All through the day the Judge and jury had sat hearing the evidence, but very few of the public had attended. As, however, night came on, and it became known that the Judge purposed sitting till the case was concluded, the Hall was quickly crowded with diggers.
Here were men begrimed with dust and coatless as they had hurried there, men who had removed the signs of their daily toil; the floor of the Hall was thronged so that none could move; on the window-sills stood men clinging to each other for support, and to the very girders of the roof a number of adventurous youths had climbed; a veritable sea of faces met the eye, as one gazed around. On the stage sat the Judge surrounded by the tawdry wings. Some were associated in the spectator’s minds with occasions widely different from the background. A glimmering light was shed by a row of flimsy Chinese lanterns suspended above, and on the Judge’s desk were a couple of glittering dips. In front sat the counsel at a table of rough planks, elevated chair high on liquor cases, and behind them were the prisoners mounted on boxes stamped with the battle-axe trade-mark, and bearing the inscription, Henessey’s XXX. As the night wore on, the excitement grew intense; the feelings of the public were dead against the prisoners, perhaps scarce a score in that vast crowd had a doubt as to their guilt or wished them to escape the murderer’s doom. The addresses of the counsel and the charge of the Judge were listened to in breathless silence, and then the wearied jury retired. Apparently some doubt existed in their minds, for the verdict of Not Guilty was returned.
The present High Court in Kimberley is a lofty and extensive building constructed of brick and stone, but for years after the Mutual Hall had been abandoned as a temple of Justice, the Judge or Judges sat in a wretched, tumble down shanty, which is still occupied by the Special Court for the trial of offences against the Diamond Trade Act.
The Resident Magistrate’s Court was the favorite arena of litigants in the early days, as there under Special Proclamations cases involving £500, when there was an acknowledged debt, and £250 in matters of disputed debt or damages, might be tried in a speedy and summary manner eminently satisfactory to those who abhorred the “law’s delays.” This extensive jurisdiction has since been largely reduced, with the result of vastly increased costs and other serious inconveniences to the honest man, who has unfortunately become entangled in the meshes of the law.
The first Recorder of the High Court of Griqualand West, as I have just said, was Mr. now Sir Jacob Dirk Barry, a scholar and jurist of no mean pretensions, and it is not too much to say that at each critical period of the history of the Fields, as the tent burnings and the rebellion already described, it was largely owing to Judge Barry’s firmness and earnestness in the endeavor to maintain obedience to law and order, that consequences which might have proved disastrous in the extreme were happily avoided. After Mr. Barry left there were several judges and acting judges appointed, until, annexation having taken place, a court of three judges was formed, of which Mr. Justice Buchanan was made President.
Of the first Attorney General, Mr. John Cyprian Thompson, I have but little to say, as ill-health almost from the time of his appointment prevented him from taking an active part in public affairs. To the superstitious it would have seemed as if there was a bar upon the Attorney-Generalship; since annexation the Crown Prosecutorship of Griqualand West, Mr. J. C. Thompson’s successor, Mr. S. G. Sheppard,[[94]] afterwards Judge and at present Administrator of the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, his relations with the other members of the Executive becoming somewhat strained, tendered his resignation. Mr. J. S. Lord, Q. C., who succeeded him, gave up his office in preference to either having to submit to undue interference in the performance of his office or else living in a continual state of “protest;” the next, who was the first Crown Prosecutor, was removed from his post, but hitherto the gentleman at present holding the appointment has maintained his relationship with the Attorney General without friction.
But in no British Colony, I should think, have so many enforced or semi enforced changes taken place among officials as in Griqualand West. In the short space of a decade there were three Resident Magistrates, a Clerk of the Peace, two Commissioners of Police and a Chief of the Detective Department, who were either removed from their respective offices or deemed it advisable to resign.
As my readers may conceive, the Diamond Fields attracted a certain number of barristers, many of whom must have made large sums of money. The fees paid by illicit diamond buyers, when a barrister was engaged for the defence, were, I believe, something enormous. These cases were but a small source of income compared with the long protracted lawsuits that used formerly to arise between various wealthy claim-holders, and subsequently after the claims had been put into companies between these bodies. In the early days there was a court specially established to adjudicate upon claims to unoccupied land situate in Griqualand West, and here several gentlemen of the long robe picked up gold and silver with rapidity. The cases from which the lawyers perhaps derived most emolument was a civil action brought by Isaac Sonnenberg and Edward Eager Hurley against Alfred Ebden, the registered proprietor of the farm on which are situated Kimberley mine and town—and another brought on behalf of the London and South African Exploration Co., Lim., against the government. In the first case Messrs. Sonnenberg and Hurley sought to oust Mr. A. Ebden from his farm on the ground that they had bought a prior and preferent claim, but their enterprise signally failed. In the latter case, the company gained their point and compelled the government to disgorge some portion of the rents and license moneys, which they had improperly received and retained.
Of attorneys there were enough and to spare, and their manner of conducting business, at least in the early days, was decidedly unique. The one grand characteristic that distinguished them was a phenomenal and perennial thirst, and the manful efforts which they made to quench it were worthy of a better cause. Should a clerk omit to dot an “i” or cross a “t,” your attorney would at once propose an adjournment to the nearest canteen while the error was being rectified. Was a case won? So joyful an occasion demanded a copious libation. Was a case lost? A cup of consolation was forthwith quaffed. Was a compromise agreed on? The prospect of renewed amity between the whilom litigants was surely worthy of a foaming bumper.
The “Green Bar”[[95]] was the green room of the Judicial Theatre. I have frequently even known adjournments of the Magistrate’s court for the evident if not the avowed purpose of liquidating some abstruse point of law. There was a vast amount of “bluff,” as it is vulgarly termed, and tall talk on the part of the attorneys in those days. I remember upon one occasion, a leading member of the side bar describing a respectable witness as having come into the court with the Bible in his hands and a lie on his lips, while the passages at arms between the practitioners seemed often acrimonious to a degree; but when the court rose, the feuds were forgotten and the contending parties again sped to the “Green Bar,” which possessed for them an absolutely magnetic attraction.