Counsel: “Oh, yes, Martha Ann Snooks; and you are the wife of Thomas Snooks, the bookmaker.”
Witness (very indignant): “Nothing of the sort.”
Counsel: “I beg your pardon—my mistake—bootmaker.”
Witness: “And has been this thirty year——”
Counsel: “And you live at 139 Doncaster Street, Upper Tulse Hill.”
Witness: “We did live there; we’ve moved now, sir.”
Counsel: “What is your present address?”
etc., etc., ad lib.
Consider for a moment, if you will, the horrid waste of all this irrelevance standing between the Court and Mrs. Snooks’s version of what she saw of an accident in High Street, Kensington, and reducing her to a state of nervous irritation antipathetic to accurate testimony.
How much more business-like was the method of the eighteenth century! In a State trial in the days of Queen Anne the name of the lady is announced in the oath, and then counsel approaches her, as Sir Frank Lockwood might have done: “Pray, madam, will you be pleased to acquaint my lord and the jury what you know concerning the matter, and what passed between your brother Mr. Colepepper and Mr. Denew at his first coming to him?”