A FAMOUS JUDGE AND HIS WIT AND HUMOUR

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7125, 24 January 1930, Page 8

A FAMOUS JUDGE AND HIS WIT AND HUMOUR

Quotations In Court

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 then only forty-seven, and crities alleged that neither his practice at tho Bar nor his political standing warranted such promotion. The Press screamed and round-robins were openly circulated in tho Temple against this “political jobbery.” Darling himself remained unperturbed by all this bother. It is said that when Augustine Birrol playfully criticised his sensational elevation Darling retorted: “Well, I can read and write; what more do you want?” Sinco 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 tho fact that he was over a shrewd, able, and humane judge. How one wishes that the author of such sparkling gems as ‘Scintallae Juris’ and ‘Meditations in a Tea Room’ had given us his own autobiography, says ‘John o’ London Weekly.’ Born in Essex in 1850, Charles John Darling was such a feeble child that his parents despaired of his life. Too dclicato 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, ho published his ‘Meditations in a Tea Room’ under tho pseudonym “M.P. ” eight years before he actually entered Parliament —a characteristic and prophetic gesture! His annus mirnblis was tho year 1885, when he married, took the silk, and fought his first election, but it was not until 1891 that he was returned to Parliament with the nicknamo “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 seratchings of his companion’s pea. 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 buit insufficient staff; Oust was just setting tho ‘Pall Mall’ into its stride, and often a ‘leader’ needed writing when there was no leader writer on the premises. Mr Darling obliged!

A Painting in Court. Mr Justice Darling’s Court became the Mecca of sensaton-seekers of all classes. Ho was good ‘copy.’ His wit was keen, yet kindly. The Charleswirth, Sievier, Permerton-Billing, and “Mr A.” cases all fell to his lot (not undesired, Gossin alleged!) but none gave him more scope for wit than the ‘Great Romney Picture Case’ in 1917, when a New Yorker sued a famous firm of art dealers, the issue being whether or not a certain picture was that of Mrs. Siddons and her sister painted by Romney. Tho picturo 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 Lockor-Lampson—-all on the spur of the moment. Glowing testimony of his literary knowledge! It is, of course, as a criminal judge that Darling’s fame is writ largest, writ in figures of Steinio Morrison, Armstrong, Elmma Byron, who stabbed her stockbroker lover in Lombard Street Post Office, and ‘Chicago Mary’ (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 tho police after his escape from Devil’s Island.

Dr. Crippen’s Wife. 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 Crippen had helped her to have trained. Hopes of grand opera failing, she took the name of B'elle Elmore, and announced her intention of appearing at music halls. But hex 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 stop that was one day to place tho rope round Crippen’s neck. B'eflied fame, Belle Elmore was determined to see life, Sko dressed, lived and entertained extravagantly, wit'A the result that the impoverished doctor soon found himself rising early to do the morning housework himself before going .to business.

Then he fell in love with Ethel Le Neve—and bought some deadly poison. His neighbours accepted the explanation that his wife had gone abroad and died. But her friends of the Music Hall Guild wore less credulous. Their awkward questions and gossip brought Inspector Dew on the scene. Arrested, by Wireless. 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 Darling did not try at first instance, usually came before him on appeal, amongst them those of Seddon, Casement, and “The Brides of the Bath” murder. Once in the Court of Criminal Appeal: — Council 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.”