60 with the ragged humanity in the dock or with the less-than-genteel juries, attorneys and onlookers in attendance. Nevertheless, by virtue of his offices as a law officer and Chief Justice, Mansfield’s involvement with the venerable court was extensive. On 18 May 1750, Mansfield, then Solicitor General Murray, wrote to his friend Stone: I long to hear that you are well and that you breathe a healthier air than We do at present. Death is very busy among us; since Browne; Baron Clarke is dead; and Sir Thomas Apney is only not dead but lies in his last Agonys; people are apt to impute their Feavers to the last Old Bailey Sessions; I hardly think it because of the Distance of Time; but it is extraordinary that many who were there have died and others have been ill of Feavers. Sir Daniel Lambert is dead. My Lord Mayor is a dying, the Under Sheriff is dead. Lord Chief Justice Lee’s Train Bearer dead; an Attorney or 2 dead, a Council whose name is Otway either dead or in Extremis, besides others who have been ill.^^ As Chief Justice, Mansfield sat at the Old Bailey for 10 years, 1757—1767 (excepting 1760). Patterns of staffing the bench with judges in rotation, and general characteristics of the 18th century trial procedures at the Old Bailey, have been clearly described by Langbein, drawing upon Dudley Ryder’s diaries and other sources.^"* Mansfield played his part, ordinarily sitting twice a year, in April and October. This pattern was not fixed; Dudley Ryder noted in his diary the advice he received from Baron Legge that “the judges take the Old Bailey by rotas three and three at a time, and then the Chief begins and tries what he thinks proper and then gives the paper to his next brother and so on”.^^ After 10 years, Mansfield’s attendance ceased. In the Old Bailey sessions papers,Mansfield is shown as having presided over 110 cases during his sittings there. liest work was by Holliday,]., Life of WilliamLate Earl of Mansfield, 1797, which Lord Campbell called, a bit unfairly, “the worst specimen of biography to be found in any language”. There is as well one recent book: Heward, E., Lord Mansfield, 1979. One analysis of Mansfield’s judicial opinions (Fifoot, C.H.S., Lord Mansfield, 1936) contains a derivative biographical chapter, and Mansfield appears in brief in a number of biographical compilations. Add. MSS. 32, 320, f. 359. Referring to this episode, Gerald Howson wrote: “In 1750, sixty people died, including several judges and alderman, from gaol-fever (a form of typhus) in a single Sessions. Thereafter, the judges used nose gauze, and the fumes froma neighboring vinegar-distillery were piped in [to the Old Bailey] to counteract the stink of the prisoners”. Howson, G., Thief-Taker General, 1970, p. 316. It is unclear whether Murray was personally exposed at the fatal sessions. Langbein,]., “Shaping the Eighteenth-Centurv Criminal Trial”, 50 Univ. of Chicago L. Rev. 1,31-36, 123-134 (1983). Ryder Diaries, 13 April 1754. See Langbein,]., “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial”, 50 Univ. of Chicago L. Rev., pp. 10-18, 21—26, for a description and an evaluation of these case reports. He undoubtedly conducted more trials than this figure indicates. For example, Mansfield is shown in attendance in the April and October 1757 Sessions, but specific trials at which he presided are not identified. Also, Mansfield sat in on other trials being conducted by fellow judges, as was traditional (see Langbein’s discussion of the Collegial Trial Bench, 50 Univ. of Chicago L.
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