If, however, you know no solicitors and belong to no community specially interested in your welfare, and have no money, the only way is to show yourself at quarter sessions in the hope that you may be discovered by some enterprising solicitor.
The quarter sessions of the city of Manchester, holden at Minshull Street, are run by the city authorities. There is a list of the members of the Bar present, and as counsel have the sole right of audience, each prisoner has to be prosecuted by counsel, and the minor cases are “souped” or given out in rotation among the junior bar. After this ceremony was over those of the juniors who had drawn blanks made off to lunch at their clubs, and were seen no more.
I found it sufficiently entertaining to sit in court and listen to Blair and Shee, and Byrne and McKeand, defending prisoners, and my first glimpses of Manchester clubs were so pleasant that I deliberately did not join any for some time, so that I should not be tempted to be away from chambers in working hours. There were generally two courts
at the Manchester Sessions, and it was not long before I was asked by some of my seniors to hold their briefs in one or another.
At that time our recorder was Henry Wyndham West, Q.C. Manchester and West had very little in common. He was a typical Whig aristocrat, born and bred in London, impartial, honest, and fearless in his administration of the law, but apparently wanting in sympathy for, and certainly lacking in knowledge of, the working class in the north of England. It is said that in 1865, when he was appointed to the Recordership, he startled a Manchester jury by some strange comments on the evidence as to the time of a theft. “Then, gentlemen, we are told that this happened at the dinner-hour. I think learned counsel for the Crown should have asked the witness to state the time more definitely, for, as we all know, the dinner-hour may mean any time in the evening between 6.30 and 8.”
West, in his day, had had a great practice in the Yorkshire West Riding Sessions in cases as to the “settlement” of paupers, but these were all dead and gone now, and, except in a few important prosecutions, he did not do much work on circuit. For some reason unknown, he and the late Lord Coleridge did not love one another. Falkner Blair used to tell a story of Lord Coleridge coming on circuit in the early days and asking him about West.
“I never see him at Westminster. What does he
do?” asked Lord Coleridge in his suavest and most silvery tongue.
“He’s Recorder of Manchester,” replied Blair.
“Ah!”