Since retiring I’ve had the flexibility to do things that previously I couldn’t due to work commitments, particularly those taking place during the week. A number of these events have been part of the local u3a group, an international organisation for those that have retired or semi-retired.
One such event was the one I attended today – a tour of legal London guided by ex-journalist Tim Wood who had covered legal cases for News of the World.
Royal Courts of Justice
We met on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand and went in. Anyone can enter the building, it being important to our legal system that it can be put under public scrutiny, but in order to do so you have to pass through airport type security. Compared to the Old Bailey, more on which later, this proved to be a breeze.
You enter into a large open space very reminicant of the interior of a cathedral and this is because the architect, George Street, had always wanted to design one and clearly saw this as his chance. Given that he died aged 57 “hastened by overwork and professional worries connected with the building” maybe he’d have been better with something less ornate.
Street was clearly a God-fearing man as he built into the building’s false column because it was (is?) believed that only God can achieve perfection, and this false column was an imperfection. I’m not sure I buy this, as surely God knows that it was done deliberately? Anyway, I digress.
The place is huge and contains within its walls 101 courts and three miles of corridors. It took us an hour and a half to wander through with all its twists and turns and nooks and crannys. You’d turn a corner and there would some other point of interest such as a Legal Costume display or a transcript of Guy Fawkes’ trial from 1605. It’s because of its vastness that a homeless man managed to live there for five years.
The corridors are incredibly long and, we were told, that the reason for this is that when lawyers come out of court and want to discuss matters with their clients they don’t want to be close to the opposing parties and this faciliates that.
As we walked along these corridors rooms were labled as things such as “Criminal division” and “Kings bench division” which made me wonder if there were promotion and playoffs!
Lincoln’s Inn
We came out at the back of the courts and after a brief stop to look at the world’s oldest legal book shop we walked through a fairly nondescript archway that opened out onto an area that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Oxford or Cambridge. This was Lincoln’s Inn somewhere I knew of but had no idea where exactly it was or how stunning it looked.
I hadn’t noticed it until it was pointed out but there were absolutely no pigeons in Lincoln’s Inn at all and this was apparently because the area is patrolled by a couple of birds of prey discouraging any visiting birds.
The Old Bailey
After lunch we walked back to the Old Bailey dropping off our stuff at a travel shop which would “securely” look after it for us for only £10 a bag. By “securely” they meant sticking it in their back office. Given how many people were dropping off bags I wondered how much travel do they sell or do they make more money from “securely” storing bags?
The reason for storing the bags was that you could basically take nothing into the courts with you. There is a list in one of the images below, but it includes all the usual items such as phones, liquids and computers, but also includes the more esoteric such as afro combs and cannabis grinders. Unsurprisingly, firearms were on the list but a long way down – I’d have had them as my number one item.
One in our party kept asking what items on the list were which reminded me of the following Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch, which seemed very apposite given where we were.
You had to go through airport style security and despite having surrendered everything I owned my shoes still set off the scanners!
We’d been given a sheet outlining the cases that were on today the first one on the list being the Constance Marten and Mark Gordon trial who had concealed the birth and death of their baby leaving her in a Lidl bag. I remembered this from the news and didn’t really want to go to this and chose instead a gangland style shooting (don’t judge me they all sounded awful given this is probably the highest profile of England’s criminal courts). However, when I tried to go in I was told I needed ID which I didn’t have so I ended up in the court watching Constance Marten being questioned.
Of course, the court was nothing like it is on TV. For a start, the place was tiny, and it was all very static; no pacing up and down and grandstanding in front of the jury here. There were about 30 people below us, including the judge, barristers, press, and Constance Marten herself.
Some things I did recognise though as the judge got a bit pissy with Marten when he felt she wasn’t answering the question put to her. I did have some sympathy with her though as she was repeatedly asked about the weather and temperature on a particular day and she said she couldn’t remember since it was more than two years ago. I can barely remember what the weather was like yesterday. Then again I hadn’t concealed the birth and death of my baby yesterday so maybe it’s not a fair comparison.
I found it all pretty distressing and was glad when they decided to call it a day at only 3:15 after an hour and fifteen minutes of hard work.
