THE COURT.
When the swearing of the jury is going on, how good, and how natural is the scene with the unfortunate chemist.
‘Answer to your names, gentlemen that you may be sworn,’ said the gentleman in black. ‘Richard Upwitch.’
‘Here,’ said the greengrocer.
‘Thomas Groffin.’
‘Here,’ said the chemist.
‘Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well and truly try—’
‘I beg this court’s pardon,’ said the chemist, who was a tall, thin, yellow-visaged man, ‘but I hope this court will excuse my attendance.’
‘On what grounds, sir?’ replied Mr. Justice Stareleigh.
‘I have no assistant, my Lord,’ said the chemist.
‘I can’t help that, sir,’ replied Mr. Justice Stareleigh. ‘You should hire one.’
‘I can’t afford it, my Lord,’ rejoined the chemist.
‘Then you ought to be able to afford it, sir,’ said the judge, reddening; for Mr. Justice Stareleigh’s temper bordered on the irritable, and brooked not contradiction.
‘I know I ought to do, if I got on as well as I deserved, but I don’t, my Lord,’ answered the chemist.
‘Swear the gentleman,’ said the judge, peremptorily.
The officer had got no farther than the ‘You shall well and truly try,’ when he was again interrupted by the chemist.
‘I am to be sworn, my Lord, am I?’ said the chemist.
‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the testy little judge.
‘Very well, my Lord,’ replied the chemist in a resigned manner. ‘There’ll be murder before this trial’s over; that’s all. Swear me, if you please, sir;’ and sworn the chemist was, before the judge could find words to utter.
‘I merely wanted to observe, my Lord,’ said the chemist, taking his seat with great deliberation, ‘that I’ve left nobody but an errand boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my Lord, but he is not acquainted with drugs; and I know that the prevailing impression on his mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid; and syrup of senna, laudanum. That’s all, my Lord.’ With this, the tall chemist composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assuming a pleasant expression of countenance, appeared to have prepared himself for the worst.
One who was born in the same year as Boz, but who was to live for thirty years after him, Henry Russell—composer and singer of “The Ivy Green”—was, when a youth, apprenticed to a chemist, and when about ten years old, that is five years before Bardell v. Pickwick, was left in charge of the shop. He discovered just in time that he had served a customer who had asked for Epsom salts with poison sufficient to kill fifty people. On this he gave up the profession. I have little doubt that he told this story to his friend a dozen years later, and that it was on Boz’s mind when he wrote. Epsom salts was the drug mentioned in both instances.
It must be said that even in our day a defendant for Breach, with Mr. Pickwick’s story and surroundings, would have had small chance with a city jury. They saw before them a benevolent-looking Lothario, of a Quaker-like air, while all the witnesses against him were his three most intimate friends and his own man.
We have, of course, testy judges now, who may be “short” in manner, but I think it can be affirmed that no judge of our day could behave to counsel or witnesses as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did. It is, in fact, now the tone for a judge to affect a sort of polished courtesy, and to impart a sort of light gaiety to the business he is transacting. All asperity and tyrannous rudeness is held to be out of place. Hectoring and bullying of witnesses will not be tolerated. The last exhibition was perhaps that of the late Dr. Kenealy in the Tichborne case.
All the swearing of jurymen before the court, with the intervention of the judge, has been got rid of. The Master of the Court, or Chief Clerk, has a number of interviews—at his public desk—with important individuals, bringing him signed papers. These are excuses of some sort—medical certificates, etc.—with a view to be “let off” serving. Some—most, perhaps—are accepted, some refused. A man of wealth and importance can have little difficulty. Of course this would be denied by the jurists: but, somehow, the great guns contrive not to attend. At ten o’clock this officer proceeds to swear the jury, which is happily accomplished by the time the judge enters.
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