PRISONERS MOURN JUDGE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 86, 5 January 1935, Page 6

PRISONERS MOURN JUDGE

Sentenced Many But Befriended Old Lags

Seldom indeed do gaol birds go into mourning for a judge. And yet, when Sir Ernest Wild, K.C-, the Recorder of London, died last month, the old lags of many prisons expressed deep sorrow at the termination of a brilliant career. “ British justice is the fairest and most expeditious in the world,” this leading legal light once said, and if that observation be true of British justice in general, it was especially true of the justice administered by Sir Ernest Wild himself at the Old Bailey. As Recorder of London he served there for twelve years. During those years he gained a reputation not only for fairness, but—what he would have considered ,a ' greater honour—for mercy.

Many “old lags” tad reason to be grateful for his efforts on their behalf. Notable amoijg them was James Brady, “a complete illustration” (in Sir Ernest’s words) “of the way in which our predecessors manufactured criminals. ”

At the age of 72, Brady appeared at the Old Bailey on a charge of housebreaking. He had been sent to prison for three monts at the age of 19 for stealing 7s 6d. and since then had been sentenced m all to over 28 years in prison. Sir Ernest placed Brady in the charge of the probation officer, Mr George Newe, who found him a newspaper pitch. When be was ill in hospital, Sir Ernest took him flowers, and gave the old man “ bis first foretaste of heaven.” “ Two shillings,” Sir Ernest realised, “may save a man’s soul.” and for that reason he did everything be could for those unfortunate people who are “ tossed aside ” from court and prison, and “ thrown back into the world again without a ray of hope.”

But he was forthright in sentence and condemnation when the occasion seemed to him to demand it, and there was no more frequent critic of the growth of lawlessness in our midst. On the subject of crimes committed by women he was trenchant. “You get some horrible murder,” he told a meeting of the Holloway Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, “ and it is always the murderer or murderess who is considered; nobody seems to think of Mr Jones and Mrs Robinson, or to mind in the least that they have been sent to eternity suddenly.” He was critical also of the encroachment of Government departments on the administration of the law, and fearful of the growth of “ the greatest and worst of all despotisms—the despotism of bureaucracy. ” In court, he was 'i man of infinite pains, and, whenever possible, great mercifulness. It. was his boast that in four years he filled a hundred note-

books of seventy pages each with notes of the pleadings before him, and with agitated witnesses he was gentleness itself. When offences of brutality camo before him, however, he could denounce criminals in unequivocal terms and pass sentence accordingly. He was the son of a well-to-do Norwich tradesman and public worker, and was educated at Norwich Grammar School, and Jesus College, Cambridge, whence he graduated in history. He was called to the Bar in 1893. and joined the South-eastern Circuit, on which he made his reputation as counsel for the defence in the famous Peasenhall (Suffolk) murder trial of 1902-03.

He was a Judge of the Norwich Guildhall Court of Record from 1597 uutil 1922, when he was appointed Recorder of the City of London. He represented Holborn in the London County Council from 1907 to 1910, and, after four times unsuccessfully contesting seats at Norwich and North-West Ham. was elected Coalition Unionist member for the Upton division of West Ham, in December, 1918 He was sitting In the House of Commons at the time of his appointment as Recorder of London, but resigned his seat when questions were asked in the House of Commons about the compatibility of the two offices. Sir Ernest was deeply Interested In the origin and ceremonial of the Recorder’s office. The origin he traced to the days when writing was a rare accomplishment, a,nd litigants were accustomed to seek a scribe to make a record of their cases. The ceremonial he increased with an innovation which at the time fluttered the dovecotes of the Temples. After a petty jury has been sworn to hear a case of treason or felony, it is customary for the usher to call on any who know of any further treasons, felonies, or other peccadilloes chargeable to the prisoner, to declare the same forthwith, or for ever hold his peace,

The 'challenge ends with the words, God save the King. ’’ •

Sir Ernest instructed the usher to add the words, “and the King’s justices.”

In the intervals of a busy life, Sir Ernest took a keen interest in literature. He was president of the Dickens Fellowship and the author of a study of Spenser's “Faerie Queene.” He also wrote verse himself, mainly of the political and patriotic order, and was a keen playgoer. He was elected a Freeman of Norwich in 1932, being given the scroll of freedom in the same silver casket in which it had been handed to his father, and until his father’s death rarely missed a week-end ah Norwich.