FAMOUS JUDGE AND WIT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 36, 5 August 1911, Page 10

FAMOUS JUDGE AND WIT

SO MIC OF TII.E LATE JUDGE IiACON'S SAYINGS. London, June 12. Willi the dentil of Judge Bacon, London loses one of its most memorable and picturesque figures. The famous judge died at his house in Kensington 011 Saturday morning. He was for many years the senior county court judge, and despite his great age of seventy-nine years, lie was working almost to the end. Judge Bacon was born in 1832, and had sat in the Whitechapel and Bloomsbury County Courts since 1878. He will always be reinclubcred as a wise judge w)io tempered his wisdom with wit. Here are a few of his sayings:— "How can two men talk at the same time and understand each other?" lie asked ,a noisy plaintiff and defendant. "It takes two women to do that." To a woman witness: Raise your veil and put back your hat a little. I want to see your eyes. A woman's eyes are sometimes more tell-tale than her tongue.

•"The plaintiff's wife," remarked a solicitor who was conducting a case, "ip an accomplished horsewoman, and no ordinary wife." "Ordinary wife!" retorted Judge Bacon. "Perhaps not, but she is his only wife." One litigant was a disappointed speculator in hair-wash. The judge remarked: "Dreams ,of great and immediate profit make the inventors' paradise and the financiers' grave." '-You think that because a man lives in an expensive house you have evidence of means," lie said to a man claiming a debt. "What nonsense! In most cases it is a sprat to catch a whale." A man who appeared in answer to a summons said he had been summoned in mistake, because, although he bore a similar name, he was not the defendant, and knew nothing about the case. "And why are you here?" said the judge. "If I were summoned in the name of Shakespeare I certain should not come." "What do you mean by the word 'foundation,' which you are using so often?" he once asked a garrulous foreigner. "I mean that he is telling a lie," said the foreigner. "Ah," replied Judge Bacon, "you mean 'fabrication.' There is a great deal of difference, between the two things. Remember that a foundation is something solid, while a fabrication is an airy structure, which has no foundation whatever." A man sued his tailor for the return of twelve shillings —the value of a pair of trousers that did not fit. "Put them on," said the judge. When this was done the judge looked critically for a few moment. "Much too short," he said. "Judgment for the plaintiff. Take off the trousers and give them back to the tailor."

A Jewish defendant, sued on a judgment summons, declared he was on the verge of bankruptcy. "Will you swear it?" "Yes," was the reply. "Will you swear it in the synagogue, with the praying-shawl on your shoulders and the scroll of the law in your arms?" The man lowered his head in silence. "Ten days," said Judge Bacon in a low voice.

A woman who was summoned for debt said that she could hardly earn enough to keep her children, whereupon Judge Bacon said: "Why do you dress like that?" "Like what?" asked the woman, taken aback. "With a hat like that—the very latest fashion." "It was bought seven years ago," said the woman. "That is nonsense," said the judge sternly; "that is absolutely untrue. Women did not wear such great flowers in their hats five years ago. I observe and I know."

"The point is easy," said the judge, interrupting a case concerning the life of domestic servants. "Ordinary servants claim six meah a day!" "I saw the collision," said a policeman witness. Judge Bacon leaned forward. "I regard you with interest," he said. "You are the first policeman I have had before me in the whole of my experience who has ever happened actually to have seen an accident."