"Gentlemen, it appears to be impossible that the prisoner can have committed this crime. A mother guilty of such conduct to her own child? Why, it is repugnant to our better feelings"; and then being carried away by his own eloquence, he proceeded: "Gentlemen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, suckle their young, and——"
But at this point the learned judge interrupted him, and said:
"Mr. F——, if you establish the latter part of your proposition, your client will be acquitted to a certainty."
And to the same authority we are indebted for a judge's gentle but sarcastic reproof of a prosing counsel. In an action for false imprisonment, heard before Mr. Justice Wightman, Ribton was addressing the jury at great length, repeating himself constantly, and never giving the slightest sign of winding up. When he had been pounding away for several hours, the good old judge interposed, and said: "Mr. Ribton, you've said that before."—"Have I, my lord?" said Ribton; "I'm very sorry. I quite forgot it."—"Don't apologise, Mr. Ribton," was the answer. "I forgive you; for it was a very long time ago."
A very old story is told of a highwayman who sent for a solicitor and inquired what steps were necessary to be taken to have his trial deferred. The solicitor answered that he would require to get a doctor's affidavit of his illness. This was accordingly done in the following manner: "The deponent verily believes that if the said —— is obliged to take his trial at the ensuing sessions, he will be in imminent danger of his life."—"I verily believe so too," replied the judge, and the trial proceeded immediately.
Some judges profess ignorance of slang terms used in evidence, and seek explanation from counsel. Lord Coleridge in the following story had his inquiry not only answered but illustrated. A witness was describing an animated conversation between the pursuer and defendant in a case and said: "Then the defendant turned and said, 'If 'e didn't 'owld 'is noise 'ed knock 'im off 'is peark.'"—"Peark? Mr. Shee, what is meant by peark?" asked the Lord Chief Justice. "Oh, peark, my lord, is any position when a man elevates himself above his fellows—for instance, a bench, my lord."
Another story illustrating this alleged ignorance of every-day terms used by the masses comes from the Scottish Court of Session. In this instance the explanation was volunteered by the witness who used the term. One of the counsel in the case was Mr. (now Lord) Dewar, who was cross-examining the witness on a certain incident, and drew from him the statement that he (the witness) had just had a "nip." "A nip," said the judge; "what is a nip?"—"Only a small Dewar, my lord," explained the witness.
Lord Russell of Killowen, himself a Lord Chief Justice, tells some amusing stories of Lord Coleridge in his interesting reminiscences of that great judge in the North American Review. When at the Bar he was counsel in a remarkable case—Saurin against Starr. The pursuer, an Irish lady, sued the Superior of a religious order at Hull for expulsion without reasonable cause. Mr. Coleridge cross-examined a Mrs. Kennedy, one of the superintendents of the convent, who had mentioned in her evidence, among other peccadilloes of the pursuer, that she had been found in the pantry eating strawberries, when she should have been attending some class duties.
Mr. Coleridge: "Eating strawberries, really!"