that the Bar Council had no right to pass judgment on the conduct of any member of the Bar or on their action or non-action, the only body with a right to do so being the Benchers. According to Mr Healy, the Bar Council was under a misapprehension if it thought that its duties corresponded with those of the Bar Council in England, where, due to the presence of four Inns of Court, it was necessary that some body should exist there which would have general jurisdiction in matters of professional etiquette.
After some discussion the meeting adjourned indefinitely. According to the Freeman’s Journal of the following day, it was generally understood that the feeling of the meeting was that the Bar Council had acted without jurisdiction and that the effect of the proceedings of the meeting had been to nullify the previous resolution.
On the 12th of the same month, Mr Diarmuid Crowley, barrister and Circuit Court judge in the Dáil Courts, was arrested on returning to his lodgings at the Moy Hotel, Ballina, after presiding over a court in that town. A report of his arrest in the Manchester Evening News described Mr Crowley was known as a sound lawyer and a fearless advocate has appears in some important civil cases before the judges in the Four Courts. One suspects that his arrest was not unconnected to what had taken place in the Law Library the previous week.
What happened to Mr Crowley? Or, indeed, the Dáil Courts? What did barristers and solicitors unwilling to practise in these courts do to occupy their time throughout 1920? You’ve guessed it – they lobbied for an increase in fees! How many went to the Colonies? The story continues here!
Shoulder Belt Plate worn by a member of the Irish Lawyers’ Corps, c. 1796
Despite many parades, and much drilling, the question of what that notable barrister militia company, the Lawyers’ Corps, actually did during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 went unanswered for many years. Indeed, it might never have been resolved at all had the Dublin Daily Express not belatedly managed to unearth the diary of an anonymous 24-year-old barrister member of the Corps and publish it in a centenary edition of 27th August 1898. Its contents make interesting reading!
“1798: May 21st, Monday. – About 11 o’clock, just before I went to bed, one of the drummers of the Lawyers’ Corps called to summon me to attend in arms the next morning at 7 o’clock at the Four Courts.
May 22nd, Tuesday – I went to the Four Courts. Here I got a scrambling breakfast of cold beef and porter, and, after remaining a great while under arms, we were at last marched to Thomas-Street, where we searched several houses for concealed arms. We found some, and were dismissed about 2 o’clock.
May 23rd, Wednesday – As I was going to the Four Courts, expecting that the eight days’ sittings after term would begin, I met several lawyers who assured me that all the Courts had adjourned. In the evening at eight o’clock I went to the Four Courts to mount guard with my company of the Lawyers’ Corps. I found the drums beating to arms and all the yeomanry assembling; the remainder of our corps met in Smithfield. A general rising was expected through the whole town. The two Sheares brothers had been taken up that morning, and a vast deal of pikes and concealed arms had been discovered by flogging the several smiths and others who had been detected making or possessing them. The night, however, passed without any disturbance, and we were not dismissed till a very late hour next morning – first day of the Rebellion.
May 24th, Thursday – There was great alarm in Dublin. Accounts arrived that the United Irishmen had appeared in arms in many parts of the County of Kildare and in different places near Dublin. Martial law was proclaimed, and in the evening, about 8 o’clock, all the yeomanry assembled in arms in Sackville street, where we were joined by many volunteers. From thence our corps and the Attorneys’ Corps marched to the Four Courts, and a detachment of ours, consisting of a lieutenant and two sergeants and twenty privates, was sent to take post on Sarah Bridge.
May 25th, Friday – I was sent on the party to relieve the detachments stationed at Sarah Bridge. Luckily the weather was extremely fine. Here we remained under arms till 5 o’clock. Then we marched to the Four Courts, and about 6 o’clock were dismissed. I went to bed and slept till 2 o’clock, when I was awakened, and told that a drummer had summoned me to attend at the Exchange to see the execution of some of the rebels.
May26th, Saturday – This day very alarming accounts came to town of the forces of the rebels – of the murders and violence committed by them. Dublin remains quiet. In the evening we paraded as usual at the Four Courts, and I was of the detachment to Sarah Bridge which was not relieved at all. This night we got an alarm and the men, though repeatedly challenged by our sentries, did not make any answer. Le Hunte, one of the sentinels, and four or five privates and a sergeant fired at them. We were very ill accommodated with a guard room and a bad supper at the other side of the bridge at a public house.
May27th , Sunday – Before 8 o’clock paraded at the Four Courts and was marched as guard to Newgate. Our guardroom this night was the Sessions house in Green Street; several of us drank tea in the keeper’s room. All was perfectly quiet.
May28th, Monday – We had a good breakfast about 6 o’clock. Went to parade at the Parliament House, as usual, in the evening. This night, our guardroom was changed to the Parliament House, where the main guard was stationed. We had an excellent supper given to us by the Clerk of the Parliament whom we lately admitted a member of the Corps.”
Sarah Bridge, now Island Bridge, where members of the Lawyers’ Corps stood guard during the 1798 Rebellion.
Over the next two weeks, the diarist continues night guard at the Parliament House and also at Hertford Bridge in the Grand Canal, occasionally adjourning to the Sackville Street Club to read ‘horrid accounts’ of events in Wexford, centre of the Rebellion. On June 4th, while again guarding Sarah Bridge, he is informed that the rebel leader Lord Edward Fitzgerald, arrested the previous week, has died in Newgate. Subsequently, the diarist returns to the Sessions house in Green Street to attend the trial of two of his rebel colleagues, John and Henry Sheares, remarking that
“[i]t was a melancholy sight to see two men whom I had remembered at the Temple, and whose faces I had constantly seen at the Four Courts as barristers, standing indicted for high treason.”
He does not think much of the defence put forward on the Sheares’ behalf by the great advocate John Philpot Curran, but, as he says, ‘[i]ndeed he had not materials.’
On 13th July the diarist marches again with the Corps and a six pounder cannon through the Phoenix Park to Luttrelstown. By the 26th July, it is all over, and he goes again to the Four Courts, where the Court of Exchequer is now once again sitting, saying that
“[i]t was curious to see all the lawyers in their different dresses, some in uniform, some in black, and some in coloured clothes, but in gown and wig not one. Hardly any appearance of business.”
Although a few shots were clearly discharged from time to time, there are no references in the diary to any deaths or injuries among the Corps in Dublin. Some Corps members based outside Dublin did, however, see action at the battles of Vinegar Hill and Arklow – one barrister, James Dunn, being so profoundly shaken by the latter battle, in which he was marked for life by the powder of a rebel’s pistol fired in his face at close quarters, that he felt called to take holy orders and change his profession to that of evangelist.
The Rev James Dunn, his face showing the marks of his injury at the Battle of Arklow
But who was our mysterious diarist and what happened to him after 1798? Did he go on to fame and fortune at the Bar? Or did he end up leaving the profession like the Reverend Dunn? The Express notes that he was the son of a bishop, which might be of assistance in tracking him down. What we do know is that he liked his food! Over two centuries have passed since 1798, but some things don’t change -barristers, like militia, still march on their stomachs. You can still get a very good breakfast in the Four Courts today, though cold beef and porter is no longer on the menu!
“In the Court of Exchequer, on Saturday week, the clergymen and choristers from Christ Church Cathedral appeared and performed their accustomed homage, by singing an anthem and saying prayers. At the entrance of the minister and choristers the barons arose and continued standing during the ceremony.”
The practice of attending at the Four Courts, or more specifically the Court of Exchequer, four times a year, was a continuance of an older practice which had existed when the courts were previously at Christchurch, and indeed even before that time. It was in thanksgiving for an annual stipend which had been granted out of the Exchequer in 1547, hence the Court of Exchequer being the only court visited. Hopefully the other courts did not feel left out! Possibly they were happy for the opportunity to get on with business.
Another report in the Belfast News-Letter of 26 October 1898 describes the songs sung as the ‘Te Deum’ and the ‘Jubilate.’ Some nostalgia attaches to this account, since the enactment of the Irish Church Act 1869, disestablishing the Church of Ireland, had had the effect of bringing an end to these visits, which some wags remarked were the closest many barristers came to attending religious services.
Of course, there is nothing to stop the choir visits from being reinstated again on a voluntary basis – four times a year might be a bit much, but perhaps some Christmas carols?
