MARY MAHERintroduces a wealth of anecdotes from the District Court's early days
“THE DISTRICT Court was created on the fly and on the sly,” author Mary Kotsonouris says at the opening of Tales of the District Court. In October 1922 the new provisional government appointed 27 resident magistrates, and “by sleight of hand and practically overnight”, the old and new jurisdictions were melded.
The extraordinary story of that evolution from the Dáil Courts onward creates the setting for dozens of other stories gathered by the author, a legal historian and former judge in the Dublin Metropolitan District. Drawn from her own considerable experience and the recollections of many colleagues, journalists, friends and neighbours, these are the small stories – funny, sad, infuriating, shocking, comforting – that bring the courtroom to life. Here’s a short edited sample from this wealth of anecdote:
One of the crew on a Norwegian ship on an official visit to Dublin got into trouble for being drunk and disorderly. He appeared in Justice Robert Ó hUadhaigh’s court the following morning. The Garda explained that the defendant was repentant and had apologised, but the judge was not prepared to let it go at that. He requested that a consular official from the Norwegian embassy attend.
At the resumed hearing, Judge Ó hUadhaigh said to the consul: “I want you to explain something very clearly to this young fellow. Years ago, we had trouble here in the city from other sailors who came from his part of the world. They did a great deal of damage, stayed for a considerable time and caused a lot of upset to the people of Dublin. I want him to understand that this kind of behaviour cannot be allowed to happen again.” The startled official was obliged to enlighten his compatriot on the Viking invasion . . .
Kerry, 1940s: Judge Richard Johnson was driving home from court on a dark evening when, near Rathkeale, he came across two men with a tractor stranded in the middle of the road. He parked and went back to see whether he could help: they had run out of fuel. “Why on earth are you out on a tractor in the dark?” he asked. “Because we have cleats [studs] on the wheels and there is a hoor of a district justice in Kerry who is death down on using cleats on the road,” he was told.
He fetched a petrol can from his car. Overcome with gratitude, nothing would satisfy them but that they would return the petrol. Just to get away, he was forced to give the address of a shop in Tralee where they could leave it, and hurried to his car. “But who will I say it’s for?” shouted one of them. Dick Johnson called back, “Tell them it’s for the hoor of a district justice.”
There was a prosecution in Bray court of a boy accused of stealing a wristwatch from a house in the town. A shopkeeper, who was also a church warden, gave evidence that the accused had come to his shop and offered to sell him the watch for a shilling, saying he had found it on the road. He bought the watch.
Evidence was given that the family had eight children, of which he was the eldest. The husband was in delicate health, as was one of his daughters. The lad’s solicitor asked the justice to give him a chance and not to send him to an industrial school. He would be 14 the following Monday. Mr Little, district justice, said that as the woman had so many other children, including the delicate girl, it would be far better that she would not have to take care of the boy – and the court would send him to Carriglea Industrial School.
Tom Donnelly, president of the District Court, was hearing a prosecution for growing cannabis. A neighbour of the accused was giving evidence of seeing the plants in the adjoining garden on a date in April. Questioned on his certainty of the actual date, the witness looked at him in scorn. “Wasn’t it Good Friday?” Disgusted at his questioner’s continuing lack of enlightenment, the reluctant gardener exploded, “Why else would I be in the garden only that the pubs were shut?”
As a recently qualified solicitor, I had to supervise the handing back of a baby girl who had been fostered by an adoring family. She had been abandoned on the steps of a church and found the following day, with a broken leg sustained from a stumble in the churchyard. The gardaí traced the parents, who were extradited from Britain and tried in Ireland. I think the father was jailed for six months and the woman was given probation.
Some years later, my firm was instructed by English solicitors to represent the mother, who was applying to the High Court to have her daughter returned to her. Although the application was strenuously opposed by the local authority, the order was that the child be returned to her natural mother.
Hence the small group gathered in the lounge of a Dublin hotel. The lively toddler bounced about between her foster parents, while the wife explained to our client what her favourite cereals were, her bedtime, the things she disliked, while handing over the youngster’s most loved soft toys. To my censorious eye, the mother did not appear to be paying any great attention. Her attitude was in strong contrast to the other woman’s steely determination to stay calm and to try to soften what would shortly be a nightmarish experience for the small child.
A solicitor from a midland town was doing very badly, mainly through his fondness for drink; his friends were concerned and decided the best thing for him would be to take up alternative employment. They made inquiries and found there would shortly be a vacancy for a rate collector in the locality. Representations were made and it was arranged for him to meet the constituency Dáil deputy at Leinster House.
The solicitor was tidied up and put on the morning train to Dublin. The kind friends were waiting when he returned that evening. Their faces fell when he told them that, unfortunately, the rate collector’s job had already been given to someone else. “It’s not so bad,” he said, “they are going to make me a district justice instead.”
' Tis All Lies, Your Worship . . .' – Tales of the District Court, is published by The Liffey Press at €19.95. Mary Kotsonouris served as a judge in the Dublin Metropolitan Court for nine years, and is the author of Talking to Your Solicitor; Retreat from Revolution: The Dáil Courts, 1920-1924, and The Winding-up of the Dáil Courts, 1922-1925