Over the years mercifully little in the way of violence has broken out in English courts. Perhaps the most famous example is from the time when a sort of franglais was the lingua franca. In 1631 it was recorded that a prisoner ‘puis son condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit justice, que narrowly mist’. I believe the man was hanged.
Not surprisingly, the Old Bailey has seen the odd fracas. In 1896 four gaolers only just managed to stop one Fowler from strangling his co-defendant. Just over a century later, in January 2001 while trying a murder case, Ann Goddard became the first British judge in living memory to be attacked when the defendant leapt over the dock and punched her in the face. Bruised and stitched but unruffled, she returned 48 hours later. After that dock security was tightened.
At Clerkenwell Magistrates’ Court on 5 September 1938 the last case in the list for the stipe Walter Hedley was a private prosecution brought by engineering student Reginald Henriques alleging assault involving a doctor, a medical student and Ladi Moore, a law student.
Henriques had his dates and evidence all wrong and, when Hedley dismissed the case, he took out a revolver and shot Moore in the thigh. He also put a hole through the warrant officer’s papers and hit the wall of the public gallery with another bullet. When ex-Grenadier guardsman PC Greenaway disarmed Henriques, he found three more cartridges in the pistol and a truncheon studded with razor blades in Henriques’ coat.
Charged with attempted murder, Henriques received five years. Greenaway does not seem to have received a bravery award.
It was in July 1973 at the old West London court off Cromwell Road that, in helping an escape attempt by her lover, a woman shot at Alan Stevenson, possibly the last magistrate to wear a wing collar. She was either a poor shot or the gaoler, knocking her off balance, spoiled her aim, because the bullet ended up in the panelling over the court reporters’ box. It remained there until the court closed in 1996. She received probation. The woman’s lover, who had been trying to arrange an escape attempt from Brixton, drew nine years.
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
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