What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

Honourable James Bryce, who was then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and told him that if he wished to appoint me as judge of the County Court, I was at his disposal. The only person I mentioned it to was my old friend Byrne, because I knew he was making application himself. The Whitsuntide holidays came along, and we went to Seascale, in Cumberland, and I heard nothing about the appointment for more than a week. One Monday morning we were having breakfast at our hotel when my friend Charles Hughes, who was staying in the village, came in flourishing a morning paper, and saying, with mock reverence, “Good morning, your Honour.” When we opened our letters there was a kind note from Mr. Bryce, appointing me to the judgeship. It had reached Manchester on Saturday, but Seascale in those days had no Sunday post. That was, I believe, very nearly Mr. Bryce’s last official act as Chancellor of the Duchy. As Louis Aitken—​that genial companion who disguised his wit and learning in an obtrusive Lancashire accent and a downright utterance of homely truths—​declared the first time he met me in Manchester: “Another appointment of that kind would have ruined any Government.” So they took Mr. Bryce away from the Duchy and made him President of the Board of Trade.

I cannot say that I altogether enjoyed the change during the first twelve months of my judgeship. In the first place, I had a serious and not unexpected breakdown in health, and, secondly, I had the great

misfortune to lose Mr. Registrar Lister, whose long experience of the Court and its working was invaluable. I found, too, that judicial work is a very lonely business. From the moment of entering the side door in Byrom Street to the time one got out again one became an unpleasant official person. People “addressed” you instead of talking to you, and with unblushing sycophancy pretended that they believed you to possess a cyclopædic knowledge of the law. How many times have I been told that legal cases were “within your Honour’s recollection,” or “your Honour will no doubt be thinking of the case of ‘Jones .v Smith’,” when counsel were well aware that it was long odds against the Court having in mind any case whatever.

There are, of course, many advantages about a “peark” like a County Court, but the main difference between it and my former work at the Bar was that one was an unfriendly, solitary job, whilst the whole spirit of the other was genial and sociable. However, I made one rule that was a great joy to me. It became a penal offence to send any paper, book, or document of, or connected with, the Court to my house. At last I was able to keep my work outside my home, and when I did get out of my cage and turn my head up Peter Street, I at least knew I was a free man until to-morrow morning. But if judicial work tends to make one morose, the good-fellowship that abounds in Manchester more than corrected the tendency. I have heard judges say that it is a mistake to live in the district in which

they work, but I confess I do not agree. During my seventeen years in Manchester I went about in clubs and to social gatherings of every kind, and I never remember being spoken to about a case or heard a case discussed in my presence. The sense and courtesy of all classes in Manchester made life very pleasant when working hours were over.

One thoughtless request I do remember, which had an amusing sequel. A friend of mine coming down in the train—​we will call him Robinson—​shouted across the carriage that he was summoned for to-morrow as a juryman, and as it was his mail day he wanted to be let off. I at once reprimanded him, and told him he would certainly be fined five pounds if he stayed away. The next day I called for the jury list and found “Robinson” at the bottom of the column. Taking a pencil I transferred him to the top, and when the list was called “John Robinson” came first, and I made him a most formal bow as the policeman led him into the box. As luck would have it, the case he was on lasted until 7 o’clock at night, so his mail day had to go on without him. The next morning in the train I explained to him the disadvantages of asking favours of high-souled and upright judges, and he agreed that it was not a wise thing to do. But he consoled himself, he said, in two ways: “I had a very entertaining day, and, being away from the office, I saved several hundred pounds by not buying on what turned out to be a falling market.”

After the first few years we never had any jury

cases, and for myself I think juries in the County Court are generally a mistake. There is too little time, and too many cases to try in the time, to deal with a jury case at proper length. I do not think I can fairly claim to be a great judge, but I do flatter myself that I am an uncommon common jury. And from a County Court point of view that is an asset. It requires some dramatic instinct to take by intuition the same view of facts that eight tradesmen would take if they had heard the same evidence. To approach a subject full of a prejudice you have not got, but which, as a jury, you ought to have, and gradually by listening to your own judicial remonstrances to lay down the cherished prejudice you never really had, and still to let a little of it appear in the final sum you award—​that, I take it, is an attitude of mind not to be achieved without serious study. I think it may have been because I had more sympathy with the facts of life than with the legal aspect of affairs that Louis Aitken used to say in my praise, “that a common judge was quite as good a tribunal as a common jury.”

The work of the Manchester County Court was divided into days for the poor people’s cases and days for the heavier work, which were printed in black and red on the calendars. This convenient system is at last finding its way into other places. I took a great deal of interest in the black-letter days, as they were called, for the smaller work, though trifling in amount, was often not trifling in the proportion of the amount to the weekly wage of the

litigants. If I have learned any lesson in the many days I have spent listening to the short and simple annals of the back street, it is that the law of imprisonment for debt bears very harshly on the working class. In season and out of season I have preached the injustice and inequality of the law in this matter, and we have had commissions and inquiries sufficient to reorganise the whole legal system of the State, but out of this groaning mountain not so much as a statutory mouse has yet proceeded. I should like to be still on my “peark” when the list of the day is called over without a single judgment summons in it.