A FAMOUS JUDGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 January 1930, Page 10

A FAMOUS JUDGE

HIS WIT AND HUMOUR. When in 1896 Mr Darling Q.C., was appointed Commissioner of Assize a storm of protest burst, and swelled into a veritable tornado a year later when he was elevated to the Bench. He was then only forty-seven, and critics alleged that neither his practice at the Bar nor his political standing warranted such promotion. The Press screamed and round-robins were openly circulated in the Temple against this “political jobbery. Darling ' himself remained unperturbed by all this, pother. It is said that when Augustine Birrell playfully criticised his sensational elevation, Darling retorted: “Well, I can read and write; what more do you want?” Since then Lord Darling has become a national institution. If his name is primarily associated in the popular mind with “Laughter in Court,” that does not alter the fact that he was ever a shrewd, able and humane judge. How one wishes that the author of such sparkling gems as Scintillae juris,” and “Meditations in a Tearoom” had given us his own autobiography, says u Jolm ©’London Wook* ?y.” Born in Essex in 1850, Charles John Darling was such a feeble child that his parents despaired of his life. Too delicate for early schooling, he also missed the University, and, after being articled to a Birmingham solicitor, was called to the Bar when twenty-four. , Flirting with journalism and'playing with politics, he published his Meditations in a Tea-room,” under the pseudonym “M.P.” eight years before he actually entered Parliament —a characteristic, and prophetic, gesture ! His annus mirablis was the year 1885, when he married, took silk, and fought his first election, but it was not until 1891 that he was returned to Parliament with the nickname ‘ ‘Deptford s Little Darling.” His journalism was anonymous. One writer records: —

Years ago Sir Charles spent many years in an untidy office in Northumberland Street. He may remember the two chairs, the single ink-pot, and the scratching of his companion’s pen. There were no tidy brief-boxes, no tidy clerks, in that office; but untidy printers’ boys waited at the door for copy. And the copy produced by Mr Darling, Q.C., was as good as any man’s. He had fallen in with a brilliant but insufficient staff; Gust was just setting the Pall Mall into its stride, and ofte na “leader” needed writing when there was no leaderwriter on the premises. Mr Darling obliged!

A PAINTING IN COURT. Mr Justice Darling’s Court became the Mecca of sensation-sekers of all classes. He was good “copy.” His wit was keen, yet kindly. The Charleswirth, Sievier Pemberton-Billing, ana “Mr A” cases all fell to his lot (not undesired, Gossip alleged!), but none gave him more scope for wit than the “Great Romney Picture Case” m 1917, when a New Yorker sued a famous firm of art deale’rs, the issue being whether or not a certain picture was that of Airs Siddons and her sister painted by Romney. -The picture stood on an easel beside the judge, who contrived during this seven-day trial to quote Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Disraeli, Dickens, Goldsmith, Tennyson, and Locker-Lampson —all on the spur of the moment. Glowing testimony of his literary knowledge I It is, of course, as a criminal judge, that Darling’s fame is writ largest, writ in figures of Steinie Morrison, Armstrong, Emma Byron, who stabbed her stockbroker-lover in Lombard Street Post Office, and “Chicago May (recently dead), who smiled sweetly at him when he sentenced her to fifteen years’ imprisonment for shooting at Eddie Guerin, whom she had betrayed to the police after his escape from Devil’s Island.

Surely his most dramatic case was that of Crippen, which possessed all the ingredients of successful melodrama. Crippen, an American doctor, arrived in London in 1900 as manager of a patent medicine business. His wife, a Pole, possessed a voice of doubtful quality which CrippSn had helped her to have trained. Hopes of grand opej’a fading, she took the name of Belle Elmore and announced her intention of appearing at music halls. But her talents were woefully poor. Not one engagement did she get; yet, although having no possible claim to the description of music hall artist, she became treasurer of the Music-Hall Ladies’ Guild —a step that was one day to place the rope round Crippen’s neck. Denied fame, Belle Elmdre was determined at least to see life. She dressed, lived, and entertained extravagantly, with the result that the impoverished doctor soon found himself rising early to do the morning housework himself before going to business. T Then he fell in live with Ethel Le Neve —and bought some deadly poison. His neighbours accepted his explanation that his wife had gone abroad and died. But her friends of the MusicHall Guild were less credulous. Their awkward questions and gossip brought Inspector Dew on the scene. When portions of a headless body were found beneath the cellar floor, Crippen and Ethel Le Neve (disguised as a boy) were crossing the Atlantic. The frustration of their attempt to escape was the first practical demonstration of the value of wireless. Such sensational cases as Lord Darliim did not try at first instance usually came before him on appeal, amongst them those of Seddon, Casement, and Smith, “the Brides m the Bath’’ murderer. . . Once in the Court of Criminal AppCcll Z . . Counsel was pleading quite seriously that the appellant was a person of good character against whom nothing but murder had been alleged. “Unfortunately,” replied his lordship, “I have had to sentence to death too many persons who bore the highest character to enable me to give that argument more than its due weight, ’