Had one the pencil of Sir Thomas Overbury, how pleasant it would be to draw the outline portraits of the worthy characters of my comrades of the Northern Circuit. Looking back on my short sojourn among them, two men seem to stand out as types of the genius of the circuit, Gully and Charley McKeand. Both were ideally honest and full of consideration for their opponents, and it is in these qualities that I think the Northern Circuit is pre-eminent.
But though they shared these good attributes they had little else in common. Charley McKeand was as rough and blustering in his advocacy as Gully was smooth and polished. Gully wounded his victims with a rapier, McKeand with a bludgeon. All advocacy ought to be straightforward, and the bulk of it is. Certainly, the standard of honesty and open dealing on the Northern Circuit is a very high one. But Gully and McKeand were the Quixotes of the Bar, and when a junior like myself had to appear against
either of them he realised what a refreshing thing it is in advocacy to be concerned in a case where, however powerful is the frontal attack, there are to be no ambushes or ambuscades.
Charley McKeand had not anything of the appearance of a leader of the Bar, yet he developed rapidly into a very clever advocate, and would have done big things but for his untimely death. The first impression of him was of a big, jolly, careless Englishman, rather stout and easy-going, fond of sport and sporting companions. But give him a brief, and his attitude towards life changed. He was never a learned lawyer, but he knew the law of evidence well, and would get some junior to “devil” the legal circumstances of any case that had any law in it, and quickly picked up all that was necessary to his purpose. He began his advocate’s career in the right way, by defending prisoners from the dock. If, with a copy of the depositions in front of you and an oft-convicted thief in the dock behind you, the verdict is “Not guilty,” you may know that you are qualifying for an advocate. Charley McKeand did it—not once, but again and again. There was no apparent art in his style, but he thundered out the most absurd suggestions of a hopeless defence with an energy and enthusiasm that often inspired a belief in them in the minds of an inexperienced jury. He soon became the fashion, and no criminal would be without him if he could possibly afford his services.
He was one of the most popular figures in Manchester, and the mob, who always take the side of the unfortunate nobleman in the dock, called him in their good-natured adoration “The People’s Charley.” When he defended a cabman at the police court who had got into some trouble with the authorities over hackney coach bye-laws and defeated the police, the cabmen of St. Anne’s Square cheered him as he drove his phæton down to court with his bull-dog by his side, and held a mass meeting and sent a deputation to his chambers to present him with a handsome gold-mounted malacca.
It was about this time that he was pressed to stand for municipal honours. Certainly no Nonconformist conscience could have stood a chance against “The People’s Charley.” He greatly enjoyed the first invitation he received. A few of the inner circle of the politicians of a certain ward came to visit and ask him to stand as a Conservative candidate at the next municipal election.
“But I heard Mr. X. was going to stand,” said McKeand, naming a very respectable citizen.
“Nay, Mr. McKeand,” said the spokesman, dwelling lovingly on three syllables of his name. “Nay, Mr. McKeand, we don’t want Mr. X., we wants you. Mr. X. ain’t anything to the likes o’ us. You know our ward, Mr. McKeand. It’s full of bookmakers and thieves and rat-catchers—you knows the sort and they knows you—and they’ll vote for you like one man.”
However, McKeand had no ambition for a seat on
the City Council and stuck to his work in court, of which he was really fond.