Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/482

 The

Vol. III.

No. 10.

Green

BOSTON.

Bag

October, 1891.

THE ENGLISH BENCH AND BAR OF TO-DAY. III. THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL. SIR EDWARD CLARKE, the present In 1877 the Pcngt- Mystery was the subject Solicitor-General, is, in the strictest of judicial investigation. Lewis Staunton was sense of the term, a self-made man. He tried for the murder of his wife, Harriet; and was born in 1841; his father was a jeweller his brother Patrick, and his mistress, Alice in Cheapside. He became a student of Lin Rhodes, were indicted as his accomplices. coln's Inn in 1861, and was called to the bar Within eighteen months after her marriage, on Nov. 17, 1864. If report may be relied the deceased lady had been taken from her on, the first years of Clarke's professional life home and put to lodge with Patrick Staun were passed under a cloud of poverty. The ton, while a new house had been provided gossips of the Temple say that he used to for Lewis and Alice Rhodes. In Patrick linger in the common room at Lincoln's Inn Staunton's house Harriet died, and the pro to avoid the pressing pecuniary demands of secution alleged that the prisoners had caused her death by deliberate starvation and neglect. his laundress; and a rumor, that loudly de clares itself to be authentic, asserts that the Mr. Justice Hawkins presided at the trial; future Solicitor-General was wont to sit in the Attorney-General, Sir John Holker, ap his stockings at one end of his chambers, peared for the Crown; and Clarke was while a second-class cobbler soled his boots charged with the defence of Patrick Staun at the other. At length — so the story goes, ton. The prisoners were found guilty and and we beg our readers to note that we are sentenced to death, but the sentence was still dealing with on dits — he determined to i afterward commuted to penal servitude. abandon the bar. An opportunity offered The Penge case was the turning-point in itself. The Civil Service Commissioners an Clarke's career. Sir John Holker, the nounced an open competition for a specified greatest advocate of his day, ever quick number of Government appointments. Mr. to detect and to welcome ability in others, Clarke went up for the examination, and had been struck by the power with which gained the last or the second last place on the Patrick Staunton had been defended, and he took his comparatively unknown oppo list of successful competitors. Then it ap peared that the authorities had miscalculated nent by the hand. Thereafter Clarke's name the number of vacancies at their disposal, is no stranger to the student of our causes and that the candidate above Mr. Clarke ce'lebirs. In the same year, for instance, as was the last for whom it was possible to the Penge case, he was retained for the de provide a place. The Government had fence of one of the " Five Detectives," in to pay for its mistake, and Clarke was dicted for criminal conspiracy and fraud; enabled to remain at the bar till his hour and the prisoner that Clarke defended was I the only one who escaped the clutches of the came. 58