Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/58

 NOTES AND QUERIES. pi s. rs. JAN. 17, wit

Again, another juror is made to say : "I be for giving of 'un dree months in the sheriff's ward." And the foreman having said that " t'es neck or northing," the juror replied, "Then I'm for northing." Again, a juror who " spoke out like a man," on being asked by the foreman what his opinion was, replied: " Just as you plase. Hang it is said that " the majolity car'd it agin the minolity."
 * un or no, t'esn't a ha'penny odds." Then

The whole story is a burlesque invented by Hicks, and perhaps suggested by his being on a jury himself. It is hardly likely that he told this story while the foreman was alive, as it ridicules him to such an extent, and he could have so readily con- tradicted it, and exposed the absurdity of it. Moreover, he could not have told the story while Donnall, who was a medical man, was alive, as it is based on his guilt, and on the assumption that an ignorant and stupid jury improperly acquitted him.

In the third edition of ' Tales and Sayings ' it is said that the jury were " shut up with no vire nor candle for hours. Us come to decision in the deark "' (p. 98). There is no statement that they were locked up for ' ; twelve hours."

Mr. W. F. Collier, the editor of 'Tales and Sayings,' spells the name of the prisoner Donnell. and he makes it appear that a failure of justice took place because " Dr. Cookworthy got into a wrangle with counsel and judge, lost his temper, and muddled the case for the jury," and he adds that "Dr. Cookworthy saved the man's life, which was very far indeed from his inten- tion " the fact being that Dr. Cook- worthy was not a witness for the Crown, but was called on behalf of the prisoner, and did not get into any wrangle with any one ! See the report in The Times of 3 April, 1817, from which it appears that the jury retired for only a " quarter of an hour," and not "for hours." See also The Times, 9 April.

I do not like analyzing a good joke, but as W. B. H. has raised the question, and thrown serious doubt on the story, and wishes to know " definitely the truth of the facts involved in the story of ' The Cornish Jury,' " I have complied with his request.

Besides the jury story, I have heard Hicks tell all his stories and sing his songs. The jury story Hicks never intended should be written and published, and part of the fun of it was in the perfect way in which it was told by him in the Cornish dialect.

There is an excellent little bust of Hicks in the Garrick Club, and on the pedestal

is an inscription in verse by Abraham Hay- ward, Q.C., who also wrote an obituary of Hicks in The Morning Post of 8 Sept., 1868, headed 'An Illustrious Obscure.'

Let me say by the way that juries were not in 1817 allowed to have candles when they had retired to consider their verdict, unless the judge for some special reason ordered them to have them. In a case of treason, R. v. Hensey, in 1758, the jury wanted candles, having some letters to examine, which the bailiff could not let them have ; but on Lord Mansfield being applied to, and the counsel on both sides agreeing to it, he ordered the jury to have candles. This practice was followed by other judges, but it was not until 1870 that juries were allowed, by the Juries Act of that year, " the use of a fire " and were also allowed "reasonable refreshment, such refreshment to be procured at their own expense."

The old system was to coerce the juries into returning a vewiict speedily. Hence Pope's satire :

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

I shall be glad to give W. B. H. any further information that he may desire.

HARRY B. POLAND.

Inner Temple.

" (11 S. viii. 466). Let me contribute a reply to my query. As I am glad to see and learn both from Godefroy's ' Diet, de 1'ancienne langue francaise ' (x. 272), and from Darmesteter-Hatzf eld- Thomas's ' Diet, frang.' (ii. 1674), there was. and still is, indeed, a specific term applied in French as well as in Spanish to denote a " stepfather," which came from the popular Latin patrastrum, found in Ducange's ' Glos- sarium"' (v. 140), viz., pardtre=Spa,n. pa- drastq=Old French padrastre, parastre (occur- ring in the ' Chanson de Roland ' of the eleventh century). But it has now grown obsolete, and is used only in the restricted evil sense of a bad father (like the corre- sponding original term for a stepmother : mardtre = ~Low Lat. matrasta). Such a re- striction and deterioration of the sense of pardtre, after the analogy of mardtre= mauvais pere, mauvaise mere, appears to be a sufficient reason why beau-pere and belle- mere assumed their twofold sense of step- father and stepmother as well as father-in- law and mother-in-law. It may be worth while also to add the Greek and Latin dif- ferent terms applied to a stepfather and a