Sober As A Judge by Henry Cecil

Author:Henry Cecil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper and Brothers

Chapter Twelve

THE CASE OF THE TWO USHERS

Whether it was meeting Toni again or mere coincidence, the Lord Chief Justice again appeared in Roger's dreams that night, and this time for much longer.

"I was telling you," the Chief said, "that I always use a pin myself. I remember once, I was sitting in the Court of Criminal Appeal when the same thing happened to all of us. It caused quite a sensation. There were five of us at the time. There'd been a disagreement on the first hearing, and I'd ordered a rehearing with a court of five. Well, counsel for the appellant, a very young man who required encouragement (you know how they get it in our court), opened the appeal by saying rather tentatively that he had a rather unusual application to make.

" 'Don't let that worry you, Mr. Crape,' I said in my bluff, hearty manner. 'We like new suggestions in this court. Helps to keep us on our toes, stops us becoming too hidebound. Let's hear your unusual application.' And the next thing we knew was that we each of us had a girl on his knee. Naturally, as I had encouraged the young man, I did not want to rebuff him too hastily. It wouldn't have been fair. So I contented myself with saying:

" 'Exactly what is this in aid of, Mr. Crape?'

" 'Your Lordships,' said Mr. Crape.

"I waited a moment or two but, as he remained silent, I said: "Yes—Mr. Crape, go on.'

" 'Go on yourself,' said the young lady on my knee.

" 'Silence,' said the usher.

"Now, that raised a nice point which, so far as I know, has never been decided in any of the books. It has been plainly laid down that an usher may not silence the judge, not even if he goes on far too long or makes a series of incredibly bad jokes. That was decided as long ago as The Queen against Willgo and Blanket.

"In that case an usher whose son was at the Bar and was being prevented from arguing a case by the constant interruptions of the judge pretended to see someone in the gallery creating a disturbance whenever the judge intervened. He did this so often that eventually the judge had to send for another usher to keep the first usher quiet. But unfortunately the new usher was an uncle by marriage of the young barrister, and he, too, began to see disturbances at the back of the gallery. So, according to the report:

"The Judge: But, really, Mr. Spink, that argument has been raised—

"1st Usher: Silence in Court.

"The Judge: Be quiet.

"2nd Usher: Silence.

"The Judge: You, too.

"1st Usher: Silence.

"The Judge: This is really too bad.

"2nd Usher: Silence.

"Both ushers were indicted for contempt of court, the matter being too serious to be dealt with summarily. But the difficulty was to obtain an usher at the Central Criminal Court. Although there was no actual trade union of ushers, they all stood together and refused to take part in the proceedings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.