FAMOUS TRIALS RE-TOLD

Waikato Times, Volume 115, Issue 19272, 2 June 1934, Page 11 (Supplement)

FAMOUS TRIALS RE-TOLD

LORD READING’S CAREER : DRAMATIC EPISODES.

(Hamilton Fyfe, A MARCH AFTERNOON was darkening in the Old Bailey twenty-two years ago. In the dock stood a man who had just been found guilty of murder. The wife of this man had been tried with him, and had been acquitted:— At once Seddon turned to his wife in the dock and kissed her. As the Court watched this last salute, it was as if they were spectators of some ghastly tableau between life and death. The awed silence was broken by a moan from Mrs Seddon. “,Tell her she is discharged," said the Judge. And Mrs Seddon, sobbing uncontrolledly, was half led, half lifted out of the dock by wardresses. She resisted as much as her feeble strength would allow, flinging her arms out toward her . husband and giving a terrible cry. But Seddon had paid his tribute to emotion, and was once more the practical man of affairs; he waved her back, and, though hearing her cries, which, growing ever • fainter, still harrowed every other person in Court, he paid no heed. He was not a kind or tender husband. “ He never used to take any notice when I said anything to him; he always had other things to think of,” his wife had said naively in her evidence. But this time he could be excused for concentrating on He was about to Make Such an . Effort to Escape Hanging as had never been attempted before. Mr Derek Walker-Smith does not mention this incident of the famous trial In his book, “ Lord Reading and His Cases." 1,, remember it well, for I was there. Seddon knew, the Judge to be a prominent Freemason. Seddon was a Freemason, too. At the end of a short speech asserting his Innocence he raised his hand and made with It a motion which sent a low murmur running through the Court. The man next to me, a journalist who had a long record in Freemasonry, muttered, "Good Godl" “What did he do?” I askeji, “ He made the High Sign." I could not ask any -more at the moment, for the Judge with tears running down his cheeks (the book does not mention that) was passing sentence. When I tried to get my fellow-reporter to explain further, he refused to say anything. I gathered, however, that the High Sign is the S 0 S among Freemasons. Seddon hoped that if he made this supreme appeal, his life might be spared. Mr Walker-Smith’s account of this murder trial is not so vivid as- that which Edward Majoribanks gave in his record of 'Marshall Hall’s cases. The passage I have quoted shows his manner of writing. -It js usually adequate, but it seldom rises above a. jog-trot, and lie often offers comments or reflections' that suggest extreme simplicity. However, he relates fairly well the stories of the chief trials and actions in which Lord Reading, when lie was Rufus Isaacs, took part, and he analyses with skill the qualities that made the late Lord Chief Justice so successful with juries—and with judges. " He had not the dominating personality of Carson, the soaring eloquence of Marshall Hall.” No, but his manner never grated on juries as Carson's did very frequently, nor did he Embroil Himself with Judges after the manner of Marshall Hall: He had all the quieter attributes of success. Learned in law, quick and resourceful in argument, .penetrative in cross-examination, he possessed in addition a meipory quite out of the ordinary and a capacity to unravel and elucidate the Intricate mysteries of figures that was unrivalled. To these qualities he added a strength, supple and resilient rather than forceful and assertive, and an unvarying self-disci.plme. . . . With Rufus Isaacs it was In the Courts as in his conduct of life: 'lie did not challenge; he charmed. I remember that during the Seddon case there was some talk among lawyers about his pressing the pnsonei too hard, showing more eagerness to get a^exnlm m on prosecuting counsel are supposed to show. The explanation was that he had no experience of murder trials and that his usual manner was. so gentle as to make anj slight deviation from it noticeable. He was courteous 1 cj the common even in Ibis instance, lie addressed the pusoner always as “ Mr Seddon. > That kind of tact went a long way with juries. Perhaps it is not, quite fair to call if tact. 11. is, I suspect, an integral part of the man’s character, lie is by nature, •kindly, agreeable. His suave tone when lie crossexamined, his politeness to hostile witnesses, his lucid presentment of a case full of figures, never talking down to the jury, always putting the thing before them with a deferential* air—all that had its effect. Yet his building up of wails from which there was no escape was deadly ■in its precision, its quiet confidence, its perfect command of detail. Never was his | Ability to Master Financial Problems displayed to greater effect than in his prosecution of Whitaker Wright (whom Mr Walker-Smith persists in calling Whittaker; he has a liking for double letters, which makes him misspell the name of that famous judge, Gorell Barnes). There was a good deal of'doubt in the City about the eventual soundness of Whitaker Wright’s enterprises. Many thought they might come right in the end (as some did). He had ability and foresight, but he had not enough patience. He could not wait for his endeavours to mature. So he juggled with the assets of his companies in a way that brought him within reach of the law. Only just within reach, however. It was possible to plead, as liis counsel did, that he had done his best for the shareholders. Even llie Solicitor-General had told the House of Commons that, although ho believed Wright had published a false balance-sheet, he did not see how he could be prosecuted for that. There was quite a chance that 1 he prisoner might get off. liis career had been more spectacular than that, of onv oilier of tiie financial “geniuses” who have gone to gaol -in the last thirty years, lie was from Norihumoerfand by way of America, where lie had Learned How to Rig the Market. * The preslice of W.W.. as he came to he known in |he Cilv was enormous. He was looked upon as a sort of Midas who had only to touch a scheme to turn it into cold. His shares were taken up with alacrity and his invitations to subscribe responded to with enthusiasm, his actions were watched and his example followed; his advice was besought and his nod attended to. Nor did social eminence lag behind financial prosnerity (it rarely does). He had all the trappings of success; a house'ln Park Lane next to Londonderry House, a marvellous country seat near GOdalming, a racmg } which had defeated the Kaiser’s champion. His houses famous for their furniture, and In the drawing-room I"! Park Lane tl e e was a replica made at great expense the Cabinet "is Rols of Louis XV., Use ordinal of which 16 ln The house 6 at Lea Park was even more magnificent, and armies of; workmen were Ashing- ponds! aiid"a billiard room under the lake; there was a maih e fountain transported from Italy. eor _ The stables for fifty horses described as JO Shed‘aU C settees, upholstered in leather,

in John o’ London.) on which princes might recline to admire the horses or the fittings, the whole of which in the stable are of polished gun-metal.” ~, Nothing less than a marquis would content xv .w. for his guinea-pig in chief, and, although he put himse in the wrong by Bolting to the United States, whence it took nearly three years to bring him back, the odds were about even, when lie came to trial, that the prosecution might fail. And so it might have failed if the case against him had been entrusted to anyone else but Rufus Isaacs. With a natural gift for figures (which somehow had not saved him from failure on the Stock Exchange) the K.C. handled the financier’s complicated dealings with ease and put before the jury “the salient points," begging them to concentrate on these. What he had to do was “to destroy the atmosphere of the benevolent autocrat, whose good intentions had been misunderstood by persons not in a position to judge and whose course of conduct, if not interrupted, would have led to an honourable salvation for all.” Rufus Isaacs did destroy this atmosphere by a crossexamination which led "the stocky self-confident figure in the box” to convict himself as to the false balance-sheet. The “lean courteous figure” of the advocate closed the net round Ills victim slowly, but with appalling precision. No verdict but one of "Guilty” was possible. The prisoner made his preparations accordingly. After lie had been sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude he was taken to an anteroom. His solicitor was there with two friends who had assisted him. He thanked them for all they had done. Nothing more could have been done, he assured them. Then ho Collapsed and Died. His death was due to cyanide poisoning. He had kept a tiny tablet under his tongue all day. Now he had swallowed it. rf killed him at oneje. As a precaution, he had in his pocket a loaded revolver—for use in case the poison failed to act. Another financier with whose doings Rufus Isaacs was concerned bore the name of Goudie. I wonder if that name stirs any memories to-day. A generation ago it was on every lip. Goudie was a young Scot, who had come from the Shetlands lo Liverpool, where lie was employed as a clerk in the Bank. Unfortunately he had none of the hardheaded shrewdness of his countrymen; indeed, although he was an industrious and capable young man, his distinguished characteristics were a child-like readiness to believe all that he was told and a capacity for making tlie most undesirable friends. These qualities, united to a taste for betting, were fairly certain to get him into trouble. The trouble duly came, hut it was on a scale that nobody could have anticipated. What Goudie did was to rob the bank of £160,000. It'seems incredible That a junior clerk could make away with so large a sum. Goudie Went About It Very Cleverly. He had to deal with the account of a very rich customer, Mr Hudson, of Hudson’s soap. He opened an account of his Own, so that he could get cheques, and to these he forged Mr Hudson’s signature. After the cheques had been uttered they came to the bank for payment, where theyvwere given to a clerk in the clearing department, who would enter them in a journal and then hand them over to Goudie for Hie purpose of making an entry in the ledger. Goudie, however, did not enter them in the ledger, but simply ticked the journal as if he had; then instead of placing the forged cheques on the,file, he destroyed them. The scheme, therefore,'was simplicity itself, but there were, of course, further obstacles to overcome. There was for instance, the weekly bank sheet, but this he coped with by entering' false debits. The auditings presented greater difficulties, for here be bad io supply details for the inspection of the auditors, lie dealt with Ibis, 100, however, by entering a false debit to the account, a few days before the audit; this entry appeared for the space of the audit, and lie then rectified it by making a false credit entry so that attention was not called to.the account. That anyone capable of inventing and carrying through a scheme so ingenious over a period of two years should have wasted the money lie stole, not on betting, but on being Fleeced by Racecourse Sharps and Toughs, who did not put his money on iiorscs, hut simply told him he had lost and pocketed -thousands, seems all in keeping with the fantastic nature of the whole story. There was, according to the Judge, no carelessness on the part of the bank. ° Goudie’s fraud was watertight—until a certain cheque was asked for. He then saw that discovery was inevitable; he merely said that the porter mu.st have mislaid it, and while the porter was being sent for Goudie left the room, picked up his hat and umbrella, and unostentatiously decided there and then to resign from the- service of the Bank, lie, was found In a cheap lodging-house, living in abject penury, and was arrested eleven days later. For many years Rufus Isaacs was In most of the “big" cases. When he was Lord Chief Justice he had the biggest of all before him. This was the charge of high treason against Sir Roger Casement during the War. lie had then to perform the grimmest task that can fall to the lot of a human being. But even as Lord Beadingpassed the awful sentence, “l-ou shall be hanged by the neck until you be dead,” Casement’s face was seen to Wear an' Expression of Amusement. Perhaps this was for the benefit of the spectators, or perhaps it was just relief that all was over, or even—who knows? —a sign of triumph. For had he not declared liis pride at standing in the dock? \Vi ia |, memories Lord Reading must ha\c of all the scoundrels and sociely flibbertigibbets liis cases have, brought him into contact with (there is a full account of Ihe Hartopp divorce, case, in which the. aristocracy figured freely), and how that queer, gallant, 'half-lunatic liguie of Casement, must haunt his dreams sometimes! An advocate who gels into the very front rank of his profession lias an interesting life, though a hard one. He must work far info the niglil. lie must leave a dinner party or a first night at Hie play, not lo go home to bed, hut to wrestle with briefs and bunt through law books. r l’he rewards are high. Twenty-five thousand a year (for a few years) is not out of the way. Then there is the prominence, the chance of promotion, the social prestige. If one wonders whether it is worth the candle, here is Lord Reading, so I gather from the book, ready to Testify In the Affirmative. Mr Walker-Smith has really written, a biography, including the boyish episodes when young Isaacs ran away to sea. He once told me, as wc crossed the Atlantic together, a long story about his having been, a cabin-boy and how terrified he was at having to go aloft, I thought he was romancing, but it is all here. At another lime he thought of becoming a professional singer. Later he set off to tr> his luck in America, but was overtaken by his brothers at Euston and persuaded to return home because of his mother's grief. (It was she, by the way, who persuaded him to re® d for the Bar.) So he made more than one false start before he found the career in which lie was lo win fame.