JUDGE IN TEARS

Evening Star, Issue 19617, 25 July 1927, Page 7

JUDGE IN TEARS

FA BE WELL AFTER THIRTYTHREE YEARS.

In flic Maidstone County Court a, few weeks ago Judge Parry, smiling, kindly, and shrewd as ever, after conducting tho business of tho day, laid down his pen and looked about the drab court.. He looked at counsels, at solicitors, and at litigants and tho public. Thou tears camo to his eyes, and, in a voice broken by emotion, ho bade farewell after thirty-three years as a judge of tho “ Poor Man’s Court.” Judge Parry was an unlawycrlikc lawyer. He was learned in the law, and was a recognised authority on the Workmen’s Compensation Act, but ho was first, last, and all the time a human being. As ago is reckoned in the legal profession, says a London paper, this handsome, clean-shaven man is but a youngster, being merely in the neighborhood of seventy; but tho reason for his retirement is that his health is not good. Whereby hangs a story. No oilier comity court judge of the present time has so endeared himself to all who knew him or achieved so great a reputation for wit and wisdom as this .judge. Which makes all the stranger the fact that his ill-health today is the result of an attempt made on his life while he was sitting in his own court in Manchester.

Judge Parry had cancelled a bailiff’s license. The man, imagining himself badly used, rushed into court and fired at tho judge. Tho bullet penetrated Judge Parry’s neck, and for a long time lie hovered between life and death. Ho recovered, however, and now the old wound has made his retirement necessary.

Law by no means monopolised all Judge Parry’s talents. If ho had not chosen the legal profession, ho could have won even more fame than ho did as a dramatist, for his plays—‘What tho Butler Saw,’ ‘Tho Captain of the School,’ and ‘ England’.? Elizabeth ’ — placed him in the front rank of contemporary dramatists. His outpu,t however, was small on account of his legal work. Uno day Judge Parry took his little granddaughter to see a court of law at work. As they came away she said: “Oh, grand-dad, 1 think judging is awfully nice work.” It was, as performed by Judge Parry. Ho had a sense of humor that made even the drab atmosphere of tho count.v court iolly, and ho always enjoyed a joke at his ow r n expense. One day he heard a disgruntled litigant say as he left the court. “He is a d——cl fool, but I suppose he did his best.” Ho often told this story against himself.

But“ it is as a wit that Judge Parry is most renowned. His wit is, perhaps, even more pointed and brilliant than that of Lord Darling. He wrote: “How much lies in laughter, the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man,” and " Truth will leak out, «ven in an affidavit,” lie once said. He tells many good stories of the humor of the courts. Judge Parry was called to tho bar in 1885,. and appointed county court judge in 1911. Ho was seventeen years in the Manchester County Court, since when his circuit has included Lambeth, Bromley, Hartford, Gravesend, Maidstone, and Sevenoaks.