The old Courthouse, Boyle, Co Roscommon, via Buildings of Ireland
From the Evening Herald, 15 October 1907:
“While his Honor County Court Judge Wakely was revising the voters’ list in Boyle Courthouse yesterday a wild scene of tumult took place. George W Tully was after being examined in support of his claim for a vote, and on leaving the witness table he deliberately struck Arthur O’Connor two blows on the face with his clenched fist. Mr O’Connor retaliated, and a wild scene of riot ensued. The audience was composed of the supporters of Mr Jasper Tully and the supporters of the Parliamentary Party. As if the attack was pre-arranged, both parties rushed at each other, and fierce fighting took place all over the Court.
His Honor cried, ‘Order, order.” The police rushed between the combatants, and tried to separate them, but owing to the confined area in which the fight took place they were handicapped, and the riot continued till the parties on either side showed signs of exhaustion. His Honor from the Bench cried, ‘Shame, shame,’ but this had no effect, and he left his seat and threw himself between the parties, who were fighting and struggling all over the place, encouraged by the wild shouts and cries of their supporters, who could not join in the fray.
Eventually order was to some extent restored, but many of the combatants bore visible signs of the fierceness of the struggle. Mr Jasper Tully’s face was covered with blood, which ran from a deep cut over the eye. His face also presented a bruised appearance.His Honor, when he could make himself heard, said – Gentlemen of Boyle, I am ashamed of you. I never thought you would conduct yourselves in such a manner in a court of mine’ (cries of ‘It was Tully’s fault’).
This photograph of Jasper Tully at Westminster a decade prior to the above incident, via the National Portrait Gallery, demonstrates that the combatants in the above fight were men of mature years.
Mr Jasper Tully appealed to his Honor against Patrick O’Connor, who went near kicking the eye out of him.
Mr O’Connor – It was George and yourself commenced the row?
Mr Jasper Tully – My lord, look at the state of my eye (laughter).
His Honor – ‘Order, order.’ He then asked the head constable who was responsible for such a disgraceful scene (cries of ‘Tully, Tully’ and cheers and counter cheers).
Acting-Sergeant McGarry was sworn by his Honor, and swore he saw George Tully strike Arthur O’Connor twice on the face with his clenched fist.
His Honor – I sentence George Tully to a week‘s imprisonment for contempt of court.
Mr Jasper Tully – What about O’Connor?
His Honor – Who was that man I saw struggling so violently in the seat?
Acting Sergeant – Alfred – O’Connor.
His Honor – I also sentence him to a week’s imprisonment.
Before the Court adjourned, his Honor again referred to the scene, and expressed the pain it was to him to witness such a disgraceful scene in the court over which he presided. He altered the sentence on Tully and O’Connor to a fine of £2 each, and hoped the matter would end at that.
Our reporter wires that the wildest scenes of tumult occurred in Boyle last night. The police were kept busy separating contending parties, and the town was in a very disturbed condition.”
Judge Wakely, from Edenderry, was the first Circuit Court judge on what later became the Midlands Circuit. Michael Byrne, solicitor, has written a wonderful post about him, and his successors on that Circuit, available to read here.
British soldiers in Dublin, from John F Finerty’s ‘Ireland in Pictures,‘ 1898
From the Freeman’s Journal, via the Western Mail, 11 September 1871:
“During Tuesday last the locality of Pill Lane was considerably excited by a collision which occurred between a party of military and a number of the females gathered in the neighbourhood of the police courts. A soldier, absent without leave, was supposed to live in a house in the lane, and a picket of his regiment went in search of the fugitive. They attempted to enter the house, but were confronted by several women, by whom they were forcibly repulsed.
Upon renewing their endeavour to force admission they were furiously assailed, the din of the conflict sounding afar off, and attracting all the passers by in the vicinity. One of the female combatants sounding a species of general’s cry with a brickbat on the head of an adversary, in a moment a battalion of Amazons sallied forth and, with appalling vociferations, swooped upon the forlorn hope of redcoats, who, utterly confounded by the ferocity and determination of an enemy against whom the ordinary process of warfare could not be employed, were compelled to the ignominious tactic of entrenching themselves behind such points of shelter as the lane afforded.
A council of war was called, but the foe were in force, and the regulars being too feeble to take the field, they finally retired amid howls, leaving their warlike laurels in the lane, and the female visitors to reverse the boastful train, and sing after their fashion ‘None but the fair deserve the brave.’ “
19th century Dublin was a military city with many dependent on Army custom to keep their businesses going. One category of businesspeople who had no need to maintain good relations with the military were the fishwives of Pill Lane, immediately behind the Four Courts, who sold leftover fish to the poorest of the poor, on a street with a tradition of rebellion going back to 1798.
From Pill Lane to today’s Chancery Street – the street behind the Four Courts where the British Army was routedin 1871
If even the mighty British Army quailed at their invective, imagine how lawyers making their way home must have feared abuse from these wild women! Read a complaint from one passer-by here.
I previously posted a short video about the Milltown Outrage, which occurred in Dublin in September 1861. It involved an attack on a 19-year-old governess by the cab driver engaged to bring her home from Sackville (now O’Connell) Street to Rathgar.
At the end of the video it was disclosed that an arrest had subsequently been made. The name of the man arrested was John Curran. Unusually for the perpetrator in a 19th century Dublin criminal trial, we have a contemporaneous drawing of Curran (above).
Curran was a 24-year-old husband and father living in Grant’s Row, off Lower Mount Street. He did not live with his wife, who was in service as a nurse (she lost her job as a result of the trial). He and his two children lived with his aunt, Mrs Meares, who kept a lodging-house. The children slept with Mrs Meares; Curran shared a bed in another room with two of her male lodgers. He owned a horse, and rented a cab from Mrs O’Connor in Baggot Street, where he also stabled the horse.
The trial of John Curran took place in the Commission Court, Green Street, Dublin (now Green Street Courthouse) the month after the attack. It would have occurred earlier, were it not for the fact that Miss Jolly was in poor health following the attack. It was, to say the least, an eventful trial, with one of the witnesses being subsequently convicted of perjury. There were also some unexpected witnesses – the crew of a cross-channel ferry called the SS Moorsom!
The key issue in Curran’s trial was one of identification of the perpetrator – something which is of key relevance in many criminal trials today. Although the law has evolved since then, the warnings given by the presiding judge in his charge to the jury regarding the dangers of identification evidence still apply.
Ironically, Curran shared his name with two of Ireland’s greatest advocates – John Philpott Curran, father of Robert Emmet’s beloved Sarah, and his own defence counsel, John Adye Curran. His trial was one of the most widely reported Irish criminal proceedings of the 19th century.
What was it that made the Milltown Outrage and its fallout of such concern to Dubliners? In 1861, Dublin’s middle-class community was enthusiastically expanding into the red-brick South Dublin suburbs of Ranelagh, Rathgar and Rathmines. But not all of the new arrivals had private carriages. Safe transportation for women living in these areas, particularly at night, was a must. But the only alternative to the cab was the Rathgar omnibus, which had already fallen into the Grand Canal at Portobello in April of the same year, resulting in the loss of a number of lives.
A further spark to the fire: Ranelagh, Rathgar and Rathmines were Protestant areas, and Miss Jolly herself was a Protestant. It may not have escaped the notice of older Dubliners that the Bloody Fields, where the attack occurred, was exactly where citizens of Anglo-Norman Dublin had been massacred by a contingent of Wicklow Gaels in 1209. No one would have wanted the attack on Miss Jolly polarised in similar terms, but as long as the perpetrator remained at large, there was always the risk that it might be characterised as sectarian.
For a trial that prompted so much newspaper coverage both in Ireland and abroad – in London, one man was charged with attacking his wife due to a difference between them as to Curran’s guilt – it is amazing that the Milltown Outrage has now been wholly forgotten.
See below a further video detailing the events at the trial and subsequently. I hope you enjoy!
“A man named John Cowan was brought before the magistrates on a charge of having stolen a fawn in the Phoenix Park, on the preceding day.
Police Constable 97D stated that he met the prisoner on the King’s Inns Quay, with a suspicious looking bundle under his coat; on searching him he found a live fawn concealed on his person.
The prisoner said he was returning from the review, with a number of other persons, and saw the fawn lying beneath a hawthorn tree; imagining that it had been deserted by its dam, he thought it was no harm to bring it away.
Alderman Tyndall said it was most necessary to have all similar offences severely punished. He would, accordingly, inflict a penalty 5l on the prisoner, in the present case, which he hoped would be a warning to the public on future occasions.”
The above was only one of many incidents of fawn-stealing from the Phoenix Park resulting in criminal charges in the 1830s.
In June 1830 two ‘respectable mechanics’ were taken up at Arran Quay with a young fawn tied up in a handkerchief and concealed under one of their coats. They were also fined 5l each, and the fawn restored to the woods and wilds.
In July 1835 George Godden, one of the rangers of the Phoenix Park, swore informations against a man named George Callaghan, for attempting to steal a fawn the previous Monday. Mr Godden gave evidence that he observed Mr Callaghan, through a telescope, running away with the fawn, who had since died, in consequence of the injury received by the pressure in carrying it off. Mr Callaghan was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, in default of paying the usual fine of 5l.
In June 1837 Mr Godden appeared at Arran-Quay Police-office yet again, to give evidence against Dennis Keogh and Daniel McGordon, whom he had again observed, through his telescope, taking up a fawn and tying it in a handkerchief. He arrested them at Knockmaroon-gate, with the fawn still in their possession. The magistrate, Mr Hitchcock, said, in consequence of the many instances of fawn-stealing, and the depradations which had recently occurred in the Phoenix Park, the Magistrates were called upon to exact the maximum penalty of £30, or, in default of payment, six months’ incarceration to each of the prisoners.
There were no more prosecutions for fawn-stealing after 1838 – the purchase of black-market fawns must have gone out of fashion or perhaps the high financial penalties being imposed served as a disincentive?
I hope Mr Cowan’s fawn made its way safely back to its family. It may be that its descendants still live in the Park today!
“Sir – I was sitting in the court of Queen’s Bench yesterday, and while counsel was reading a long affidavit I applied myself to the columns of the Standard newspaper. Suddenly the Lord Chief Justice called out to me – ‘This is not a place for the public to read newspapers.’
I understood this as a prohibition, and of course desisted.But the question has since occurred to me – ‘Has not an exalted magistrate for once exceeded his authority?’ I know of no law prohibiting what I was doing, or conferring upon his lordship the power of imposing such a prohibition. I was not committing a contempt of court, or conducting myself in an unseemly manner.
I am a member of the English bar, to which I was called in 1844, and I have not only frequently read newspapers under the eye of the bench in England, but I have seen barristers of every degree of eminence doing the same thing, without rebuke or question. Reading newspapers is a necessity to barristers, and it is surely a reasonable convenience to them to do so in court in the interest of actual occupation. Of course I do not mean that an English barrister in Ireland is likely to be anxious to save time in the way; but I suppose there must be one rule for all, whether barristers, solicitors or spectators.
The Lord Chief Justice’s words applied only to ‘the public,’ of which I was considered to be an ordinary member; but can it be seemly for a lawyer to read a newspaper in court, and not for a layman? The case would be different if there were any danger of the courts being used by idlers for reading the news; but who would dream of affirming the existence of such a danger? The case of England shows that there is none. I am sure that the dignity of the English courts is well maintained, and I cannot think it probable that, in the face of the practice established in them, Irish judges would advisedly decide that to read newspapers in court was so unseemly as to call for interposition.
I may observe that newspapers contain law reports, and some journals nothing else. These must be used sometimes in court. But I was not asked what I was reading, nor whether I belonged to the profession. If I had declined to desist, would the Chief Justice have gone so far as to commit me, or fine me, or even to order my expulsion?
I am, sir, your obedient servant, TS
PS – I enclose my name and address.”
James Whiteside, Lord Chief Justice of ireland, 1866-76, who, as well as having strong views on the Liffey smell, took the view that a court was no place to read newspapers.
Not all Irish judges were as strict as Lord Chief Justice Whiteside! The Glasgow Herald, reporting on the 1887 Coercion Act trial of newspaperman William O’Brien, M.P. before the Mitchelstown magistrates, stated that
“On the Court resuming, all the defendants were represented. It was at once apparent that most of them, as well as other in Court, had taken advantage of the adjournment to furnish themselves with copies of the Dublin newspapers. They do many things in Ireland in a free and easy way. Few of our Scotch judges tolerate the reading of newspapers in Court, but here the Magistrates themselves showed the example, each of them returning to court with a newspaper in his hand. Mr O’Brien, who took his old seat beside his barrister Mr Healy, was deeply engrossed in the columns of an English newspaper. Even while evidence of his own paper was being read, Mr O’Brien continued to read, and seemed quite indifferent to what was going on… even Mr Healy, in an ideal moment, sought amusement in the pictures of a comic paper.“
The Weekly Dispatch (London) also noticed the magistrates’ newspaper reading, and was less tolerant of it, remarking that even though they presumably got their orders from Dublin Castle, it would have been as well for them to pretend to listen to the case that they were pretending to be deciding.
Traditionally, judicial objections to the reading of newspapers in court had been regarded as preciousness akin to ordering a bald man to leave a court on a bright summer’s day because the rays of the sun were refracted from his head to the dazzled eyes of the judge.
Moreover, as shown by the Mitchelstown report above, newspaper-reading on the bench was itself a common practice. Fraser’s Magazine of 1864 stated that Lord Mansfield, the prince of courtesy, was in the habit of reading newspapers and answering letters in court; Lord Eldon did so too, and Lord Abinger would do it ‘ostentatiously and offensively, to mark his contempt for the advocate.’ As against this, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke used to declare that ‘he did not take his place upon the bench to write letters to his correspondences, or to read the newspaper.’
Lord Campbell stated that a glance at a newspaper ‘may be permitted to a judge during a tedious reply, as a hint to a counsel against prolixity’. However, he did not approve of a judge ‘indulging his curiosity by turning over the unwieldy pages of the Times while a counsel has been opening in an condensed manner a very important and complicated case requiring the closes attention of a judge, however quick, learned and discriminating.’
Although the decision as to whether or not to allow reading of newspapers in court appeared to be one for the particular judge, by the late 19th century, more and more judges were deciding that court was no place for newspapers, at least if read by anybody other than themselves. Lord Morris, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in Ireland between 1887 and 1889, was particularly fond of pretending to read the newspaper ‘ostentatiously’ during Counsel’s summing-up in jury trials, while in fact listening intently with a view to perfecting his own, invariably excellent, charge.
In August 1882, the Liverpool Echo reported that ‘a reporter who happened to be holding in his hands a copy of an evening journal, and who might, for anything that is known to the contrary, have been consulting it for purely business purposes – such, for instance, as a desire to know whether all his ‘copy’ had reached the office safely – was peremptorily ordered to put the newspaper down. Not satisfied with the rapidity with which this direction was obeyed, the judge next insisted that the gentleman should leave the court.‘
The author of the piece went on to state that ‘the right of an irate member of the bench to apply physical violence to the removal of a gentleman whose only offence is that he has looked at a paper in court remains to be established.’ However, in 1900 at Alzenau, Germany, a prominent tradesman was sentenced to 24 hours imprisonment for the ‘grave irreverence’ of reading a newspaper in court while a case was under trial.
In 1891 Mr Justice Denman told a barrister that ‘if you are a barrister you must behave as such and not be seen reading a newspaper in court or engaging in anything inconsistent with the idea that you are heart and soul following the business in hand.‘
The trend continued into the 20th century, with an English judge saying to a solicitor caught reading newspapers in court in 1911 that ‘this place is not a free library.’
In 1906 the Empire News and the Umpire stated that Sir Gorell Barnes ‘will not allow anyone to read a newspaper in court, firstly because he does not consider it in keeping with the dignity of the court for persons to be interested in anything but is proceeding there and, secondly, the rustling and turning over of the average unwieldy newspaper distracts people’s attention from the subject matter in harm.’
Sir Gorell Barnes. A sketch carried out at great risk, since, for the same reasons, namely the majesty of the law and the comfort of witnesses, Sir Gorell also had a problem with sketch artists.
Irish Republicans in court during the Irish War of Independence enthusiastically adopted Lord Abinger’s practice of reading newspapers as a mark of distaste, though the reasons for their distaste went beyond mere scorn at the ineptitude of Counsel. In Fermoy, in February 1920, seven men charged in connection with a member of the Shropshire Light Infantry read newspapers in court and occasionally spoke to their friends. Their hats had to be removed. It seems that, in the circumstances, the court decided not to make an issue of their newspaper reading.
In 1929, at the Leeds Assizes, the Vicar of Hulme, near Huddersfield, was fined 40s for declining to desist reading a newspaper in court. Likewise, in the London King’s Bench Division in July 1928, Mr Justice Swift rebuked some people who were reading newspapers in court. ‘I don’t know whether they come from the theatrical profession,’ he said, ‘If so, they would be very angry with me if I went to one of their theatres and read a newspaper during one of their performances.’
There have been some relatively recent cases of witnesses being in trouble for reading newspapers in court in Ireland, though none resulting in fine or imprisonment. In 1968, the Meath Chronicle reported that a ‘blonde’ wearing a polo neck knitted sweater and black jeans had had to be removed from Trim Court after an altercation. In response to it being remarked by the judge that she had been reading a newspaper in court that morning, she said: ‘Yes I was, I was bored stiff. I had other things to think about.’
In 1993, the Drogheda Argus and Leinster Journal reported that a man reading a newspaper at Dundalk Court had been told by the judge: ‘This is not a mart or a circus. You can’t stand down there and read a paper.’ The newspaper was put away.
In 1998 an Englishman was threatened with, but managed to escape, a week in jail for describing proceedings at Galway District Court as a mockery after he had been asked to refrain from reading a newspaper in open court. The judge said that it was a very hurtful thing to be told his court was a mockery, and that if the man knew how hard he worked he would not have said that, but it was not worth putting the police to the trouble of sending him to prison.
Anyone – journalist, newspaper, or barrister – who reads paper newspapers in court today, it seems, does so at peril of public reprimand at the very least! But what about online newspapers?
