“Ow,” grumbled Cave, as he took his blue pencil and scored it out of his notes. “Remember, gentlemen of the jury, to forget all that. It’s not evidence. Go on, Mr. Aitken.”
A few days after Aitken was dining with the judges, and Cave nodded across the table to him and said, “Lucky we spotted that evidence point at Lancaster, Mr. Aitken.”
I remember, too, in a small libel case the perfect sang-froid with which he transferred the blame of his proceedings on to the shoulders of Lancaster Woodburne, one of our most serious juniors who had something of the south country style. On a hot summer afternoon Woodburne had opened a very unimportant case in a highly impassioned speech, and when he had finished was horrified to find that Cave really was fast asleep. We had often seen him make the attempt, but this was the full offence. The weather and the luncheon hour were accessories before the fact.
“What on earth shall I do?” he muttered to me. I suggested he should call a witness, but Woodburne objected that the judge would not hear his evidence. As I was on the other side this did not seem to me to be very material. The judge’s clerk was out of court, the Associate, well knowing the state of affairs, was busily writing below the bench with
his eyes glued on to his papers. The jury, indeed, were smiling broadly. There was no doubt that it was a painful moment for Lancaster Woodburne. Suddenly a pile of books near my elbow upset on the floor. Cave opened his eyes and shouted angrily at my opponent:
“Now then, Mr. Woodburne, why are you wasting the time of the Court? Are you going to call a witness, or am I to sit here all day doing nothing?”
How different again in manner and manhood was Mr. Justice A. L. Smith. We were all glad to hear that he was coming the circuit. “A. L.,” as he was affectionately called, had a strong, breezy business manner of doing his work that suited Manchester admirably.
Sir Charles Russell once said to a new County Court judge, “Better to be strong and wrong than weak and right.” It is a counsel of perfection to all judges of first instance. “A. L.” understood the idea and acted upon it, and went one better by being seldom wrong. The main reason of his popularity and success as a judge was that he knew his own mind and was always ready to take responsibility promptly.
One of my earliest recollections of “A. L.” was in 1887, when a man named Thomas Leatherbarrow was put in the dock and charged with the murder of a woman. The prisoner had been very violent in the police court, and the chief witness against him was another woman he had tried to kill. He came into the dock, a powerful giant, surrounded by three or four warders. He lurched forward to the rails and
gazed wildly round the court like a savage animal looking for prey.