holed out from the edge of the green. The other fellow’s good fortune we remember sneeringly well, but our own—well, it is a common failing, and certainly I am not more free from it than another. But I suppose every one who has had any fortune at all at the Bar could tell some amusing stories of accidents that have helped him to success. Certainly in my short round—I only played nine holes, as it were, for within ten years of my call I was a judge—I cannot grumble at my luck, and some of the early chances which brought me briefs were as unexpected as they were entertaining.
It must have been within a year of my coming to Manchester that I was met by a glad surprise when I went down to the Assize Courts to my usual occupation of sitting in the back row and listening to others do cases in a manner that made me feel really sorry for them, their clients and myself. Wandering along the corridor in a weary and somewhat melancholy way, feeling that I had no real part in this hustling crowd of excited litigants and lawyers that the first day of assizes brings together, I was suddenly handed—a brief. If it had been a writ or a County Court summons or—but it was a brief. And there I was charged with the responsibility of defending a tradesman who, with his servant girl, was indicted for conspiracy to conceal the birth of the latter’s child. The papers were marked “15 and 1. With you Mr. Addison, Q.C.” I had never heard of the solicitor, and he took occasion to let me know that he had never heard of
me, and had had some trouble to find anyone who had. However, there was the brief, a very fine specimen of that rara avis, and I promenaded with it under my arm or left it lying about in prominent places in hopes that it would act as a decoy. Towards the end of the sittings Addison defended the prisoner with great success—I had really nothing to do but look on—and both he and McKeand, who defended the girl, obtained acquittals. The case created some sensation in the local town where the prisoners came from, and I heard that the prisoners and their counsel were burnt in effigy on the evening of the trial.
I never learnt the solution of that mysterious brief until years afterwards. What had happened was this. I had been defending some prisoners for McKeand in the second court at Salford Sessions, one being the case of a man charged with assault on a woman, in which, to my own and other people’s surprise, there was an acquittal. The prisoner in the assize case was on the jury in that case, and when his own turn came, having seen no other counsel defending prisoners than Parry, he came to the conclusion that Parry was essential to his liberty. Nothing that his solicitor could do could alter his determination, so the sensible solicitor obeyed his client’s instructions and with some difficulty discovered Parry, and then in order that his client might have a really good run for his money he gave Addison a leading brief.
One solicitor came to me for elaborate opinions
on difficult points of law, and always marked the brief Dr. Parry. I found out that in a local list of the Bar, my name being next Pankhurst’s at the bottom of the page, the printer had repeated the Dr.—really it is quite as good a way of obtaining a degree as any other—but my practice as a doctor of law ended after six months when a new and correct list was printed.
I had a visit once from a solicitor from Burnley with his client, a bookmaker. They had some talk outside with my clerk and then came in. The bookmaker nodded and said, “That’s him,” and appeared to be very satisfied. His great anxiety about his case, which was a summons for keeping a betting house, is best expressed in his own instructions, which he repeated to me several times. “I ain’t partickler what I pays, but I want yer ter see that at the end of the case there ain’t no going down stairs.”
The county magistrates let him off with a fine of £80. He was a well-known and not unrespected character, and perhaps had met some of the justices in another place. He seemed to think the magistrates pocketed the money, for he took it very philosophically, and said as he crumpled up the receipt for the fine: “After all, it’s quite natural they should try and get a bit of their own back to-day, but I’ll have my turn presently.”
I learned afterwards that the bookmaker was an admirer of my style of advocacy. His solicitor, a broad Lancashire man, told me the story of it.
“He comes to me and says ‘I want that two-year-old I sees at Bury County Court last week.’ What’s his name? I asked. ‘Hanged if I know,’ says he, ‘but he’s a long, lean, lanky beggar, and he puts one foot on the desk and just talks to the judge like ’as if he was his feyther.’ With that I came to Manchester, and I was talking to one of Cobbett’s clerks and I repeats the description, and before the words were out of my mouth he says ‘Parry!’ So we comes round to your chambers, and sure enough he was right.”