OLD BAILEY'S ANCIENT HISTORY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28234, 23 March 1957, Page 6

OLD BAILEY'S ANCIENT HISTORY

World's Most Famous Criminal Court

CENTURIES-OLD RECORD OF DRAMATIC TRIALS

IBy MAX CAULFIELD, in London] /"OFFICIALLY, the name is the New Sessions House, but commonly it is called the Old Bailey: a name famous—and notorious—the world over. For the dramas played out in the courts are those that quickly go into black legend. There is no ominous look about the building—except on reflection. It sits solidly and pretentiously on the north-western slope of that hill which also supports St. Paul’s. It stands 212 feet high, is built of Portland stone, white and pristine, and crowning it is a twelve-foot Justice robed in gold.

She. of all Justices in the world, wears no blindfold. In this place, said the Corporation of London when they raised her 50 years ago, justice will not be blind. The court which sits at the Old Bailey is the Central Criminal Court for the City and County of London, the county of Middlesex, and portions of Kent, Surrey and Essex. But a prisoner can be tried at the Old Bailey even if he lives outside this area if a local trial is likely to prejudice the verdict, or if the date of the local Assizes is too far ahead. The Bailey—foreshortened so by the barristers, reporters, detectives and old lags who spend half their lives there—has known some of the worst men who have ever lived. It seems strange to associate them with a place whose interior is so massively and grandly garnished. Inside the main entrance door you are met with overwhelming slabs of Greek and Sicilian marble. Floors and walls all echo frostily as you walk. Thick, monolithic marble pillars support the great ceilings—the smaller weighing four tons, the larger eight. A Jury Immortalised To the left of the main entrance hangs a marble tablet. American visitors stare at it with reverence; so should we, for it immortalises that jury which established the right of all juries to give a verdict according to its convictions. “Near this site William Penn and William Mead were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Grace Church street This tablet commemorates the courage and endurance of the Jury, Thos Vere. Edward Bushell and 10 others who refused to give a verdict against them although locked up without food for two nights and fined for their final verdict of Not Guilty.” Penn was the Quaker who founded the State of Pennsylvania.

Then there are Roman arches and panels idealistically painted to represent Mosaic, Roman and English law. The 67-foot high inner dome you see from the outside sits on this like one balloon on top of another —is lit by Gerald Moira’s blazing murals on Truth, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Labour. Prisoners are not led in through the main doorway, under the graven eye of the Recording Angel. Instead, they are whisked to the second entrance. In all there are 2ve entrances: (1) For the Lord Mayor of London and Her Majesty’s Judges. (2). For prisoners, (3) main entrance—for officials and witnesses, (4) for barristers—who are taken up by lift to their robing chambers and bar mess. (5) for the public galleries. All these entrances lead to separate parts of the building, each of which can be sealed off from the rest. The Old Bailey is, in fact, five buildings in one. Significance of Cell 23 Prisoners are brought into the courtyard next to the Lord Mayor’s entrance; from there they are taken into the cell block with its red glazed bricks and white tiles, below ground level. If they are charged with murder—and are males—they are put into Cell 23, which is roughly six by six and contains a long wooden bench and a round table upon which a meal is served at the luncheon recess. In contrast to Cell 23, the others are narrow and have only single desks and benches. All furniture is clamped to the floor. Most of the cells are not needed these days; prisoners are kept here only while the justices are actually sitting above. Each night they are taken back to the prison where they came from—Brixton, Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubs.

The man accused of murder—as were Crippen, Seddon, Viosin, Christie, Heath—or of a treasonable activity—as were William Joyce or Fuchs, almost always ascends into Court No. 1. It is this courtroom men think of when they talk of Old Bailey. It is a dull, gloomy room, panelled in dark English oak, sinister. Four shallow arches, squared, span the ceiling which is a sheet of glass.

As you stand in the modern dock, you face the most impressive Bench in the Kingdom. Five stern men stare back at you—in the centre sits the Lord Mayor. On his right, sits the Judge, who will try you. and on his right sits his clerk. On the Lord Mayor’s left sits the Sheriff of London and on his left, an Aiderman of London.

Below the Royal Arms hangs a sheathed sword, cast in the sixteenth century. It hangs there when the Lord Mayor is absent to remind everyone that he is the Chief Magistrate of the City, taking precedence over even the Queen’s Judge. A High Court judge normally takes the important cases in Court No. 1. The Recorder of London, Sir Gerald Dodson (at £4500 he is the highest paid Recorder—he is also the only one entitled to wear the scarlet of a full judge) normally takes Court 2. Mr Anthony Hawke, the Common Sergeant, Judge Carl Aarvold and Judge John Maude (son of Cyril Maude the actor) preside in the others. On Site of Old Prison Today’s building rests on the site of that infamous Newgate prison which had its historical birth in a keep in London’s medieval wall. In 1902 it was pulled down. With wry humour the architect, E. W. Mountford, built some of Newgate’s forbidding stones into the lower rustica of the present Old Bailey.

The Old Bailey was built and is maintaned by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of London. Even the jurymen’s lunches come out of the Lord Mayor’s pocket. Should you be asked to dine with the Judge your invitation card will inform you that your host is the Lord Mayor. If he or one of his representatives is not present, the Court cannot sit at all—even if the Lord Chancellor and all the Queen’s Bench of Judges are present. An aiderman must be somewhere within the precincts. He can be sitting beside the judge reading or looking at TV in a back room as long as he is on the premises: only then is the Court properly constituted. Six days a week, twice a day (mornings and afternoons) London aidermen perform this duty.

Old Custom of Flowers The Lord Mayor himself rarely attends except on the two opening days of each session. He, judge, sheriff and aiderman will foregather in the robing room and each will be presented with a nosegay of flowers which they will carry into Court. Officials will already have strewn stweetsmelling herbs in the courtroom. A pleasing enough custom today but a less pleasant reminder that in the old days officials had to be protected against the stench of the prisoners. Sixty-two persons look after the Old Bailey—49, under the Keeper of Old Bailey, Mr Charles Sanders, attend to the administration; 12 serve in the office of the Clerk of the Court. As each session starts, Mr Sanders hands over 35 keys to Crown representatives; gets them back when the session ends. Three times a day one of his men patrols the entire building. turning a key in 25 security locks.

On a big day the main halls of the Bailey (it cost £250,000 to erect the Old Bailey; £500,000 to restore the blitzed north - west wing in 1952) have the look of Waterloo Station at the rush hour. At the Jack Spot hearing more than 500 people, reporters, policemen, gangsters, barristers, officials, vague “witnesses,” anybody with the slightest excuse to be there, milled about. Two hundred people queued from early morning for the 28 seats in the public gallery (which perches next the ceiling much like a choir loft). People will still queue from early morning for the seats in the public gallery. Those who do not get in will just stand and watch the building. They will stand and wait as crowds always have outside the Old Bailey. For here men are put on trial, perhaps for their lives. And where punishment and death are involved—we are all interested.