MR. JUSTICE DAT RETIRES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR. JUSTICE DAT RETIRES.

REMINISCENCES OF THE GREAT FLOGGING JUDGE. Mr. Justice Day, whose long-expected retirement seems about to become an accomplished fact, is without, doubt one of the most sticking personalities in the modern history of the Bench. His slow, caustic manner, and the elaborate severity of his decisions, have for a whole generation been familiar to the legal profession and the public. lie, as most people know, was bitterly hard in cases of assault with violence, and criminals convicted of this offence met with scant consideration at his hands.

"The jury," he would say in his sottovoce guttural tone," "has' recommended you to mercy, and in consequence I shall not sentence you to a long term of imprisonment." Here it behoved the criminal to smile approvingly at a prospect of lenient treatment. " I consider yours a uase," the judge would continue, in which the ratepayers' money would he expended to no good purpose, and so I shall not send you to penal servitude." The prisoner by this time would be jubilant.

" But I shall sentence you to twelve months 7 ..lani labour, with twenty-five strokes with the cat when you go in and another twenty-live when you come out.'' Then the criminal, in appalled astonishment, would collapse, but the sentence would prove effective in most oases. " .Show your back to your dissolute friends when you come out," the judge would add. Mr. Justice Day's bark was frequently worse than his bite. He had •■<. habit when on circuit of visiting prisoners in the cells, while they were awaiting removal to prison, in order tr. tell them their sentence had been reducd. On one occasion one of the objects of his compassion saluted him by throwing a pair of boots at his head. Sir John Charles Day has Dutch blood in him, his mother having been a daughter of Jan Caspar Hartsinck : and the judge himself was born at the Hague in 1826. He was educated abroad, and entered the Middle Temple in 1845. His career at the But, commencing four years later, was uniformly successful.

For many years he worked as a. busy junior, while after he took "silk" in 1872 lie found that he had as much work as he could do. He was elevated to the Bench in 1882. Sir John Day, who has been twice marriedj is a, Roman. .Catholic