It is a while since I last posted anything of the tales from the Courtroom, so time to reminisce about the plummy magistrate.
Magistrates come from all walks of life, or at least they’re meant to. Back in the late 1990s there was one Court I used to often go to and the Magistrates there were a different breed altogether. Talk about plummy.
Plummy? You must know what I mean? It is that certain voice but one of being distant and from a different era. Think of the old BBC announcers in the 1950s and you won’t be far off. The plummy voice, it has to be said, is very posh and quite refined. Probably influenced by, in the case of ladies, their finishing school or their aristocratic chums. For men, it might be influenced by their fathers, their gentlemen’s clubs and so on.
In this particular Court room, there was a certain titled lady who was chair of the bench. And she knew my name. As I was an officer of the Court, she knew I was available to assist as much as I could and I think I even had a reputation for doing what I could for each case. Whenever I needed to contradict or challenge, she always listened carefully to what I had to say and would normally be agreeable to whatever I said.
While she had the utmost style and deportment in the Courtroom with her plummy voice, she would often be misunderstood by some of the defendants. Some, I think, knew perfectly well what she was saying but they liked pretending they didn’t understand and they expressed this in their course, lazy language.
Then there was the case of a scallywag of a serial shoplifter. He was well known to the Court and I imagine every Magistrate would have heard his excuses about why he had been stealing again. He even had a solicitor well trained and would talk about the woes of the Government’s policies on state benefits as a way of trying to mitigate the latest offending.
Once they had gone as far as they could with the case that day, it needed to be adjourned for some reason or other with the plummy magistrate announcing in Court
”We are going to adjourn this case young man. Do you understand?”
Without really giving him a chance to respond, she decided he must not be able to understand the word “adjourn”.
”So listen to me young man. We are adjourning your case until next Wednesday. This means we are putting this orf until next week. Do you understand?”
The defendant clears his throat, tries to look serious for a moment and says “yes I understand my case is being adjourned until next Wednesday but I don’t understand what orf means. How are you spelling it Ma’am?”.
The plummy magistrate was furious. On the tip of her tongue was an order to take him to the cells for a thrashing. Instead it was “see Mr Hook sitting over there. He’s very nice and patient, he’ll explain it to you and he might even write it down for you. Thank you Mr Hook for whatever you can do for this cheeky young man”.
And so I stood up as he was allowed out of the dock. We both headed for the door to the lobby so I could see him.
I think we both succeeded in keeping a straight face until we were out of sight. Then he burst into an hysterical laughter. Me, well I managed to remain composed. But only just!