Lecture given as part of lecture series organised by the Courts Centenary Commemoration Committee

Date: Thursday 13th November 2014

Speaker: Dr. Myles Dungan

Title: The Irish Law Times goes to war – 1914-1918

Introduction My intention tonight is to view the four years and three months of the Great War through the prism of a specialist journal, one that watched over the activities of the legal profession with the loving gaze of an adoring mother, anxious to defend her children against outside interference but capable of admonishment if the situation arose.

The Irish Law Times and Solicitor’s Journal traced its ancestry back to the Irish Law Times and Reports established in 1865 - it was, in 1914, published on a weekly basis – it also published a comprehensive annual supplement of law reports containing details of significant cases which might have an impact on a legal system based on judicial precedents and judgments

Its reporters at the time of the war included, in 1918, a very young John A Costello who was covering the King’s Bench court for the periodical – other contributors included J.R.Peart and Hugh J.McCann – surnames which have persisted in Irish legal circles to this day.

In 1914 it was generally ten pages long – by 1918 that had been reduced to 8 or even 6 pages given the scarcity of newsprint

Background What was the legal landscape like in 1914? - there were fewer than 500 barristers (as compared with more than 2000 today) and fewer than 2000 solicitors (as compared with 10,000 today)

The Judiciary in 1914 included a total of 14 Superior Court justices. This included a six judge Court of Appeal – ultimate appeal was still to the House of Lords.

The lower courts were the domain of County Court judges, Justices of the Peace and Resident Magistrates. In 1914 there were 6000 JPs holding court in Quarter Sessions or Petty Sessions – [2400 were Catholic- twice the number of 1886] – There were also 64 RMs in 1914 – paid by the Crown and expected to be legally expert. –

The leading judicial lights of the period were the extraordinary Baron Christopher Palles who had been Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer since 1874. He would retain the post until his retirement in 1916 at the age of 85 [he died in 1920] One of his judgments was cited as recently as 2006 in an action against a certain national broadcasting station. At the time of his retirement his court had already been absorbed into the Kings Bench, hence his title of ‘the last of the Chief Barons’

Lord Peter O’Brien, the Lord Chief Justice, proprietor of the Airfield estate in Dundrum – died in 1914 shortly after the outbreak of the war. Known while a Crown Prosecutor in the 1880s as ‘Peter the Packer’, for his renowned ability to pack a jury in favour of the Crown, his obituaries in the ILT are uncontaminated by any reference to his expertise in this questionable practice. Questionable, that is, if you were a defence attorney.

The judiciary presided over a system that within a few years would be supplanted by a shadow ‘subversive’ apparatus of Sinn Fein supreme court, district court and parish court which, bar the judicial robes, would pay the official system the homage of imitation while ruthlessly seeking to replace it

Times were already uncertain for the members of the Bar even before the declaration of war. On 31 October 1914 the Irish Law Times noted that ‘the decrease in business to which we called attention last year continues’. There were fewer cases before the courts. The total amount allowed in costs had declined from £240,000 to £199,000. Bankruptcy sittings were down from 1384 in 1912 to 1188 in 1913. Good news all round for society at large perhaps, but not for the legal profession.

The outbreak of war The first issue of the ILT after the outbreak of war was published on 8 August 1914. Despite the tumultuous events of 3 / 4 August 1914 the ILT concentration was on matters decidedly more mundane than murderous global conflict – estate duty on agricultural land in Ireland - Section 63 of the Companies Consolidation Act 1908 - the adjudication of costs in civil cases - the Statute of Distributions relating to the division of the residue of a will after provision for the widow - & the results of the annual Bar examinations in UCD. For the record one M.Binchy finished 2nd – it has been suggested to me that this may be Michael Binchy, who went on to become Circuit Court judge - a female candidate, Miss May Hogan, received 2nd class honours and was placed 21st and 12 of the successful candidates were from India.

An interesting footnote …

One of the Indian students who studied law in Ireland – at UCD - during the war period and whose examination successes were mentioned in the Irish Law Times was V. V. Giri – a political activist he went on to join Sinn Fein and befriend Eamon de Valera – this resulted in his expulsion from the country in 1918 – on returning to India he became a Labour activist and a member of the Congress Party - he was imprisoned by the British Raj prior to Indian independence in 1948 - in 1969 he became Acting President of India before taking on the role in his own right until 1974, during which period Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister

By 15 August, however, the ILT had hit its stride and had woken up to the fact that Ireland was, willy nilly, at war. It was now engaged enough in the concerns of a wider world to quote a Law Times editorial on the questionable constitutionality of the appointment of Lord Kitchener as Secretary of State for War …

popular opinion must undoubtedly endorse the action of the Cabinet in putting that all-important department, at such a time as this, in the capable hands of one whose services and achievements mark him out as essentially the person to deal with the situation so far as our active land forces are concerned.

But the ILT still devoted space to what the general public would see as trivialities but which, presumably, were of no little importance to the legal profession – for example, the right of a junior to carry a ‘brief bag’ – the ILT pointed out that …

In these days the right of the very newest junior at the Bar to provide himself with a brief bag is so unquestioned that it may surprise some members of the profession to learn that this privilege did not always exist

Apparently in 1806 it had been ordained that …

no man could carry a bag who had not received one from a King’s Counsel

… however large the junior barrister’s business might be, he was forced to carry his papers in his hand. The practice was not formally abolished until 1831 though it was moribund long before that.

In the issue of 22 August 1914 comes the first detailed reference to a piece of legislation that will come to dominate the legal landscape for the duration of the war – the Defence of the Realm Act – DORA to her good friends, among whom only the Crown Prosecutors at the Irish Bar could reasonably be numbered.

This was a short and rather vague piece of legislation rushed through Parliament with the intention, according to the ILT, of enabling …

the authorities to deal summarily with matters of immediate danger

It began as a couple of paragraphs conferring power on the government but by 1918 the list of regulations was so long as to encompass more than 650 pages banning, amongst many other things, the flying of kites, the practice of treating in public houses and the throwing of rice at weddings – on pain of a fine, or in the case of the latter heinous offence, of imprisonment

The first overt reference to the military side of the conflict in the ILT was on 5 September 1914 with a helpful article on the wills of solders on active service.

In what must have been quite a sobering experience for the ordinary volunteer Tommy the Army allocated a page in the soldier’s pay book for the writing of a simple will. Soldiers on active service, the ILT pointed out, were exempt from many of the provisions of the 1837 Wills Act. They did not, for example, have to be 21 before they could make a will and there was no requirement for the document to be witnessed. The ILT opined that …

in relaxing the rules of will-making, in favour of our soldiers at the front, our law exhibits a wise and just discretion.

It was the first recognition by the ILT of the serious and pressing health and safety implications of going to war

These early days of the war, before awareness of the precarious position of the BEF became widespread, have a certain surreality about them – there is a matter of factness in relation to the immediate consequences of the outbreak of the war but, by and large it is business as usual for the ILT. Recent legal decisions are published, advertisements continue to be carried, the death of Lord O’Brien the LCJ is noted and his career is discussed. The war impinges, but only in a professional sense.

The air of surreality was reinforced by a piece carried on 19 September in which the reader is informed that …

A natural feeling of panic, coupled with the fact that alien enemies are forbidden under the new Alien Restrictions Act to own homing pigeons, has led … numerous persons in various parts of the country to wage warfare on all carrier pigeons, or pigeons presumed to be such, which cross their range of vision. In various police courts persons have been summoned and to their surprise fined for committing what they considered the patriotic act of shooting such pigeons.

All that was required was some simple guidance, like this for example … (slide)

However, that same week, the war became more personal as the Irish Law Times noted the trickle, soon to become something of a minor exodus, of barristers, solicitors, solicitors apprentices and the sons of senior legal figures into the armed forces in the wake of Kitchener’s call for 100,000 volunteers – a modest beginning as it transpired. The journal noted one significant recruitment gathering in particular in its edition of 19 September …

The Irish bar is well represented in the company formed by volunteers from the Irish Rugby Football Union. Among the contingent who went to the Curragh on Wednesday were Mr. Julian, lately Reid Professor, Trinity College, Mr. Poole Hickman, Hon. Sec and Treasurer of the Munster Circuit, Mr. Herbert Tierney of the same circuit, and Messrs Thomas Hughes and Charles Godfrey Place, barristers at law. We convey to them our heartiest good wishes.

This was one of the most celebrated and unfortunate units of the Gallipoli campaign, ‘D’ Company of the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers – the Pals – destroyed on the Kiretch Tepe Sert ridge in Suvla Bay on 15 /16 August 1915 barely a week into the second major Entente incursion in the Dardanelles - a unit that would find its chronicler among the members of the bar in the Kings Counsel Henry Hanna – of which more later.

Why did so many members of the legal profession join up?

Youthful idealism and a martial tradition were certainly contributory factors – many barristers were graduates of TCD where there was a very active Officers’ Training Corp (OTC), as there was in Queen’s University Belfast, another major source of entrants to the Bar. Many of the members of the Bar who were commissioned as officers would have been members of those OTCs.

Officers pay [2nd Lieutenant £2.12.0 a week – Lieutenant £3] might also have been attractive to young barristers starting out – and the feeling that war service would do their careers no harm when they returned.

Later the Inns of Court OTC would send more commissioned officers to the armed forces

Most of the members of the legal profession who joined up had already received commissions. There were, however, notable exceptions. For example, Joseph Bagnall Lee, a TCD graduate and former auditor of the Law Student’s Debating Society, who had been called to the Bar in 1909. He first enlisted as a private in the 6th Royal Munster Fusiliers but was rapidly commissioned and just as rapidly killed in action on 7 August 1915 hours after landing at Suvla Bay in Gallipoli.

Another exception was the aforementioned Herbert Tierney who had been called to the Bar in 1910, he joined D Company, 7th RDF as a private but was then commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 8th Cheshires and was killed in the attempt to relieve the obnoxious and arrogant Major General Sir Charles Townshend in 1916 in Mesopotamia [Iraq] in the siege of Kut-el-Amara [to describe Townshend as a ‘donkey’, as many British generals were, is an insult to a fine animal.

Despite received wisdom to the contrary not all the barristers and solicitors who joined up were Protestant and unionist, though a majority of the politically committed probably were. But there was also a generous sprinkling of nationalists, Tom Kettle & William Redmond (of whom more later) William Archer Redmond, like his uncle and father a nationalist MP and Hubert Michael O’Connor of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, winner of the Military Cross, killed during 3rd Ypres and an independent Nationalist candidate in 1910 for East Limerick.

Between August 1914 and February 1916 126 barristers, 110 solicitors and 71 solicitor’s apprentices would enlist. A total cohort of 307. [In addition the sons of 160 other barristers and 175 solicitors would also join up.]

By the end of the war 25 barristers, 20 solicitors and 18 solicitor’s apprentices had been killed or were unaccounted for, among them Tom Kettle, Ernest Julian, Poole Hickman and Willie Redmond. This represents an attrition rate of almost 20%. The overall UK attrition rate was 12.6%. The overall Irish rate is impossible to establish exactly but it hovered around 14-15%.

Thomas Kettle Thomas Kettle, the most illustrious Irish victim of the war, was a barrister, poet and academic. He was the son of one of the founders of the Land League (Andrew Kettle). He had been auditor of the L&H in UCD, an Irish Party MP and was Professor of National Economics at the National University of Ireland – he was also the author of perhaps the best Irish WW1 poem To my daughter Betty A Gift from God – written to his small child a couple of days prior to his death at Ginchy on the Somme in Sept 1916 - the closing quatrain is best known

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead Died not for flag nor King nor Emperor But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed And for the secret scripture of the poor

In an ILT obituary he was described as …

a man of brilliant scholarly attainment, [who] both as a writer and as a speaker had established a wide reputation [Possessing a] genial disposition, charm of manner, ready wit and kindness of heart endeared him to all.

Although it is the Irish practice to speak no ill of the dead this description of Kettle – leaving aside his known propensity for over-indulgence in alcohol – was probably well deserved

Julian et al Ernest Julian, in his mid 30s, originally from Co.Offaly and a member of the Connaught Bar, – became Reid Professor of Law at TCD in 1909 as a result of a competitive examination –future appointees included Mary Robinson, Mary McAleese and Ivana Bacik - a Lieutenant with the 7th Dublin Fusiliers, he died within hours of landing at Suvla Bay in the first 10th division attack, on Chocolate Hill – as did Poole Henry Hickman, a member of the Munster Bar, although he survived Julian by just over a week, dying in the unnecessary carnage of Kiretch Tepe Sert on the night of 15/16 August 1915

All three were officers in the Dublin Fusiliers

Willie Redmond MP – brother of John – was, at 56, too old to be in the front line, but he insisted on being allowed to join his unit of the Royal Irish Regiment in the successful assault at Messines on 7 June 1917 – he had been called to the Bar in 1891 but was more of a politician than a barrister – he had spent his 21st birthday in Kilmainham jail with Parnell. In 1917 his age probably told against him – the wound he received was to his arm but he died of shock.

Martin Almost every week the ILT published details of death or injury among members of the legal profession or their offspring – some of the details are extremely poignant – in consecutive issues on 22 & 29 May 1915 the ILT announced the death of Lt.J.S.Martin – 1st Royal Irish Rifles – only son of R.T.Martin, solicitor, of College Gardens, Belfast – he had been in the 6th form at the famous Uppingham school which had sent many students directly into the army – Martin was one. He was due to go to Oxford but left school when commissioned. He reached France on 15 March and was killed on 9 May – eight weeks on the western front, short even by the horrendous standards of life expectancy for junior officers, of whom around 20% perished.

Lipsett The following week it was the turn of W.A.Lipsett, resident in Canada but late of the Irish Bar. He was killed at Ypres on the night of 22-23 April. According to the ILT he ‘threw up a good appointment’ to join the first Canadian contingent travelling to Europe. According to the late Anthony Quinn in his excellent work Wigs and Gowns: Irish barristers in the Great War Lipsett, a native of Donegal, was a rarity. He was a private and had refused to accept a commission – other barristers, like Joseph Lee and Herbert Tierney had also enlisted as privates but had rapidly been commissioned.

28 August 1915 The most obvious and immediate military tragedy for the Irish legal profession was the wretched Gallipoli campaign. On 28 August 1915 ILT recorded three dead barristers there, Robert Cullinan, Poole Hickman and Joseph Lee – with Julian reported missing. In fact he was already dead. Two solicitors William Bridge and William Reeves Richards were also recorded as fatalities – to this number was added later Herbert Findlater, a solicitor and two other barristers John Henry Leland and Gerald Plunkett.

War Supplement The journal published a War Supplement in February 1916 containing the names of the 307 barristers, solicitors and solicitor’s apprentices serving in the Crown forces [126 barristers, 110 solicitors and 71 apprentices]. Of the 20 members of that cohort who had already died up to that point [10 barristers, 6 solicitors and 4 apprentices] half the deaths had taken place in Gallipoli.

One particularly tragic death was associated with Gallipoli but did not actually take place there. The young and very promising Irish rugby international, Jasper Thomas Brett, a solicitor’s apprentice, survived Suvla but was invalided out of the army in Salonika suffering from shell shock. After a brief period in hospital in England, having been diagnosed as ‘insane’ he was released to his family in Dun Laoghaire in January 1917. The following month he committed suicide by placing himself on the Dublin-Bray railway line in Dalkey tunnel and allowing the 22.10 train to crush and dismember his body in manner that his mind had already been destroyed. [Ciaran O’Mara piece on Lansdowne Rugby Club]. Although his name does not feature in the Irish National War Memorial Record he is recognized as a war casualty by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Brett had been one of the ‘Pals’ in ‘D’ Company, 7th RDF. Like many of the members of that elite but unfortunate group he had a legal background. So it was appropriate that one of the most prominent members of the Law Library should seek to record at least some aspect of that ill-starred Suvla campaign.

The PALS Henry Hanna, born in Belfast and educated at Queen’s University, had become a King’s Counsel in 1911. He defended Jim Larkin during the 1913 Lockout. In 1915 he was elected a Bencher of King’s Inns. Later, in 1929, he would become an Irish High Court judge and serve in this capacity until 1943. He was also involved in one of the ‘Dad’s Armies’ of the day, the IRFU Volunteer Corps which drilled and did weapons training for home defence purposes. Their uniforms bore the legend ‘George Rex’ so they were nicknamed the ‘Gorgeous Wrecks’. Hanna actually lived on Lansdowne Road, [No.54] near the railway level crossing. Hanna is recorded in the ILT as giving numerous lectures and talks on the subject of Gallipoli and related matters. In one such lecture he observed of the 10th Division that …

although the military history of their efforts at Suvla Bay may never be written it was the duty of the people of Dublin to see that their memory was never forgotten.

Appropriate therefore, if a little ironic, that he should do so himself.

He had made it his business to talk to many veterans of the ill-advised campaign. He chose to fasten on the particularly poignant story of ‘D’ company of the 7th battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the ‘Pals’ the ‘Rugby Players’ or ‘The Toffs in the Toughs’ [the ‘Toughs actually being the nickname of the 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers].

PALS Book In 1917 he published an account of the travails of this unique unit in The Pals at Suvla – an unhappy experience, exacerbated by the decision of their Divisional commander General Sir Bryan Mahon to resign at a crucial point in the campaign when the 7th RDF was trying to hold gains made on 15 August 1915 at Kiretch Tepe Sert and was being slaughtered by Turkish grenades in the process. Mahon chose this moment to protest at the failure of the operational Commander, the hapless General Sir Ian Hamilton, to promote him.

Fish picture The Pals at Suvla was originally released in a limited edition of 200 copies lavishly illustrated by an artist, Lieutenant G.Drummond Fish, sent specifically to paint the Suvla landscape by the Army in a series of vivid watercolours. The proceeds of the sale of the book were in aid of RDF Prisoner of War and Comforts fund. The only discordant note was that the foreword was written by General Sir Bryan Mahon whose hissy fit and withdrawal from Suvla Bay to a distant island had contributed generously to the losses incurred by ‘D’ Company on Kiretch Tepe Sert. After printing and production expenses were deducted the project raised £100 for the RDF fund.

Business (almost) as usual But, from a purely business point of view things were actually looking up by 1915. In October 1914 the ILT had drawn attention to the decline in incomes over the preceding two years but the six months since the outset of the conflict had, it would seem, been good for the Irish Bar.

On 3 April 1915 the journal observed cheerily that …

We are glad to note that the somewhat gloomy forebodings at the beginning of the Hilary sittings as to the volume of business were falsified by the facts. The crisis through which the country is passing by reason of the war certainly curtailed the volume of work, but, taking everything into consideration, the term just ended was satisfactory. The prospects for next term are not at all discouraging.

This must, in part, have been owing to the exodus of many talented younger members of the profession (and one or two who were quite long in the tooth) to take up junior commissions in the Army. As they might have said in the courts of law - Malum quidem nullum esse sine aliquo bono which is a technical legal term that I’ve just made up but which roughly translates as …

‘every cloud has a silver lining’ … ‘every cloud has a silver lining’. Not as snappy as Mater semper certa est but it will do for now.

One growth area as far as the law was concerned, was defending ‘enemy aliens’ generally German, Austrian or Hungarian, against detention orders or other newly acquired legal disabilities. Under the terms of the Alien Restrictions Act the ILT reported on the prosecution of Alfred Haymann in June 1917.

Haymann He was a waiter in the famous Jammets restaurant. He had given false information when registering in Rathmines police station in October 1914. He claimed to be Russian. Haymann, an unlikely Russian name I’m sure you’ll agree, gave himself up to the DMP in College St on 23 May 1917. His counsel told the police court that …

the matter got on his nerves and he was afraid that he would be arrested.

His honesty did him little good when it came to sentencing. He got three months.

Schmidt - Smith A curious aspect of the Act was the Aliens Restriction (Change of Name) Order of October 1914. This prohibited the use of ‘any name other than that by which [one] was ordinarily known at the date of the commencement of the war’. Obviously the butcher in this Punch cartoon of August 1914 got in just before portcullis descended. According to the ILT there was, under UK law at the time, no restriction against a person changing their name. This, the ILT pointed out, ‘not infrequently facilitates fraud and crime.’

Royal Family Name Change One wonders where this particular piece of legislation left those well-known British aristocratic families the Battenbergs and the Saxe Coburg Gothas. Both of whom appear to have flouted this particular regulation by taking on the names Mountbatten and Windsor later in the conflict.

Rotunda There was at least one fascinating case involving an alien, reported on by the ILT in November 1914, which involved, it would appear, the Rotunda Hospital trying to pull a fast one. This was the case of Volkl v the Governors of the Rotunda Hospital. It prompted a significant decision as to rights of alien enemies. It was a personal injury case that had been ready for trial before the war began. The Rotunda made the case that Mrs. Volkl, the plaintiff, was now an enemy alien with no right to sue through the Irish courts under the terms of the Alien Restrictions Act. The case came before Justices Gibson and Dodd in the King’s Bench Division. The plaintiff, however, [the British-born wife of an Austrian resident in Ireland] was a registered alien with a permit to live in a prohibited area. The court held that she was …

entitled to the benefit of the King’s peace – [as she was registered and licensed] - and being allowed to continue to reside in this country.

One in the eye for the Rotunda, though they can hardly be blamed for trying.

DORA Perhaps the best known woman in the UK during the Great War was not the Queen, or Margot Asquith, or even Emmeline Pankhurst but DORA. She weighed only a few paragraphs at birth but by the age of four had swelled to gargantuan proportions. The ubiquitous Defence of the Realm Act was a constant factor in the professional lives of barristers and solicitors from 1914-1919.

There was no escape from DORA whether you were a publican being closed down for serving drink to soldiers, a shopkeeper fined £5 for refusing to sell sugar without tea, a baker fined for not selling bread by weight, a milk vendor jailed for a month for adding 4% water to his product, a publican fined £2 for displaying a Sinn Fein flag on his premises or a farmer fined for not cultivating enough of his land. All of the above and many similar cases were reported on in the ILT.

The latter case involved one James Nesbitt, who came before Monaghan Petty Sessions. He farmed 40 acres and in 1917 it was adjudged by Dept of Agriculture officials that he did not have enough of his land under the plough – this too was the subject of a DORA regulation [During the Great War Ireland went from c.9% tillage to almost 40% tillage]. His land was seized and auctioned. In a throwback to the days of the Land League no one came forward to bid on his farm. His solicitor told the magistrates that Nesbitt had acted in ignorance of the law and was now cultivating 20% of his holding. A small fine was imposed.

Mind you there’s always a chancer in the undergrowth somewhere – in a short piece in November 1918 the ILT drew attention to a farmer who went to the other extreme and sought to take advantage of the DORA cultivation rules. He ploughed his fields so enthusiastically that in the process he just happened to tear up two paths that delineated rights of way across his land. DORA got her revenge for this grave contravention of the spirit of the law and he was convicted of willfully destroying the footpaths.

As the war progressed there was an obsession with food production and concerns about food supply. New orders were being made on a regular basis on price, quality, quantity and distribution - every facet of food production. Judges were expected to enforce these regulations rigorously. In January 1918 the ILT observed that …

the lay press has recently reported many cases in which the fines were entirely too small.

It’s encouraging to see that the highly offensive journalistic practice of criticizing judicial decisions has now entirely ceased!

Fortune Tellers However one profession apparently not governed by DORA was that of the fortune-teller. It was one of the consequences of the mass slaughter of the Great War that grieving wives and parents were resorting, in desperation, to all sorts of occult charlatans. Seances were very much in vogue, as, for those still surviving, was fortune telling. The ILT, in September 1917, drew attention to a piece carried by that colourful and racy journal The Justice of the Peace.

Altogether the troubled waters created by the war have favoured the operations of those who dangle the dazzling bait of ‘magic’ before the less wary fish of the human shoal

Thus had the Justice of the Peace editorialized. Prosecutions, it noted, were taking place under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act, 1824 – ‘for pretending or professing to tell fortunes’. The only alternative, apparently, was prosecution under Section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735 for ‘undertaking to tell fortunes’, though this had not been used since 1904. The penalties included up to a year in jail as opposed to immolation at the stake. However, the Justice of the Peace went on to opine that …

But, no infliction of penalties upon the imposters will stop them in their lucrative frauds or eradicate in their dupes a belief in the occult. What the severities of the early Christian emperors and the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition failed to do, is not likely to be effected by our mild punishments.’

This may or may not have been a veiled plea for a return to use of the thumbscrew and the rack.

Legal Funnies Despite its native stuffiness the Irish Law Times had some semblance of a sense of humour – albeit usually bone dry. An exception to the humour-free zone was in the early months of the war when, in a fit of giddiness, it used its weekly ‘Law Notes’ column to subject its readers to some of the direst legal jokes ever recounted. For example …

Q: To what class of property does a Zeppelin belong A: It is an heirloom because it looms in the air Q: What is meant by restraint on anticipation? A: The inability of the Kaiser to conquer Europe Q: Give an instance of a secret trust A: A German spy

Utterly hilarious I’m sure you’ll agree.

Occasionally the ILT sought to tap into some zeitgeist or other but it was about as successful as a distinguished judge making pithy comments from the bench on the latest episode of the ‘Voice of Ireland’.

For example, this piece culled from the weekly Notes and Queries column in January 1916 on Americanisms that, according to the well-informed ILT …

are sure in their time to come into the permanency of the dictionary and to be generally accepted as additions to the language.

These included such apparently deathless neologisms as …

‘compushency’ = necessity or compulsion, ‘juberous’ = doubtful, ‘lowerarchy’ = rule of the lower classes, ‘dog robber’= menial army servant - and finally ‘armstrong’ = something hand-made as opposed to manufactured by machine.

Only the latter expression, ‘armstrong’, has stuck and even it has evolved to mean ‘a chemically rather than naturally induced proficiency in the sport of cycling’.

The ILT was also convinced that certain phrases, which, they were reliably informed, were in widespread use in the USA, would migrate to the UK and survive the crossing to thrive in the vernacular. Phrases such as…

‘sound on the goose’= reliable, or ‘dead in the shell’ = worn out, or ‘fine haired’= fastidious.

I suggest that one of the learned senior counsel here tonight might try the following on a judge …

I am sorry your Lorship is dead in the shell, you may be juberous but my witness is sound on the goose despite a compushency to be excessively fine-haired’

… and wait for the reaction.

Judges and recruiting One of the things that comes across from reading the regular references to war casualties in the ILT is the number of judges who had sons (and some daughters) involved in the conflict and at risk [7.8.15] So it should, therefore, not be too surprising that many members of the judiciary put considerable energy into military recruitment in Ireland. Others, while not actively involved in the enlistment campaign made their own adjunct contributions. One of the most active members of the judiciary in this regard was the Irish Lord Chancellor himself, Sir Ignatius O’Brien. Others, like Justices Barton and Dodd, spoke at recruitment meetings.

In July 1915 the ILT noted in an editorial piece that …

the judges of assizes have shown a keen interest in the progress of recruiting in the various counties of Ireland, and have delivered strong appeals to farmer’s sons and others to join the new Army. They have also urged the Grand Juries to exercise their influence in the promotion of recruiting.

On occasions judges were not above using their position on the bench to assist the army in the numbers game. For example, in December 1914 the ILT reported that at the Leinster Winter Assizes, Thomas Shields, a lance corporal in the 9th Inniskilling Fusiliers, had pleaded guilty to wounding John Byrne on 4 August. Captain D.M.Wilson of the Inniskillings gave Shields a good character, describing him in the witness box as ‘a very useful soldier’. The presiding judge, Justice Kenny ruled that …

as the accused was a very useful soldier at the present national crisis he would allow him to stand out in his own recognisances.

Presumably John Byrne was not too pleased with this outcome, but as he was a civilian who had still not enlisted by the end of 1914, satisfying Mr. Byrne, presumably, did not enter into Justice Kenny’s calculations.

An even more revealing case was heard in February 1917 at the Omagh Crown Sessions by Judge Linehan. Montgomery Weir of Fintona was found guilty of house-breaking and larceny. He is quoted by the ILT as …

[having] said, in reply to Judge Linehan, that he would enlist if given the opportunity. He was medically examined, and, having passed as fit for service, was handed over to a military escort.

As there was a military escort and medical examiner on hand in or adjacent to the courtroom this was probably a regular occurrence. Judge Linehan was essentially acting as recruiting sergeant. Weir survived the war, but 27 other Fintona men did not.

Custom and practice Despite the war raging in Europe the Bar, both in Britain and Ireland, managed to cling to much of its ancient, and often opaque and enigmatic, custom and practice.

In October 1918 the ILT noted that Judge Wakely was presented with white gloves at an Assizes session - ‘there being no criminal business for disposal’. This also appears to have been a custom of the time. Of equal significance is the fact that no criminal defendants came before the judge.

The previous January the same Judge Wakely had referred in court to a letter he had received from a woman about a probate case he was adjudicating. The letter contained a £5 note. He announced that he did not propose to take any further action although this was a clear case of attempted bribery. So punctilious was his lordship that he asked an RIC sergeant to return the money to the lady … and get a receipt.

Two items for inclusion in the Some things never change even in wartime Dept – From April 1915 the ILT informed us that …

His Honour Judge Drummond, having refused to sit in Ballymahon Courthouse, which he described as a left over cowhouse, Mr. Delaney, Crown Solicitor, at the meeting of the Board of Guardians on Tuesday, applied for the use of the workhouse boardroom in which to hold the April Quarter Sessions.

So even in 1914 Judges were wont to complain about their working environments.

… and this gem from June 1916 quoted by the ILT from the British Law Journal.

Sometimes I ride in tramway cars because I think it is the duty of a judge to keep himself acquainted with all phases of human life and affairs,’ said Mr. Justice Avory in the course of a case tried before him recently.

Today of course, no judge need struggle to acquaint him or herself with popular culture or the pursuits of the hoi polloi. Our judges today are no longer the remote, aloof, cossetted demi-Gods of old, they are ‘of the people’ …

.. and if, perish the thought, they are caught off-guard by reference to ‘Nidge’ or ‘The X Factor’ in their courtrooms they can always surreptitiously google them on their smartphones.

Staying in the area of custom and practice I hesitate to draw your attention to this particular item, but in October 1916 the ILT reported that new rules had been drawn up shortening legal holidays and adding 20 working days to the legal year – the piece, however, doesn’t say for how long the new onerous legal year actually extended.

1916 Through the entire period of the Great War, despite the growing crisis, as well as labour and paper shortages, the Irish Law Times never missed a publication deadline or failed to appear. Except once. There was no ILT on 29 April 1916. In its edition of 6 May the ILT explained that …

The publication of this journal on 29th ult. was prevented by circumstances connected with the deplorable rising in Dublin known as the Sinn Fein rebellion. The unprecedented events of the week beginning on Easter Monday will be a life-long memory to all persons living in Dublin or having business connection therewith.

As the Four Courts had been ‘in the hands of the Sinn Feiners’ there had been considerable damage to the fabric of the building but the ILT told its readers triumphantly that the courts would be back in action in a couple of days. The journal also drew attention to the destruction of the offices of a large number of solicitors, especially those in the vicinity of Sackville street, and said that solicitors affected would be assisted by other members of their profession.

Cursory attention was paid to the executions and the ILT assured its readers that no one had been shot without trial. Technically correct if a drumhead court- martial equates with proceedings in a court of law.

Other than that it was straight back to business. Condemnation of the rising there was, but nothing too rancorous. Of greater interest was the legal question of who pays for the damage – are ratepayers liable?

does this means apply when the damage is caused by His Majesty’s Forces quelling an insurrection? It may be difficult, if not impossible, to determine in most cases how the destruction came about. What are the liabilities of insurance companies in the circumstances that have arisen?

It was not until the edition of 10 May that the ILT focussed on the court’s martial noting, in an example of extreme understatement, that they ‘evoke widespread interest’.

Casement trial Attention then switched to the impending trial of Sir Roger Casement in London. He is described by the ILT in a June editorial as an ‘arch offender’ which seems to fly in the face of all notions of innocence until guilt is proven. The following month the ILT in its coverage of the trial of the German spy Anton Kuepferle in London quoted the English Lord Chief Justice in his praise of defence counsel for taking the Kuepferle brief

It is in accordance with the honourable traditions of the Bar that even a charge so odious as that of spying in the interests of the enemy should meet with a proper defence

The ILT then went on to quote the Law Journal in its congratulations of the Lord Chief Justice for his remarks …

not merely because members of the Bar must now frequently be engaged in the defence of persons who are found to be enemies of their country, but also because an attempt has recently been made to revive the mischievous fallacy that an advocate ought to be satisfied that his client is in the right before he undertakes to represent him in court.

One is moved on reading such laudable sentiments to wonder why the ILT didn’t then proceed to use this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that London solicitor George Gavan Duffy, had, by this time, been constructively dismissed from the law firm in which he worked for having agreed to take on Casement’s defence.

Ironically the ILT then proceeded to pull on the green jersey in its coverage of Casement’s trial, where he was prosecuted by the Attorney General himself, F.E.Smith and defended by Irish barrister Serjeant Sullivan, because no British attorney exclusively associated with the English Bar could be found to defend him – Sullivan had dual membership of the Irish and English Bars. The ILT can barely conceal its excitement at the fact that an Irish-based barrister has agreed to take a case in the High Court in London, a rare event …

and when it does take place the conduct of the case is watched by Irish lawyers with close attention. Serjeant Sullivan’s defence of Sir Roger Casement [is] expected to be a brilliant one, from the legal standpoint, and to be worthy of the high tradition of the Irish Bar.

A Michael Mansfield he may well have been but Sullivan’s arguments were to no avail and Casement went to the gallows on 3 August 1916.

Votes for women One of the few positives to emerge from the Great War was peaceful social upheaval – the bulk of the men called upon to actually fight the war had not had an opportunity to vote for or against the aristocratic and bourgeois politicians who had sent them to the front. That could not be allowed to happen again. Similarly with the women who had often replaced them in the factories and the fields. The extension of the franchise was the very least the establishment could offer as a reward - of course amid fears that women might actually outnumber men at the polls and make silly feminine decisions, like having a pussycat as Prime Minister, the franchise was restricted to women above the age of 30.

The legal profession was not immune from these social pressures though it would take another couple of years to succumb to the demands of the suffragists.

Stanley Buckmaster had been Liberal Lord Chancellor from 1914-16. He had vacated the position when Asquith was given the heave ho in December 1916 and replaced by a coalition government led by Lloyd George. In March 1917, by now Viscount Buckmaster, he introduced a measure into the House of Lords that would force the admission of women into the solicitor’s profession

On 3 March ILT quoted the Law Journal as calling the move ‘untimely’. The Law Journal invoked war loyalty when it opined that it would be surprised if the House of Lords …

does not adopt the view that it would be unbecoming to make many fundamental changes in the membership of either branch of the legal profession while all its younger members are fighting in their country’s cause.

Coincidentally, barely two months later, Ireland became embroiled in a gender based legal contretemps when an Irish court decided that a woman was not eligible to hold the post of Clerk of Petty Sessions. Georgina Frost [born 1879] had discharged such duties after her father, Thomas, the Sixmilebridge, Co.Clare Petty Sessions Clerk became ill and retired in 1915. She had already been assisting her father for a number of years and was duly appointed to the post in her own right by the local Resident Magistrates. The Lord Lieutenant refused to sanction the appointment on the grounds that she was disqualified from being appointed by virtue of her sex.

The redoubtable Georgina Frost challenged this ruling in the High Court with Tim Healy as her KC. Justice Barton, in the Chancery Court in April 1917, sided with the Crown, which argued that Miss Frost, as a woman, was far too delicately nurtured for the task. As …

it might become her duty to take depositions in criminal cases, which would be unpleasant for her and for everybody concerned.

Justice Barton agreed. The ban, he insisted, was not based on any deficit in the abilities of Miss Frost, who was clearly a thoroughly competent and experienced woman, but …

upon considerations of decorum and upon the unfitness of certain painful and exacting duties in relation to the finer qualities of women.

[Were I to mutter that awful four-word phrase ‘Chief Justice Susan Denham’ in the vicinity of his recumbent remains I have no doubt Justice Barton would begin to spin vigorously in his grave].

A footnote re Justice Barton – I am reliably informed that he gave his name to the annual trophy fought out on a national basis between the various Irish constituent golf clubs of the Golfing Union of Ireland – the Barton Cup. Golf and feminism have never been renowned as compatible bedfellows.

Georgina Frost lost an application to the Court of Appeal but took her case all the way to the House of Lords and was duly appointed Petty Sessions Clerk for Sixmilebridge, a post she retained until her own retirement, at the behest of the Irish Free State government, in 1922.

But all that was in the future in 1917 and there was concerted opposition to the notion of female solicitors or - reels back in horror – female barristers. There were some liberal voices raised. Judge Parry, who sat on the English bench, in the Fortnightly Review was pointed in his support for Buckmaster’s bill – quoted in the ILT he wrote that

the only possible objection to women joining the ranks of the Bar or the solicitors is the selfish, animal, trade-union fear that there is only so much soup to go round, and that any further competition would result in hunger and possible starvation among existing members.

The Law Journal, again quoted in the ILT, heaped scorn on Parry’s assessment, asserting that chivalrous male barristers would be at a disadvantage if faced with female opponents as they would feel obliged to hold back …

There are certain classes of cases in the Divorce and Criminal courts which no advocate could conduct with freedom if his opponent belonged to the other sex … Judges and juries, as well as counsel and solicitors, would be hampered by their presence and the interests of justice would inevitably suffer by reason of his unwonted feeling of restraint.

The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act passed in 1919 finally enabled women to enter the legal profession, the civil service and to become jurors.

Female barristers Frances Kyle was the first Irish woman called to the Bar, in November 1921 – she took first place in the Bar Examinations that year - and the first woman to practice at the Bar was Averill Deverell, who was called to the Bar on the same day as Kyle – this was some months prior to Ivy Williams becoming the first woman to be called to the English Bar in 1922.

In conclusion … The Irish Law Times, like many similar professional publications at the time, was factional, stuffy, opinionated, curmudgeonly and conservative. It was a publication entirely devoid of self-doubt catering to a profession that, like the ILT itself, combined flamboyance with prolixity and flowery rhetoric with painstaking exactitude. By 21st century standards it lacked much redemptive enlightenment but, because of the nature of the occupation and the scope of the association of its professional readership, offered a panoramic view of Irish society in the early 1900s and could, occasionally be utterly delightful and, one suspects, have its tongue firmly embedded in its cheek.

It could be aroused to paeons of righteous anger – the invective levelled against Germany for the sinking of the RMS Leinster in October 1918 was of a far higher pitch than the anti-Sinn Fein rhetoric of 1916. The ILT describing what is still the worst maritime disaster to have taken place in the Irish Sea, as one of …

the blackest crimes even Germany has been guilty of in the hideous nightmare called the war.

And when righteous anger might be expected the ILT instead could be coolly pragmatic and legalistic as in its expression of the opinion that demands for the extradition of the Kaiser from the Netherlands would be ineffectual as his alleged crimes were likely to be seen in Dutch courts as

a breach of international usage between belligerents rather than a breach of any municipal law.

To finish on a lighter note the ILT, for which I have developed a surprising amount of affection in our mutual association going back six months - was also the master of the surprise segue, either delighting in the most inappropriate juxtapositions or simply not caring about obvious non sequiturs. In one particularly delicious example in November 1915 it switched from the deadly to the banal in successive paragraphs.

First it carried the story of the commutation of the death sentence on one Jane Reynolds who had been convicted of the murder of Mrs Rosa di Lucia in Sligo on 8 December 1913. Her husband Angelo di Lucia, the ILT informed its readers ‘is at present under sentence of death’. Rather than elaborating on the nature of the crime passionel involved here the journal leaves us in suspense to move on to more pressing matters which concerns …

A novel legal point … raised in some sheep dipping cases heard at the last [Louth] Petty Sessions in Drogheda.

Here, at least we are not left hanging - the pun is entirely intentional. Farmers, it appears, in Co.Down had been brought before the beak for not having their dipping certificates up to date. Their defence solicitor, jesuitically but ingeniously, tried to claim that Louth Petty Sessions had no jurisdiction in the matter as the counties don’t adjoin because of the presence of that large stretch of water, Carlingford Lough. The magistrate dismissed the manoeuvre and said the court had jurisdiction.

Despite its bluster, its occasional bombast and its self importance how can one fail to warm to a periodical that juxtaposes adulterous homicide with agricultural fungicide.

Madam Chief Justice, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Irish Law Times 1914-1918.