JOVIAL JUDGES

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10313, 24 January 1927, Page 8

JOVIAL JUDGES

OFTEN MAKE COURT MERRY. When Mr. Justice Bigham was trying a case about a charter party relating to a cargo of donkeys for _S. Africa, and Mr. Joseph Walton informed him that his friend Mr. Bray, K.C., appeared for the defendants, the judge was well within the law to ask: “Which of the donkeys does Mr. Bray represent ?” Mr. Justice Day never made an irrelevant joke in his life, but he intervened with many witty and useful interruption sthat made for brevity. As when a learned and pompous counsel in a dull trade case about sacks and bags when addressing the court at great length said: ‘‘Then, my Lord, we come to the question of the bags; and here I must remind your Lordship that there are many kinds of bags; they might have been full bags, or half full bags, or empty “Or windbags,” interjected _ the learned judge in a gloomy voice. Mr. Justice Wightman put the same thought in a kinder but no ,f- u s amusing form to Mr. Ribbon, mho had been pounding away with a hopeless argument, repeating himself to file third or fourth iteration. “Really, Mr. Rib ton,” interrupted the judge at last, with a weary sigh, “you know you’ve said that before.” “Have 1, my Lord? I am very sorry. I quite forgot it.” ,“I)ont apologise,” said the mud old judge, with perfect resignation. “I forgive you—for it was a very long time ago.” Commissioner Kerr, a very able but eccentric judge, hated to see counsel before him wearing a moustache. “How can 1 hear you, sir?” he shouted to an offender who appeared with a beard and a moustache, “how can 1 hear you if you cover up your muzzle like a terrier dog?” “Well, I’d rather be an English terrier than a Scotch cur,” was the unexpected reply. A prisoner tried before Judge Maule for murder and found guilty was asked in the usual way why sentence should not be passed upon him. He raised his hand to heaven with a dramatic gesture and called out: “May God strike me dead if I did it!”

There was a hushed silence. The spectators gazed at the prisoner in horror. Maule stared in front of him and waited for several moments. At length he coughed and, in his thin, dry voice, as if dealing with some legal point in the case, said: “Prisoner at the bar, as Providence has not seen fit to interfere in your case it now becomes my duty to pronounce upon you the sentence of death.”