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Description
Book 1
'Disaster in law, writes Stephen Tumim, 'does not usually strike with a swoosh or a thud but with a few ill-chosen words.'
This collection of anecdotes skims over some three hundred years of legal history, pinpointing the moment of disaster in court cases famous and unknown - and the subsequent embarrassment of judge, counsel, prisoner, witness, even the system itself. Splendid eccentricities in both the law and lawyers provide the perfect setting for mishaps and misunderstandings, the absurd nature of which will appeal to anyone who follows the antics of the judiciary. From the use of four-letter words in Sir Walter Raleigh's trial for treason to the petulant fury of Lord Alfred Douglas in the witness-box, Stephen Tumim captures the calamitous exchange that throws a trial off the tracks, and reveals a lighter side of a profession nowadays thought to be wholly serious.
Book 2
Anyone who has ever found the law to be an ass will find further evidence for that opinion among the tales in this second selection from Stephen Tumim's fund of legal absurdities.
Even a subject as seemingly dull as contempt of court yields such unexpected delights as the seventeenth-century offender who, according to the records, 'ject un brickbat a’ le justice que narrowly mist' and was 'immediatement hange' for his audacity Traditionally it is between the judges and barristers that the most hard-hitting projectiles are exchanged, verbal of course, though nowadays it is quite often the prisoner in the dock who has the last word. 'You are a humourless automaton,' said one would-be practical joker to a senior judge on receiving six months for contempt, 'why don't you self-destruct?
Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge said in 1801 that he would like to hang a hundred lawyers - for their interference in his summary treatment of mutineers - and certainly the exploits and idiosyncracies of many of the leading protagonists have over the years given rise to some fierce confrontations, quite apart from ludicrous lawsuits which were, and sometimes still are, possible to bring through the obscure ramifications of the legal system.
For in this anecdotal survey of the antics of the law over the last few hundred years it is the system itself that emerges as the grand perpetrator of great legal fiascos.
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Contents
Great Legal Disasters
1. Rough Justice and a Thirsty Jury
2. Highwaymen and the Haymarket
3. A Long Story: the Duchess-Countess
4. The Scots Are Ruder
5. The Hammersmith Ghost and the Chelsea Set
6. Women and Children Second
7. Sir Charles Russell and Adversaries
8. The Clubman to the Gamekeeper
Very Select List of Books
Great Legal Fiascos
1. The Contempt and Anger of His Lip
2. And to His Very Valet Seem'd a Hero
3. To Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
4. The True Embodiment of Everything That's Excellent
5. It Has No Kind of Fault or Flaw
6. Bellowing On to the Last
7. And a Good Judge Too
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Author Details
Stephen Tumim is a London Country Court Judge living in Hammersmith. He was brought up on the Oxford Circuit, where his father was the clerk of assize and a collector of legal memoirs and accounts of famous trials. This extensive library has yielded many of the stories that make up this book.
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