A LAWYER LOST

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 136, 12 June 1933, Page 7

A LAWYER LOST

BOTTOMLEY'S SKILL

APPEARANCES IN COURT

CROWN'S LONG EFFOBT

During the company-promoting boom j on the London Stock Exchange in the nineties Bottomley made a fortune of over £.1,000,000. Moreover, he was not merely a reckless financial juggler and company promoter, like his colleagues of those days, Whittaker Wright and Ernest Terah Hooley, but a man of remarkable ability, who could have made, a name for himself in other walks of life, says a writer in the " Melbourne Age." In tho Law Courts, where he made comparatively frequent appearances to defend himself against various charges, some of which were launched by the .Director of Public | Prosecutions, he displayed such forensic skill that, although, a layman, he won tho admiration of Bench and Bar. Mr. S. T. Felstead, in his biography of the late Sir Bichard Muir, who appeared as Public Prosecutor in many famous cases, writes: —"Only once in his life did Muir try conclusions with the redoubtable Horatio Bottomley, and on that occasion he learned a lesson which he never forgot to the end of his life. As junior to Mr. Horace Avory, K.C., Muir appeared against Bottomley at the Guildhall in 1908-1009 concerning the affairs of the Joint Stock and Finance Corporation. The actual conduct of that case was 'entrusted to Avory, but upon Muir fell the greater part of the donkey work. It was. he who got together the case for the prosecution, and against anybody else but Horatio Bottomley it would have been. cast jiron. But Bottomley'' then revealed himself as one of the greatest lay lawyers in the land, making it nil the more remarkable why he never accepted the advice given him. years before by Mr. Justice Hawkins, to go to. tho Bar himself. Bottomley never did, for the reason that he would not spend three' years of his life in study; but nevertheless he was just as good as, and possibly better than, any barrister in England on anything pertaining to common or company law. CASE COLLAPSES. "Muir had never had any personal experience of Bottomley prior to this case, and he did not know his man for such a formidable antagonist. Witnesses who were supposed' to be experts on figures collapsed and floundered under Bottomley's fierce and relentless crossexamination in a manner which made it impossible for their testimony to bo believed. Muir vainly tried to stem the- flowing tide by bringing in' his old friend, William Cash, who afterwards became president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Ho proved an admirable witness, but by that time the damage had been done, and the charges were dismissed. Counsel for the prosecution had to ruefully acknowledge that Bottomley had surpassed himself, because it is not often that the defendant in such a serious case escapes being committed for trial." Mr. Edward Marjoribanks in his "Life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall," one of the great figures of the criminal Bar, also pays tribute to Bottomley's forensic skill. "In 1900 ' Marshall Hall first appeared for a man who was to be his client consistently for over twenty years, till the collapse of a certain prosecution for libel at the Old Bailey," wrote Mr. Marjoribanks. "Mr. Horatio Bottomley was sued in 1900 as the guarantor of' a Stock. Exchange account, and even then he was hardly •unknown to the British public. Mr. Justice Kidley took, an instant dislike to him. 'I cannot believe this man's evidence,' he said. Marshall Hall very properly protested. 'There is no reason ■why your lordship should not believo this gentleman just as much as the plaintiff,' he said. Whereupon Mr. Justice Eidley,. the most learned of scholars, but tho most inconsequent of Judges, observed, 'I never heard of this man before in my life.' This for a first in 'Greats' at Oxford was an almost perfect non sequitur, and Bottomley replied in a famous open letter to the Judge, in which he concluded to .the effect that if the letter made him guilty of a 'contempt of Court' that was precisely the attitude from which he regarded Mr. Justice Ridley's Court! At any rate Sir Edward Kidley was the last; of his Majesty's Judges for many a long year to refuse to take judicial notice of Mr. Horatio Bottomley." THE ONE COUNSEL. "Shortly afterwards," continued Mr. Marjoribanks, " Bottomley's paper 'The Sun' was in trouble for its 'lucky spot' competitions. The reader who was fortunate enough to buy a copy containing a certain ' spot' won a money prize. Sir Eichard Muir, for the prosecution, contended that the prizes depended on mere chance, and contained no element of skill, which was, of course, obvious. Bottomley and Marshall Hall now for the first time adopted a plan, of campaign which, was to prove invincible on' many occasions during the succeeding years; the prosecutors were anxious that neither Bottomley, as editor, nor the publishers should slip through their fingers, and proceeded against both. Marshall Hall said, 'There's only oho counsel, in England who'll do you justice in this case' 'Who's he? Let's have his name,' saia Bottomley. 'Yourself,' B aid Marshall Hall. This plan had many advantages. Bottomley appeared in person for himself, and Marshall Hall for tho publisher; the result was that Bottomley enjoyed to the- full the licencfe always allowed to a litigant in person, and at the same time had the advantage of all his great advocate s professional skill and experience. Plaintiffs in libel actions against Bottomley invariably made the same mistake that Muir had made, until a certain young junior named Douglas Hogg, who had seen that deadly team in combination, began issuing writs against the publishers alone, and Bottomley, except as a witness, was muzzled." After many years of effort on tne part of tho British Treasury and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Bottomley was at last placed behind prison bars. In May, 1922, ho was convicted of fraudulent conversion of funds entrusted to him, and was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. At tho time he was member for Hackney South in the House of Commons, to which ho had been elected in 1912, and two months after his conviction, a motion was carried in the House of Commons formally expelling him. GREAT FOLLOWING. Although his frequent appearances in the Law Courts before this catastrophe had tarnished his reputation, he had an immense following outside Parliament as tho champion of the poor and oppressed through the columns of a, weekJT paper, "John Bull," which he founded. And inside ■Parliament, where he was distrusted and disliked by many members, he was nevertheless regarded as one of the best Parliamentary debaters of his generation. Tho late Lord Birkenhead, who as Mr. P. E Smith, sat for years in the House of Commons, before accepting tho^ post of Lord Chancellor in Mr. Lloyd George's" post-war Cabinet, and going to the House of Lords, had a great admiration for Bottomley as a speaker. In discussing the subject of eloquence

in his book, "Law, Life, and Letters," Lord Birkenhead referred to some of the- outstanding Parliamentary speakers of his day, such as Lord Balfour, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Winston Churchill, and continued: — "In many ways I consider Mr. Horatio Bottomley to be one of the most attractive speakers to whom I have ever listened. Ho certainly attained to a higner degree of excellence in three quite different types of speech than any other speaker known to me. His House of Commons stylo was almost ideal. Self-possessed, quiet, irresistibly witty, and distinguished equally by common sense and tolerance, ho made for himself an outstanding position in tho House of Commons. lam assured by good judges that he was, if possible, even more effective when addressing a great audience of many thousands, and as as forensic speaker I can say with experience that his force, his persuasiveness, and the perfection of his form were unrivalled. THE BEST SPEECH. "Many men can speak well in Law Courts who speak well nowhere else; some can speak well in the Law Courts and in the House of Commons; some, again, in the Law Courts and on the platform. I have never met anyone who reached so high a degree of excellence in all three methods of speech. Ho united a brilliant native humour to a broad range of treatment, nerves of eteol, an original outlook upon affairs, and an exact grasp of the detail which hardly ever accompanies other qualities. "The best speech ho over made was, in my opinion, his address to the Bradlaugh Fellowship, from which I quote tho following:—'Tonight wo mourn him, and though many of you—most of you—are resigned to the belief that he is dead and gone for ever and over, still even you and all of us may surely take this comfort to our hearts, that if it should some day prove to be the fact that the almost universal instinct of mankind is right, and that somewhere beyond what we call death there be another life, a life where the great and the good receive their reward—then if in that world there count for righteousness, true nobility of character on earth, inviolability of honesty, purity of purpose, and inflexibility of courage, there amongst the highest and most honoured, amongst tho noblest, will be found the majestic soul of bravo Charles Bradlaugh.' " Lord Birkenhead's tribute concluded with the words: —"THe tragedy of Mr. Bottomley's later career must not allow j us to forget that he was a man of infinite wit, infinite variety, and one cap-1 able at times of a vein of elevated eloquence."