Abstract
This chapter surveys the wealth of humorous tales told about British judges and advocates from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, particularly in the criminal courts over which the judges presided, where humour either designedly or inadvertently could provide a disruption of the normally solemn proceedings. Published and archival collections of such humorous anecdotes largely refer to what happens in open court, including witty remarks by the judges and impudent ripostes by barristers. Lawyers collected and treasured such interchanges, together with tales of judicial eccentricity, as part of the folklore of their profession. Published as anthologies, they found a popular audience as well. In the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, trials were extensively reported in the press and judges became part of an Establishment celebrity culture. Some judges were tempted to play to this press gallery by producing witty bons mots. Other anecdotes deal with mishaps in court. Some are apocryphal, or else floating tales ascribed to legal figures known to be humorously acerbic. The distinctions between formal set-piece jokes about judges (of which in contrast to the United States, there is no discernible body in the United Kingdom) and humorous anecdotes (which purport to be true stories full of accurate detail) are analysed and discussed. Over time, anecdotes evolve variants and are switched to new settings and targets. Anecdotes are becoming more portable and context-free and thus increasingly taking on much of the structure of jokes. The boundary between the two categories is becoming porous.
Christie Davies (posthumous, ed. by J. Milner Davis).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a study of the American situation, see Chap. 3 by Marc Galanter.
- 2.
For an account of Trial By Jury (1875), see Chap. 4 by Jessica Milner Davis.
- 3.
A.P. Herbert’s imaginary law reports, “Misleading Cases”, began in Punch magazine in 1924, continuing for some sixty years. Many were collected in Uncommon Law (1935) and More Uncommon Law (1982), They were adapted for a BBC TV series, A P Herbert’s Misleading Cases (1967, 1968 and 1971), with Roy Dotrice as Haddock, the barrister, and Alastair Sim as Mr Justice Swallow.
- 4.
For a study of how and why corruption invades legal systems, see Graycar and Prenzler (2013).
- 5.
See for example, World Justice Project, Rule of Law Index 2016, at: https://worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/documents/RoLI_Final-Digital_0.pdf; The International Bar Association Judicial Integrity Initiative: Judicial Systems and Corruption, May 2016, at: www.ibanet.org/Document/Default.aspx?DocumentUid=f856e657-a4fc-4783; and Corruption Perception Index, 2016, Transparency International, at: http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016 (all accessed 30 April 2017).
- 6.
Nevertheless, like other women executives, women judicial officers (judges and magistrates) in Australia tend to rank more highly than do men the importance of possessing a good sense of humour in dealing with daily work (Roach Anleu and Mack 2017: 68–70).
- 7.
The same is true for some of Oscar Wilde’s more recherché epigrams (Gantar 2015: 8, 15–17).
- 8.
In classical Latin, malum can also mean an apple, suggesting yet another potential pun waiting for a punster—and a possible setting in the Garden of Eden.
- 9.
- 10.
The series, all appearing under the pseudonym “O” and published by Butterworth and Co, London, included Forensic Fables and Further Forensic Fables, both 1926; Final Forensic Fables, 1929; a reprinted selection, Fifty Forensic Fables, 1949; and a collected edition, Forensic Fables, complete with illustrations and a portrait of the famous author, as late as 1961. These were not expensive volumes, as is evident from Fig. 2.3 above.
- 11.
Curiously, Robey’s son Edward became a barrister and later a judge.
- 12.
According to commentator Chris Roberts (2006), Barnsley “is a couple of hundred miles north of London geographically but several time zones away culturally”, and Roy Cooling, sports editor of the Barnsley Chronicle, is quoted as saying, “No bugger in Barnsley has heard of [novelist] Scott Fitzgerald” (Usable Buildings n.d.: unpaginated).
References
Adams, W. Davenport. 1886. Modern Anecdotes. London: Hamilton Adams.
Attardo, Salvatore. 2011. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin. 1991. Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3): 293–347.
Aye, John. 1931. Humour Among the Lawyers. London: Universal Publishing.
Baldwin, B. 1989. The Philogelos: An Ancient Jokebook. In Roman and Byzantine Papers, ed. B. Baldwin, 624–637. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.
Beard, Mary. 2014. Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Laughter, Tickling and Cracking Up. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bent, Samuel Arthur. 1887. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. With Historical and Explanatory Notes. Boston, MA: Ticknor.
Birkenhead, Earl, 2nd. 1959. F.E.: The Life of F.E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.
Bowen-Rowlands, Ernest. 1924. Seventy-Two Years at the Bar, a Memoir of Sir Harry Bodkin Poland. London: Macmillan.
Bowker, A.E. 1947. Behind the Bar. London: Staples.
Brighte Esq, John. 1850. The Book to Keep the Spirits Up. Wakefield: William Nicholson.
Brightwell, Cecilia Lucy. 1866. Memorials of the Early Lives and Doings of Great Lawyers. London: Nelson.
Brown, Malcolm. 1998. Rorting, the Great Australian Crime. Sydney: Lansdowne.
Chen, Stephanie. 2009. Pennsylvania Rocked by ‘Jailing Kids for Cash’ Scandal. CNN, 24 February. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/. Accessed 27 March 2017.
Collins, Dick. 1998. Historia Urinalis. Re-reading Les Trois Meschines. French Studies 52 (4): 397–408.
Cook, Michael. 2012. Cook Holds Court. Michael Cook Shares Some After Dinner Tales. New Law Journal 162 (7501): 265–266.
Cornelius, Judson K. 2002. A Feast of Laughter. Mumbai: St Paul’s and BYB.
Davies, Christie. 1982. Itali Sunt Imbelles. Journal of Strategic Studies 5 (2): 266–269.
———. 1990. Ethnic Humor Around the World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
———. 2002. The Mirth of Nations. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
———. 2008. American Jokes About Lawyers. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 21 (4): 369–386.
———. 2010. Jokes as the Truth About Soviet Socialism. Folklore 46: 7–30.
———. 2011a. Jokes and Targets. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
———. 2011b. Jokes About Disasters: A Response to Tales told on Television Full of Hype and Fury. In Sick Humor, ed. Christian Hoffstadt and Stefan Höltgen, 11–40. Bochum: Projekt Verlag.
———. 2014. From Russia without Love: Russian Jokes and Estonia. In Scala Naturae: Festschrift in Honour of Arvo Krikmann, ed. Liisi Laineste and Piret Voolaid, 259–276. Tartu: ELM Scholarly Press.
Denning, Rt. Hon. Lord (Master of the Rolls). 1981. The Family Story. London: Butterworth.
Engelbach, Arthur H. 1913. Anecdotes of Bench and Bar. London: Grant Richards.
———. 1915. More Anecdotes of Bench and Bar. London: Grant Richards.
Freud, Sigmund. 1960 [1905]. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. London: Hogarth.
Galanter, Marc. 2005. Lowering the Bar: Legal Jokes and Legal Culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Gantar, Jure. 2015. The Evolution of Wilde’s Wit. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gooneratne, Ranjan. 2015. Hulftsdorp: From Courts to Quotable Quotes. Sunday Times, p. 2, 22 March. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/150322/sunday-times-2/hulftsdorp-from-courts-to-quotable-quotes-140913.html. Accessed 1 April 2017.
Gray, William Forbes. 1914. Some Old Scots Judges. London: Constable.
Graycar, Adam, and Tim Prenzler. 2013. Understanding and Preventing Corruption. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Grunstein, Ronald R., and Dev Banerjee. 2007. The Case of ‘Judge Nodd’ and Other Sleeping Judges – Media, Society, and Judicial Sleepiness. Sleep 30 (5): 625–632.
Hay, Peter. 1989. Harrap’s Book of Legal Anecdotes. London: Harrap.
Heighten, Joseph. 1916. Legal Life and Humour. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1991 [1651]. Leviathan. Ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hunter, Rosemary. 2003. Women Barristers and Gender Difference in Australia. In Women in the World’s Legal Professions, ed. Ulrike Schultz and Gisela Shaw, 103–122. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Jacob, Robin (Right Honourable Lord Justice Jacob). 2014. Knowledge of the World and the Act of Judging. Osgoode Hall Review of Law and Policy 2 (1): 22–28.
Jafar, Iqbal. 2012. Lawful Humour. The International News (Pakistan). 11 October. At: https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/390190-lawful-humour (accessed 18 March 2018).
Jokes4all. n.d. Fifteen Jokes About Judges. http://jokes4all.net/judge-jokes. Accessed 1 April 2017.
Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits: A Series of Anecdotal Biographies Chiefly of Scotchmen, Mostly by James Paterson and Edited by James Maidment 1885, No 35, Lord Braxfield, of the Court of Session, n.p. http://www.electricscotland.com/history/kays/vol135.htm. Accessed 27 October 2015.
Kenney, Sally J. 2008. Gender on the Agenda: How the Paucity of Women Judges Became an Issue. Journal of Politics 70 (3): 717–735.
———. 2013. Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter. London: Routledge.
Kerr, Heather, David Lemmings, and Robert Phiddian, eds. 2016. Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Knox, D.B. 1924. Quotable Anecdotes. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
———. 1931. More Quotable Anecdotes. London: Ernest Benn.
Krikmann, Arvo, ed. 2004. Internet Humour About Stalin. Tartu: Tapty.
Lemmings, David. 2012. Negotiating Justice in the New Public Sphere: Crime, the Courts and the Press in Eighteenth-Century Britain. In Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1700–1850, ed. David Lemmings, 119–145. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Lemon, Mark. 1891. The Jest Book, the Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings. London: Macmillan.
Maroney, Terry A. 2012. Angry Judges. Vanderbilt Law Review 65 (5): 1207–1286.
Marsh, Moira. 2015. Practically Joking. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Milner Davis, Jessica, and Troy Simpson. 2001. Humour. In Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia, ed. Tony Blackshield, Michael Coper, and George Williams, 238–239. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Morton, James. 2004. Judges at Wits’ End. Law Society Gazette, 22 January. http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/judges-at-wits-end/41180.fullarticle. Accessed 1 April 2017.
Morton, George A., and D. Macleod Malloch. 1913. Law and Laughter. Edinburgh: Foulis.
“O” [Theobald Mathew]. 1961 [1926–32]. Forensic Fables. London: Butterworth.
Orwell, George. 2004 [1946]. Why I Write. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Purves, David Laing. 1868. Law and Lawyers: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches. Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott.
Rackley, Erika. 2013. Women, Judging and the Judiciary: From Difference to Diversity. London: Routledge.
Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht, NL: Reidel.
Roach Anleu, Sharyn, and Kathy Mack. 2016. Managing Work and Family in the Australian Judiciary: Metaphors and Strategies. Flinders Law Journal 18 (2): 213–240.
Roach Anleu, Sharyn, and Kathy Mack. 2017. Performing Judicial Authority in the Lower Courts. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Roach Anleu, Sharyn, Kathy Mack, and Jordan Tutton. 2014. Judicial Humour in the Australian Courtroom. Melbourne University Law Review 38 (2): 621–665.
Roberts, Chris. 2006. Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme. London: Thorndike.
Schultz, Ulrike, and Gisela Shaw, eds. 2013. Gender and Judging. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Scruton, Roger. 2015. Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. Thinkers of the New Left. London: Bloomsbury.
Slack, James. 2010. Judge James Pickles, Who Once Asked Who Are the Beatles Dies at 85. Daily Mail, 23 December. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-Pickles-said-didnt-know-The-Beatles-dies-aged-85.html. Accessed 1 April 2017.
Slapper, Gary, and David Kelly. 2015. The English Legal System: 2015–2016. 16th ed. London: Routledge.
Smith, F.E. 1913. Introduction. In Anecdotes of Bench and Bar, ed. Arthur H. Engelbach, 9–11. London: Grant Richards.
Taking on the Die-hard Flat Caps. 1998. The Independent, 7 March. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/back-page-taking-on-the-die-hard-flat-caps-1148861.html. Accessed 1 April 2017.
Usable Buildings. n.d. QuotesAndMore. http://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/Pages/UBQuotes/UBQuotesAndMore.html. Accessed 3 November 2015.
Vestal, Allan D. 1959. A Study in Perfidy. Indiana Law Journal 35 (1): 17–44.
Wells, Ernest [“Swears”]. 1900. Chestnuts. London: Sands.
WorkJoke. n.d. Funny Judges’ Jokes. http://www.workjoke.com/judges-jokes.html. Accessed 26 October 2015.
Yablon, Charles M. 1999. Wigs, Coifs and Other Idiosyncrasies of English Judicial Attire. Cardozo Life, Spring. http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/life/spring1999/wigs/. Accessed 26 October 2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davies, C. (2018). Judges and Humour in Britain: From Anecdotes to Jokes. In: Milner Davis, J., Roach Anleu, S. (eds) Judges, Judging and Humour. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76738-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76738-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76737-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76738-3
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)