CHAPTERXVIIQUOTATIONS FROM QUAY STREETThe art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.Isaac Disraeli: “Curiosities of Literature.”At the corner of Byrom Street and Quay Street was the Manchester County Court, as I knew it, from 1887 to 1894, as a barrister and afterwards from that date to 1911 as judge. I must have spent a great portion of my waking hours within its dreary walls. Often do I walk down Peter Street in my dreams, and find the same officer on point duty holding up the traffic like the waves of the Red Sea in order that I may cross Deansgate with dignity and he may deliver an elaborate salute; but following the pleasant desultory fashion of dreamland I never actually reach the old Court, but wander away elsewhere. I do not think when I am departed I shall ever return to haunt the court-house, not merely because it is noisy, ill-ventilated, and uncomfortable—most court-houses are—but because if I once got back there I should want to be at work again, and to take a hand in what was going on, for despite all the dreariness of its somewhat squalid routine, I found a percentage of entertainment in the day’s work.I think the real reason spirits do not return to their old haunts is that they know that they would not be allowed to cut in and take part in the game.I was on the point of saying I had no unpleasant memories of Quay Street, but that would scarcely be correct, for it was in that court that I had the misfortune to be shot. One does not care to remember the tragedies of life, but if one is to set down the happenings of one’s Manchester days one can hardly leave out such an extraordinary occurrence. The facts as I understood them were these. On the morning of July 26, 1898, I had to cancel the certificate of a man named William Taylor. The case had lasted very late the night before. After the decision and just as the next case was started I became aware of what I first thought was a dynamite explosion close to my left ear. The second explosion, which caused me intense pain, I recognised to be a pistol shot, and the bullet from that I carry about with me still. The third, which gave me even greater pain, never hit me at all, for Henry Thomason, with magnificent bravery, had caught my assailant by the throat, thrown him on to the floor, and the third shot, in fact, went into the plaster on the opposite wall and then out again into the middle of the court. I must have tried to drag my head out of the way and so hurt myself. I never absolutely lost consciousness, and remember Montgomery, the surgeon who happened to be in court, examining my throat and saying “there was no perforation.” I hadn’t an idea what he meant, but it sounded reassuring.There is no object in recalling the long months of pain that I had to go through before I was fit to work. It is pleasanter to remember the enormous kindness shown to me by all sorts and conditions of people during those grievous days. In the nursing home they very soon made an effort to photograph the bullet with the X-rays, which were then only beginning to be used. It was a terrible ordeal in those days, and I should think I was over twenty minutes trying to lie still on a couch with a square negative for a pillow whilst the light spluttered about in a most unpleasant way. When it was developed they showed me a blur with one indistinct blob on it.“What is that?” I asked.“The bullet,” said the doctors.“And have you photographed all the metal in my head?”“Certainly.”“Then where is the portrait of my gold tooth?”I never got an answer to that, and the doctors took away the photograph, which I always maintained was only of interest to dentists.A year ago I thought I would make a further investigation and went down to Birmingham, where my friend, Dr. Franklin Emrys Jones, with his partner, Dr. Hall Edwards, made several radiograms of it. Dr. Hall Edwards was in South Africa during the war, and was specially interested in bullets. It is marvellous, after all he has suffered in the pursuit of radiography, to see him, maimed and in pain,directing the work with the greatest enthusiasm. The modern engines are more terrifying to the victim, and the affair is somewhat uncanny, for when the light is turned on the operators retire behind a lead-glass screen and watch you from afar. But it was all over in a few minutes, and very soon they returned with a negative in a dish, not a flattering likeness, perhaps, but an excellent picture of a side view of my skull and the bullet at the base of it.I had plenty of doctors to look after me, and they were kindness itself, Wright and Southam and Judson Bury were with me at Quay Street, and Dr. Larmuth came up and put my ear-drum back in its place. It had got blown aside by the concussion of the revolver. I think that depressed me more than anything, for I knew if I was deaf I should never get back to work again. It was the left ear, and one of my early visitors said to cheer me up, “That doesn’t matter, judge, that’s the defendant’s ear, and you never listen to him, you know.” “That may be,” I said, “but there is all the difference between not listening and not hearing when you do listen.”After some weeks I got down to Nevin, in North Wales, but it was extraordinary what a long time it was before I got over the shock. Of course, for many months I was often in pain, but with every desire and incitement to get back to ordinary life I found I had not, at first, the will to do it. I remember Dr. Leech, who was making a tour of that part of Wales to write an essay on its climatology,came up to see me, and was insistent in his kindly way upon my having a swim. I had had to grow a beard, and I looked like an Anarchist, and I hated going about, because people stared at me. However, the next day I crawled down to the shore with Dr. Leech, and with the aid of two sticks walked into the sea. I regarded the doctor as a manslaughterer at the time, but when I came out rejoicing and walking ever so much better I knew I had won the first victory. The second was over my bicycle, which I knew I couldn’t possibly ride, and very nearly didn’t in consequence. After that I got bold and went swimming out a bit until a six-inch wave knocked me on the side of the head, and reminded me that I was very far from being whole.I recall these things because I have often found them useful to refer to in those difficult cases of neurasthenia and malingering in workmen’s compensation cases. Here was I, with every incentive to recovery and every desire to recover, and every opportunity that human being could have, bungling the affair from want of the necessary will power. I learned that after a severe shock it is a really tough job for an honest man to get himself back into condition, and that long after wounds and limbs are healed or mended there remains a real mental indisposition to look the world in the face again that is hard to overcome. Even to-day, though all the effects of the accident have practically passed away, I cannot sit still if anyone suddenly opens a soda-water bottle at the back of me, and I am distinctly gun-shy.I got back to work in November. It was too early, and I broke down again, but I did get back to work and was able to do it. I could not have stood a formal greeting, but a great many friends came down, and there was quite a crowded court as I took my seat. I had arranged with Charley McKeand that as soon as I took my seat he should jump up and ask for some imaginary case to be adjourned to prevent anyone starting an oration. This was done. A few days afterwards Joseph Collier, the surgeon, told me an amusing anecdote about it. “I was coming down Byrom Street,” he said, “and the officer at the door, whom I know, called out to me, ‘Hi, Mr. Collier, you’d better coom into coort this morning. There’s gran’ doin’s on. Judge Parry’s taking his seat again, and Charley McKeand’s down, an’ ’e’ll be makin’ a fine pow-wow. You see.’ So I went in,” continued Collier, “and as you know, nothing happened. When I came out I jeered at the policeman, who seemed quite upset. ‘I never saw the like of it,’ he said. ‘After all that’s ’appened, and ’im so well liked and aw, and they make no more fuss than if he’d just been off the bench to have a drink like usual.’”I think the officer referred to the luncheon interval. There were certainly no other adjournments, even on the thirstiest days, though Collier often used to chaff me about it. However, I soon had a good story against Collier. There had been an accident to a workman, which was said to have resulted in concussion of the spine. The workmanwas a very stolid character, and Collier had examined him for the insurance company. The following cross-examination took place:—“Do you remember Mr. Collier examining you?”“Aye, I do.”“Did he stick a pin into your thigh?”“Aye, ’e did an aw.”“Did you start up and scream?”“Well, so would you.”“But hadn’t you told him your thigh was numb and had no feeling?”“What’s the good of telling ’im onything?” said the witness, pointing contemptuously at Collier. “That’s where doctor made ’is mistake. I told ’im I were numb i’ front, and what does ’e do but go and stick a pin into my backside. ’E’s no doctor.”When the case went to the medical referee Collier’s views were upheld, though I always used to warn him against the danger of sticking pins into the wrong part of the human joint.I could fill many columns with pleasant memories of our works and days at Quay Street. The Registrar and his clerks and the high bailiff and myself were a very happy family, and despite our somewhat gloomy surroundings we managed to put a good deal of cheeriness and heartiness into our work. It is not for me to say how far we succeeded, but this I may say for the Court, and I chronicle it with pride, that I believe it was the only Court in England that had a cricket team with a card of fixtures, and regularly played a high bailiff and a judge.And, on the whole, I think the staff, from lowest to highest, worked hard to make an efficient machine of it and certainly the affairs of the poorer people were thoughtfully administered, and the Registrar and chief clerks did a lot of work in looking after the estates of the widows and orphans in cases under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Personally I used to see each of the widows once a year at least, and by keeping in touch with the family doings we were often able to give a child an appropriate start in life which he or she would never have had if the money had merely been invested and automatically paid over. Not every experiment was a success, of course, but the experience satisfied me that the death payments at least were a very great boon to the working class, enabling a widow to save her home and the home life for her children in a way she could not have done before the passing of the Act.No one dislikes grandmotherly interference more than Manchester folk, unless it be Salford folk, but in dealing with large and unaccustomed sums of money it is a good thing that the widows and orphans should have the co-operation of the Court. Naturally many of these poor widows have short views, and cannot see far enough ahead to the days when what to them is indeed a bottomless purse shall be found to be empty. It is very difficult to prevent them rushing into businesses for which they are ill-fitted. They are surrounded by agents and friends, who have some unsuccessful business—generally a fried-fish shop—to sell at a high price, and both buyer and seller areindignant with the hard-hearted and unbelieving judge when he wants to see books and invoices, and to have proof of the weekly takings before he will allow the widow to invest her money. To the widowed soul, fried fish is synonymous with fortune; to me it always smells of fraud.I cannot say that all our battles with ignorance and shiftlessness were victories. We got badly hit on occasion. I remember in my early days a young widow, who had re-married, coming with her husband, a handsome young fellow, with letters from relations from America, and a scheme of going out there, where work was plentiful. It seemed an excellent plan, and after some discussion all the figures having been put before us by the young man in a businesslike manner, a big sum was handed out for the equipment and travelling expenses of the family, and the remainder was to be sent over when they arrived. Months passed and we heard no more of them, and at length one day the clerk told me the woman had turned up in the office, with a black eye and a new baby. They had not been nearer to America than Blackpool, and the man had never done a stroke of work until the money was spent. That was one of our failures. Since then we have worked through an emigration society or taken the tickets ourselves. It has been notable that on several occasions when I have told the applicants that we would take their tickets and make all the arrangements they strongly persuaded me not to go to the trouble, and seemed quite pained that they should be the cause of somuch extra worry. Indeed, finding me adamant on the subject, they have thrown up the idea of emigrating altogether and stayed in the old country.Tombstones are the source of a great deal of difficulty. Seeing the example set in high places, one sympathises with the poor in their desire to show respect to their dead, even if one is convinced that the measures they take are unwise. I generally like to postpone the drawing out of money for a tombstone as long as possible; but I have never made any hard-and-fast rule that nothing shall be used for such a purpose. I remember one widow grieved very much that I could not allow her a considerable sum for a “stone.” I told her we would discuss it again in about twelve months. When she returned after this period I happened to remember her trouble, and said: “I do hope, Mrs. X., you have thought over all I said to you last time about the tombstone.”She looked down on the ground, and I feared we were going to have tears.“I think there are so many better ways of showing respect,” I ventured.“Yes, sir,” she began falteringly, “so do I, sir.”“I’m very glad,” I said heartily.“So am I,” she said, blushing. “You see, I’m going to be married again.”And though one laughs over the little comedies in the lives of these poor folk, I became daily more and more impressed with the sterling worth of the people whose servant I was, and I spokewith all sincerity when I said, on leaving Manchester, that I took off my hat to the Lancashire man who brings up his wife and children worthily on twenty-five shillings a week. I have been face to face with the man, and feel that his outlook on life is a great asset for our country, and that it has been a privilege to be called upon to minister to his needs, even in the obscure atmosphere of an urban County Court.As a witness, he is a most refreshing and epigrammatic personality. He is far from being a saint or a hero, but he is in the main honest, homely, and humorous, and you can learn a great deal of the difficulties of his works and days by appreciative study of his sayings. Most of them could have left the court with a clear conscience, saying in the old style:—An’ I niver knaw’d what a mean’d, but I thowt a ’ad summut to saay,An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to a said, an’ I coom’d awaay.Here, for instance, is a melancholy epigram on Manchester as a city, where sane human pleasure should be catered for by the rulers and governors. It occurred in the cross-examination of a workman by that excellent advocate, Mr. Hockin. He was seeking to show that the witness was not present at the works when an accident to which he was testifying had happened.“But I think that you said you had a holiday that day.”“I had an aw!”“Do you mean to tell the Court,” asked Hockin,in his most archdeacon-like manner, “that you came back to the works when you might have been enjoying a holiday?”“Certainly,” replied the witness.“Why did you do that?” asked Hockin, with a touch of triumph in his voice as if there was no possible explanation.The reply was only too obviously truthful.“What should I do? I have nowhere to go. I’m teetotal now.”It requires quite a long and subtle study of the Lancashire witness to really understand when he is condescending to incivility, though many of his phrases might too hastily be interpreted against his sense of good manners. An excellent old brewery collector was trying to recover a lost barrel, and was quite unable to show me documentary evidence of its residence in the defendant’s house. I was cross-examining him about it, and could get no satisfaction.“When was the beer sold?” I asked.“I don’t know.”“Was it several years ago?”“Nay, but I don’t know.”“But I must know the date,” I replied sternly.He folded his hands in despair at my unreasonable obstinacy and sighed deeply, and speaking with slow emphasis said: “Then all I can say is that you’ll have to go down to the brewery.”I shall not easily forget the entire change of scene caused in a small County Court drama by a veryLancashire witness. The plaintiff was a south-country Chemist’s assistant, most dapper and polite—a very Osric of the pharmaceutical world. His employer had dismissed him for drunkenness. On the view it was hard to believe that the plaintiff had vigour enough for any such delinquency, but his testimony, given in a mincing voice, was a little suspicious.“I assure you, sir, that I have the misfortune to suffer from asthma, and my doctor has ordered me to take whisky on these foggy mornings, that are so severe in this climate. I am a very temperate man. I need hardly say, sir, a very temperate man. A lady came in for a syphon, and I gave her one. She thought it was soda, and it was lemonade. It was entirely the lady’s error, and that seems to have annoyed the lady. It does annoy ladies, and she seems to have got the impression—of course, an entirely mistaken impression—that I was not, in fact—sober. Your Honour will know what I mean; but, of course, a mistake, a sad mistake, and the lady unfortunately sent word to my master, and he came down and was very violent, and threw me out of the shop.”The defendant said the man was drunk, and proceeded to call witnesses. The lady was ineffective, but a working man called on subpœna and a very unwilling witness put the matter beyond doubt. We had no advocates, so I told him to tell his story in his own words.“I dunno reely much aboot it,” he said, “I worpassing shop an’ ’ad a bit o’ cough mysen, so I went in for twopennoths o’ balsam. An’ when I got in t’ shop I saw yon mon”—pointing to plaintiff—“leaning up agin them variagated decorated drawers like they ’ave in them shops, an’ I says to mysen, I says, ‘’Enery, you ain’t tired o’ your life yet, are you, ’Enery?’ An’ with that I cooms out wi’out ony balsam—an’ that’s all I know.”The plaintiff, who had little dramatic instinct, insisted on cross-examining as to whether the witness was prepared to swear he was drunk, but the witness replied with true Lancashire charity and caution, “I ’oped as ’ow you was drunk, but, in coorse, you might ’a’ been taking poison.”A very few months after I was made judge I got a homely rebuke from a suitor that led to an interesting reform in my conduct of affairs. A man was telling me in moving for a new trial that he had got in the County Court on the day of the trial too late for the hearing. I asked him why he had not waited until the end of the day and made an application to me.“So I did,” he said, “but as soon as last case was over you jumped up and bolted through yon door like a rabbit.”After that I made more dignified exits, and I also arranged a practice of waiting and talking to everyone who was left over and had anything to ask, so I am grateful to my critic. I used to have many strange applications for advice, some quite beyond my power of satisfying. For instance, a working man came to me once with the most perplexing problem. “Iwant to know,” he asked, “whether I must call my little girl Ferleatta?” I spell it phonetically, as he could not help me in the spelling, but I fancy the real name may have been Violetta.“What has happened?” I asked.“Two young women as visited the missis during ’er confinement coom one neet as we were at tea. They takes the baby down to parish church and they brings it back ‘Ferleatta,’ an’ I wants to know what are my rights.”I counselled consultations of a kindly nature with the young ladies, foreseeing litigation of a complicated and painful ecclesiastical nature.Another poor fellow told me his adventures when I was sitting as Recorder in the Minshull Street Courts, and he was summoned as a witness. “First I went down to the County Court an’ they tells me to coom up here, an’ I gets into the Police Court and an officer tells me to cross the bridge, an’ I lost my way an’ got into the Coroner’s Court, and they sent me out o’ that and unfortunately I got among the solicitors, and they told me to go into the hall and wait till my name wor called—which it never wor called.”I forgave him all the trouble he had caused for sake of the word “unfortunately.”I am very sorry for a man who gets to the wrong court; the summons is generally clear enough for the ordinary citizen, but to the less literate of the community it seems often a difficult problem.If one had the faculty of painting genre pictures of “Our Street” in Hulme or Ancoats the CountyCourt is the place to find the incidents. A good lady, a little, short, fussy woman, was describing to me how she got a plumber’s job done in her house. I could see the picture.“Landlord tells me ’e couldn’t get Thomas to do it, ‘and,’ says ’e, ‘if you can I give you luck.’ I went to Thomas’s missus, an’ I says, ‘Where is ’e?’ She says to me, ‘If you don’t find ’im in the beer’ouse you won’t find ’im at all.’ With that I went to the beer’ouse an’ I got ’im out, and I takes ’im up to the ’ouse. ’E wasn’t for coming, but I sauced ’im all the way down Pimblott Street, an’ ’e kept telling me whot ’e’d do if I was ’is wife.”Here is another recollection of a graphic story told by a woman witness. If unreliable at times, the evidence of women is generally full of good advocacy. This good wife gave me a very dramatic account of her husband’s dealing with a Jew jeweller. The tallyman tempts women with drapery and men with jewellery. The wife turned up to defend the case, very wisely leaving her husband at home. The tallyman produced an order form with a cross on it alleged to be made by the absent husband. I asked the woman if her husband was a scholar. “No,” she said, “David wasn’t brought up to scholarship; he was brought up to hard work.” Then she told her story. “Yon man,” she said, pointing to the plaintiff, “his name is Isaacs, and he’s by way of being a Scotchman, and I’ve had a shawl off him. Many a time he’s tried to sell David a watch, and I told him I wouldn’t have it. Well, he comes in Saturdayafternoon for a talk with a box of joollery. I remember the day ’cause he tripped over our door-mat and nearly spilt hisself, and he says to me, ‘I’ll have to be selling you a new door-mat, missus,’ and I says to him, ‘Our door-mat’s plenty good enough for the folks that comes across it.’ With that he laughed and gave me a shilling to get a quart at M‘Ginnis’s vaults, and when I comes back they was handling the joollery, and knowing how soft my husband is about joollery I made him put it back in the box afore I gave him the beer, and I can swear there was no watch there then. We all talked a bit and supped the ale, and then he and David went out. It was very late when David came home, and he came home drunk with a cigar in his mouth, but he never had no watch on him ’cause I put him to bed myself.”The case was adjourned for David to appear, but I never saw David, and I dare say the affair was amicably settled over another quart from M‘Ginnis’s vaults.Some of the most amusing evidence is given in running-down cases. No Lancashire witness ever admitted that he did not understand a plan, but it is generally waste of time to trouble him with one. Counsel, however, will do it, and I was delighted once when counsel’s own witness marked with a cross the scene of a collision between a tramcar and a milk float in the chancel of the parish church.They are very dogmatic, too, about the miles per hour a vehicle is travelling, a fact that few can measure accurately. The following dialoguebetween counsel and witness shows how worried and confused a witness may get about comparative pace, but his attempted recovery from the dilemma is at least ingenious.“Where were you, and what were you doing?” asked counsel.“I was walking along the Eccles Road towards Eccles at about four miles an hour.”“What pace was the trap going?”“Very slow indeed,” replied witness. “Say about three miles an hour.”“Ha!” cried counsel, triumphantly; “but the trap overtook and passed you—you forget that.”“I do not forget. It’s you that forget,” replied the witness with indignant assurance. “The trap was trotting; I was walking.”And it is because the bulk of the people who come before the Court are so bewildered by the forms and ceremonies of litigation, and so rarely do themselves justice in the examination and cross-examinations as at present conducted, that I want to see all this replaced for small affairs by some simpler and more domestic procedure. We should lose some of the comedy, no doubt, if we had our Courts of Conciliation and the judge were to try to make peace instead of giving a legal verdict in matters where there is very little right and plenty of wrong on both sides, but we should gain greatly in utility. And if anyone is in doubt whether there is room for such a court, let him go down to Quay Street for himself and verify these quotations.
The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.
Isaac Disraeli: “Curiosities of Literature.”
At the corner of Byrom Street and Quay Street was the Manchester County Court, as I knew it, from 1887 to 1894, as a barrister and afterwards from that date to 1911 as judge. I must have spent a great portion of my waking hours within its dreary walls. Often do I walk down Peter Street in my dreams, and find the same officer on point duty holding up the traffic like the waves of the Red Sea in order that I may cross Deansgate with dignity and he may deliver an elaborate salute; but following the pleasant desultory fashion of dreamland I never actually reach the old Court, but wander away elsewhere. I do not think when I am departed I shall ever return to haunt the court-house, not merely because it is noisy, ill-ventilated, and uncomfortable—most court-houses are—but because if I once got back there I should want to be at work again, and to take a hand in what was going on, for despite all the dreariness of its somewhat squalid routine, I found a percentage of entertainment in the day’s work.I think the real reason spirits do not return to their old haunts is that they know that they would not be allowed to cut in and take part in the game.
I was on the point of saying I had no unpleasant memories of Quay Street, but that would scarcely be correct, for it was in that court that I had the misfortune to be shot. One does not care to remember the tragedies of life, but if one is to set down the happenings of one’s Manchester days one can hardly leave out such an extraordinary occurrence. The facts as I understood them were these. On the morning of July 26, 1898, I had to cancel the certificate of a man named William Taylor. The case had lasted very late the night before. After the decision and just as the next case was started I became aware of what I first thought was a dynamite explosion close to my left ear. The second explosion, which caused me intense pain, I recognised to be a pistol shot, and the bullet from that I carry about with me still. The third, which gave me even greater pain, never hit me at all, for Henry Thomason, with magnificent bravery, had caught my assailant by the throat, thrown him on to the floor, and the third shot, in fact, went into the plaster on the opposite wall and then out again into the middle of the court. I must have tried to drag my head out of the way and so hurt myself. I never absolutely lost consciousness, and remember Montgomery, the surgeon who happened to be in court, examining my throat and saying “there was no perforation.” I hadn’t an idea what he meant, but it sounded reassuring.
There is no object in recalling the long months of pain that I had to go through before I was fit to work. It is pleasanter to remember the enormous kindness shown to me by all sorts and conditions of people during those grievous days. In the nursing home they very soon made an effort to photograph the bullet with the X-rays, which were then only beginning to be used. It was a terrible ordeal in those days, and I should think I was over twenty minutes trying to lie still on a couch with a square negative for a pillow whilst the light spluttered about in a most unpleasant way. When it was developed they showed me a blur with one indistinct blob on it.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The bullet,” said the doctors.
“And have you photographed all the metal in my head?”
“Certainly.”
“Then where is the portrait of my gold tooth?”
I never got an answer to that, and the doctors took away the photograph, which I always maintained was only of interest to dentists.
A year ago I thought I would make a further investigation and went down to Birmingham, where my friend, Dr. Franklin Emrys Jones, with his partner, Dr. Hall Edwards, made several radiograms of it. Dr. Hall Edwards was in South Africa during the war, and was specially interested in bullets. It is marvellous, after all he has suffered in the pursuit of radiography, to see him, maimed and in pain,directing the work with the greatest enthusiasm. The modern engines are more terrifying to the victim, and the affair is somewhat uncanny, for when the light is turned on the operators retire behind a lead-glass screen and watch you from afar. But it was all over in a few minutes, and very soon they returned with a negative in a dish, not a flattering likeness, perhaps, but an excellent picture of a side view of my skull and the bullet at the base of it.
I had plenty of doctors to look after me, and they were kindness itself, Wright and Southam and Judson Bury were with me at Quay Street, and Dr. Larmuth came up and put my ear-drum back in its place. It had got blown aside by the concussion of the revolver. I think that depressed me more than anything, for I knew if I was deaf I should never get back to work again. It was the left ear, and one of my early visitors said to cheer me up, “That doesn’t matter, judge, that’s the defendant’s ear, and you never listen to him, you know.” “That may be,” I said, “but there is all the difference between not listening and not hearing when you do listen.”
After some weeks I got down to Nevin, in North Wales, but it was extraordinary what a long time it was before I got over the shock. Of course, for many months I was often in pain, but with every desire and incitement to get back to ordinary life I found I had not, at first, the will to do it. I remember Dr. Leech, who was making a tour of that part of Wales to write an essay on its climatology,came up to see me, and was insistent in his kindly way upon my having a swim. I had had to grow a beard, and I looked like an Anarchist, and I hated going about, because people stared at me. However, the next day I crawled down to the shore with Dr. Leech, and with the aid of two sticks walked into the sea. I regarded the doctor as a manslaughterer at the time, but when I came out rejoicing and walking ever so much better I knew I had won the first victory. The second was over my bicycle, which I knew I couldn’t possibly ride, and very nearly didn’t in consequence. After that I got bold and went swimming out a bit until a six-inch wave knocked me on the side of the head, and reminded me that I was very far from being whole.
I recall these things because I have often found them useful to refer to in those difficult cases of neurasthenia and malingering in workmen’s compensation cases. Here was I, with every incentive to recovery and every desire to recover, and every opportunity that human being could have, bungling the affair from want of the necessary will power. I learned that after a severe shock it is a really tough job for an honest man to get himself back into condition, and that long after wounds and limbs are healed or mended there remains a real mental indisposition to look the world in the face again that is hard to overcome. Even to-day, though all the effects of the accident have practically passed away, I cannot sit still if anyone suddenly opens a soda-water bottle at the back of me, and I am distinctly gun-shy.
I got back to work in November. It was too early, and I broke down again, but I did get back to work and was able to do it. I could not have stood a formal greeting, but a great many friends came down, and there was quite a crowded court as I took my seat. I had arranged with Charley McKeand that as soon as I took my seat he should jump up and ask for some imaginary case to be adjourned to prevent anyone starting an oration. This was done. A few days afterwards Joseph Collier, the surgeon, told me an amusing anecdote about it. “I was coming down Byrom Street,” he said, “and the officer at the door, whom I know, called out to me, ‘Hi, Mr. Collier, you’d better coom into coort this morning. There’s gran’ doin’s on. Judge Parry’s taking his seat again, and Charley McKeand’s down, an’ ’e’ll be makin’ a fine pow-wow. You see.’ So I went in,” continued Collier, “and as you know, nothing happened. When I came out I jeered at the policeman, who seemed quite upset. ‘I never saw the like of it,’ he said. ‘After all that’s ’appened, and ’im so well liked and aw, and they make no more fuss than if he’d just been off the bench to have a drink like usual.’”
I think the officer referred to the luncheon interval. There were certainly no other adjournments, even on the thirstiest days, though Collier often used to chaff me about it. However, I soon had a good story against Collier. There had been an accident to a workman, which was said to have resulted in concussion of the spine. The workmanwas a very stolid character, and Collier had examined him for the insurance company. The following cross-examination took place:—
“Do you remember Mr. Collier examining you?”
“Aye, I do.”
“Did he stick a pin into your thigh?”
“Aye, ’e did an aw.”
“Did you start up and scream?”
“Well, so would you.”
“But hadn’t you told him your thigh was numb and had no feeling?”
“What’s the good of telling ’im onything?” said the witness, pointing contemptuously at Collier. “That’s where doctor made ’is mistake. I told ’im I were numb i’ front, and what does ’e do but go and stick a pin into my backside. ’E’s no doctor.”
When the case went to the medical referee Collier’s views were upheld, though I always used to warn him against the danger of sticking pins into the wrong part of the human joint.
I could fill many columns with pleasant memories of our works and days at Quay Street. The Registrar and his clerks and the high bailiff and myself were a very happy family, and despite our somewhat gloomy surroundings we managed to put a good deal of cheeriness and heartiness into our work. It is not for me to say how far we succeeded, but this I may say for the Court, and I chronicle it with pride, that I believe it was the only Court in England that had a cricket team with a card of fixtures, and regularly played a high bailiff and a judge.
And, on the whole, I think the staff, from lowest to highest, worked hard to make an efficient machine of it and certainly the affairs of the poorer people were thoughtfully administered, and the Registrar and chief clerks did a lot of work in looking after the estates of the widows and orphans in cases under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Personally I used to see each of the widows once a year at least, and by keeping in touch with the family doings we were often able to give a child an appropriate start in life which he or she would never have had if the money had merely been invested and automatically paid over. Not every experiment was a success, of course, but the experience satisfied me that the death payments at least were a very great boon to the working class, enabling a widow to save her home and the home life for her children in a way she could not have done before the passing of the Act.
No one dislikes grandmotherly interference more than Manchester folk, unless it be Salford folk, but in dealing with large and unaccustomed sums of money it is a good thing that the widows and orphans should have the co-operation of the Court. Naturally many of these poor widows have short views, and cannot see far enough ahead to the days when what to them is indeed a bottomless purse shall be found to be empty. It is very difficult to prevent them rushing into businesses for which they are ill-fitted. They are surrounded by agents and friends, who have some unsuccessful business—generally a fried-fish shop—to sell at a high price, and both buyer and seller areindignant with the hard-hearted and unbelieving judge when he wants to see books and invoices, and to have proof of the weekly takings before he will allow the widow to invest her money. To the widowed soul, fried fish is synonymous with fortune; to me it always smells of fraud.
I cannot say that all our battles with ignorance and shiftlessness were victories. We got badly hit on occasion. I remember in my early days a young widow, who had re-married, coming with her husband, a handsome young fellow, with letters from relations from America, and a scheme of going out there, where work was plentiful. It seemed an excellent plan, and after some discussion all the figures having been put before us by the young man in a businesslike manner, a big sum was handed out for the equipment and travelling expenses of the family, and the remainder was to be sent over when they arrived. Months passed and we heard no more of them, and at length one day the clerk told me the woman had turned up in the office, with a black eye and a new baby. They had not been nearer to America than Blackpool, and the man had never done a stroke of work until the money was spent. That was one of our failures. Since then we have worked through an emigration society or taken the tickets ourselves. It has been notable that on several occasions when I have told the applicants that we would take their tickets and make all the arrangements they strongly persuaded me not to go to the trouble, and seemed quite pained that they should be the cause of somuch extra worry. Indeed, finding me adamant on the subject, they have thrown up the idea of emigrating altogether and stayed in the old country.
Tombstones are the source of a great deal of difficulty. Seeing the example set in high places, one sympathises with the poor in their desire to show respect to their dead, even if one is convinced that the measures they take are unwise. I generally like to postpone the drawing out of money for a tombstone as long as possible; but I have never made any hard-and-fast rule that nothing shall be used for such a purpose. I remember one widow grieved very much that I could not allow her a considerable sum for a “stone.” I told her we would discuss it again in about twelve months. When she returned after this period I happened to remember her trouble, and said: “I do hope, Mrs. X., you have thought over all I said to you last time about the tombstone.”
She looked down on the ground, and I feared we were going to have tears.
“I think there are so many better ways of showing respect,” I ventured.
“Yes, sir,” she began falteringly, “so do I, sir.”
“I’m very glad,” I said heartily.
“So am I,” she said, blushing. “You see, I’m going to be married again.”
And though one laughs over the little comedies in the lives of these poor folk, I became daily more and more impressed with the sterling worth of the people whose servant I was, and I spokewith all sincerity when I said, on leaving Manchester, that I took off my hat to the Lancashire man who brings up his wife and children worthily on twenty-five shillings a week. I have been face to face with the man, and feel that his outlook on life is a great asset for our country, and that it has been a privilege to be called upon to minister to his needs, even in the obscure atmosphere of an urban County Court.
As a witness, he is a most refreshing and epigrammatic personality. He is far from being a saint or a hero, but he is in the main honest, homely, and humorous, and you can learn a great deal of the difficulties of his works and days by appreciative study of his sayings. Most of them could have left the court with a clear conscience, saying in the old style:—
An’ I niver knaw’d what a mean’d, but I thowt a ’ad summut to saay,An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to a said, an’ I coom’d awaay.
An’ I niver knaw’d what a mean’d, but I thowt a ’ad summut to saay,An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to a said, an’ I coom’d awaay.
An’ I niver knaw’d what a mean’d, but I thowt a ’ad summut to saay,
An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to a said, an’ I coom’d awaay.
Here, for instance, is a melancholy epigram on Manchester as a city, where sane human pleasure should be catered for by the rulers and governors. It occurred in the cross-examination of a workman by that excellent advocate, Mr. Hockin. He was seeking to show that the witness was not present at the works when an accident to which he was testifying had happened.
“But I think that you said you had a holiday that day.”
“I had an aw!”
“Do you mean to tell the Court,” asked Hockin,in his most archdeacon-like manner, “that you came back to the works when you might have been enjoying a holiday?”
“Certainly,” replied the witness.
“Why did you do that?” asked Hockin, with a touch of triumph in his voice as if there was no possible explanation.
The reply was only too obviously truthful.
“What should I do? I have nowhere to go. I’m teetotal now.”
It requires quite a long and subtle study of the Lancashire witness to really understand when he is condescending to incivility, though many of his phrases might too hastily be interpreted against his sense of good manners. An excellent old brewery collector was trying to recover a lost barrel, and was quite unable to show me documentary evidence of its residence in the defendant’s house. I was cross-examining him about it, and could get no satisfaction.
“When was the beer sold?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Was it several years ago?”
“Nay, but I don’t know.”
“But I must know the date,” I replied sternly.
He folded his hands in despair at my unreasonable obstinacy and sighed deeply, and speaking with slow emphasis said: “Then all I can say is that you’ll have to go down to the brewery.”
I shall not easily forget the entire change of scene caused in a small County Court drama by a veryLancashire witness. The plaintiff was a south-country Chemist’s assistant, most dapper and polite—a very Osric of the pharmaceutical world. His employer had dismissed him for drunkenness. On the view it was hard to believe that the plaintiff had vigour enough for any such delinquency, but his testimony, given in a mincing voice, was a little suspicious.
“I assure you, sir, that I have the misfortune to suffer from asthma, and my doctor has ordered me to take whisky on these foggy mornings, that are so severe in this climate. I am a very temperate man. I need hardly say, sir, a very temperate man. A lady came in for a syphon, and I gave her one. She thought it was soda, and it was lemonade. It was entirely the lady’s error, and that seems to have annoyed the lady. It does annoy ladies, and she seems to have got the impression—of course, an entirely mistaken impression—that I was not, in fact—sober. Your Honour will know what I mean; but, of course, a mistake, a sad mistake, and the lady unfortunately sent word to my master, and he came down and was very violent, and threw me out of the shop.”
The defendant said the man was drunk, and proceeded to call witnesses. The lady was ineffective, but a working man called on subpœna and a very unwilling witness put the matter beyond doubt. We had no advocates, so I told him to tell his story in his own words.
“I dunno reely much aboot it,” he said, “I worpassing shop an’ ’ad a bit o’ cough mysen, so I went in for twopennoths o’ balsam. An’ when I got in t’ shop I saw yon mon”—pointing to plaintiff—“leaning up agin them variagated decorated drawers like they ’ave in them shops, an’ I says to mysen, I says, ‘’Enery, you ain’t tired o’ your life yet, are you, ’Enery?’ An’ with that I cooms out wi’out ony balsam—an’ that’s all I know.”
The plaintiff, who had little dramatic instinct, insisted on cross-examining as to whether the witness was prepared to swear he was drunk, but the witness replied with true Lancashire charity and caution, “I ’oped as ’ow you was drunk, but, in coorse, you might ’a’ been taking poison.”
A very few months after I was made judge I got a homely rebuke from a suitor that led to an interesting reform in my conduct of affairs. A man was telling me in moving for a new trial that he had got in the County Court on the day of the trial too late for the hearing. I asked him why he had not waited until the end of the day and made an application to me.
“So I did,” he said, “but as soon as last case was over you jumped up and bolted through yon door like a rabbit.”
After that I made more dignified exits, and I also arranged a practice of waiting and talking to everyone who was left over and had anything to ask, so I am grateful to my critic. I used to have many strange applications for advice, some quite beyond my power of satisfying. For instance, a working man came to me once with the most perplexing problem. “Iwant to know,” he asked, “whether I must call my little girl Ferleatta?” I spell it phonetically, as he could not help me in the spelling, but I fancy the real name may have been Violetta.
“What has happened?” I asked.
“Two young women as visited the missis during ’er confinement coom one neet as we were at tea. They takes the baby down to parish church and they brings it back ‘Ferleatta,’ an’ I wants to know what are my rights.”
I counselled consultations of a kindly nature with the young ladies, foreseeing litigation of a complicated and painful ecclesiastical nature.
Another poor fellow told me his adventures when I was sitting as Recorder in the Minshull Street Courts, and he was summoned as a witness. “First I went down to the County Court an’ they tells me to coom up here, an’ I gets into the Police Court and an officer tells me to cross the bridge, an’ I lost my way an’ got into the Coroner’s Court, and they sent me out o’ that and unfortunately I got among the solicitors, and they told me to go into the hall and wait till my name wor called—which it never wor called.”
I forgave him all the trouble he had caused for sake of the word “unfortunately.”
I am very sorry for a man who gets to the wrong court; the summons is generally clear enough for the ordinary citizen, but to the less literate of the community it seems often a difficult problem.
If one had the faculty of painting genre pictures of “Our Street” in Hulme or Ancoats the CountyCourt is the place to find the incidents. A good lady, a little, short, fussy woman, was describing to me how she got a plumber’s job done in her house. I could see the picture.
“Landlord tells me ’e couldn’t get Thomas to do it, ‘and,’ says ’e, ‘if you can I give you luck.’ I went to Thomas’s missus, an’ I says, ‘Where is ’e?’ She says to me, ‘If you don’t find ’im in the beer’ouse you won’t find ’im at all.’ With that I went to the beer’ouse an’ I got ’im out, and I takes ’im up to the ’ouse. ’E wasn’t for coming, but I sauced ’im all the way down Pimblott Street, an’ ’e kept telling me whot ’e’d do if I was ’is wife.”
Here is another recollection of a graphic story told by a woman witness. If unreliable at times, the evidence of women is generally full of good advocacy. This good wife gave me a very dramatic account of her husband’s dealing with a Jew jeweller. The tallyman tempts women with drapery and men with jewellery. The wife turned up to defend the case, very wisely leaving her husband at home. The tallyman produced an order form with a cross on it alleged to be made by the absent husband. I asked the woman if her husband was a scholar. “No,” she said, “David wasn’t brought up to scholarship; he was brought up to hard work.” Then she told her story. “Yon man,” she said, pointing to the plaintiff, “his name is Isaacs, and he’s by way of being a Scotchman, and I’ve had a shawl off him. Many a time he’s tried to sell David a watch, and I told him I wouldn’t have it. Well, he comes in Saturdayafternoon for a talk with a box of joollery. I remember the day ’cause he tripped over our door-mat and nearly spilt hisself, and he says to me, ‘I’ll have to be selling you a new door-mat, missus,’ and I says to him, ‘Our door-mat’s plenty good enough for the folks that comes across it.’ With that he laughed and gave me a shilling to get a quart at M‘Ginnis’s vaults, and when I comes back they was handling the joollery, and knowing how soft my husband is about joollery I made him put it back in the box afore I gave him the beer, and I can swear there was no watch there then. We all talked a bit and supped the ale, and then he and David went out. It was very late when David came home, and he came home drunk with a cigar in his mouth, but he never had no watch on him ’cause I put him to bed myself.”
The case was adjourned for David to appear, but I never saw David, and I dare say the affair was amicably settled over another quart from M‘Ginnis’s vaults.
Some of the most amusing evidence is given in running-down cases. No Lancashire witness ever admitted that he did not understand a plan, but it is generally waste of time to trouble him with one. Counsel, however, will do it, and I was delighted once when counsel’s own witness marked with a cross the scene of a collision between a tramcar and a milk float in the chancel of the parish church.
They are very dogmatic, too, about the miles per hour a vehicle is travelling, a fact that few can measure accurately. The following dialoguebetween counsel and witness shows how worried and confused a witness may get about comparative pace, but his attempted recovery from the dilemma is at least ingenious.
“Where were you, and what were you doing?” asked counsel.
“I was walking along the Eccles Road towards Eccles at about four miles an hour.”
“What pace was the trap going?”
“Very slow indeed,” replied witness. “Say about three miles an hour.”
“Ha!” cried counsel, triumphantly; “but the trap overtook and passed you—you forget that.”
“I do not forget. It’s you that forget,” replied the witness with indignant assurance. “The trap was trotting; I was walking.”
And it is because the bulk of the people who come before the Court are so bewildered by the forms and ceremonies of litigation, and so rarely do themselves justice in the examination and cross-examinations as at present conducted, that I want to see all this replaced for small affairs by some simpler and more domestic procedure. We should lose some of the comedy, no doubt, if we had our Courts of Conciliation and the judge were to try to make peace instead of giving a legal verdict in matters where there is very little right and plenty of wrong on both sides, but we should gain greatly in utility. And if anyone is in doubt whether there is room for such a court, let him go down to Quay Street for himself and verify these quotations.